Day 20 - Ghent & Brussels

Jan 2nd - Once we woke up and had breakfast, first order of business was to find a laundromat & do our final load of laundry for the trip. Luckily there was a place right around the corner from our hotel...so a much easier venture than it had been in Berlin. Exciting stuff I know :)

With enough clean clothes to last us to the end of the trip, next up on the agenda was a day trip to Brussels, so we headed off to the train station for the 40 minute train ride. We'd been to Brussels once before, so didn't have a burning need to do a lot of sight-seeing this time around - goal for the day was to hit some beer related destinations.

A visit we had been looking forward to for a long time was to the Cantillon brewery, a short walk from the Brussels Midi train station. We found the building without problem, and once we made our way inside, a great experience was to be had, we were sure of it. Rob was almost beside himself with excitement :) We were given a short intro to the origin of the brewery & some basic history from one of the brewers, and then we were handed a brochure that outlined their brewing process & we were set free to wander about the brewery at our own pace, reading about each stop along the way. OK, setting us free to meander around the brewery may not be a good idea...we'll be unsupervised in the barrel room! :) For anyone not familiar with Cantillon, it has been an independent family run brewery since 1900 - started by Paul Cantillon, carried on by his sons Marcel & Robert Cantillon, and now run by Marcel's son-in-law Jean Van Roy. The beer they produce here all starts from one basic style called lambic. For our non-beer geek friends, lambic is a sour-tasting beer that gets its wonderful flavors from wild yeasts & micro-organisms/bacteria. When we were in Belgium about 10 years ago, we had our first taste of lambic beer & we were immediately hooked. OK, back to the tour...

First up we had a good look at the mashing house to see the mash tun, where the grain first meets the hot water & gets to work converting the starches into surgars. At Cantillon, they add 1,300 kg of crushed grain (malted barley and wheat) and 10,000 litres of water to the mash tun & spends about 2 hours here - end product being the wort.

Next stop on the tour was up one level to see the grain mill (where the malt is crushed before being added to the mash tun) and the boil kettles (where wort from the mash tun is pumped to and hops are added). They start with 10,000 litres of wort in the 2 copper boil kettles and boil for between 3 and 4 hours until 2,500 litres have evaporated off. This level of the brewery also includes the granary where the malt and hops are stored.

Boil Kettle

Grain Mill

Granary

Next up was one of the most interesting parts of the tour was up to the cooling tun room. Here there is a huge, shallow, copper vessel called a coolship where 7,500 litres of wort get pumped into from the boil kettles so it can cool overnight. There are shutter vents in the room which lets the cold night air in, both serving to cool the wort and innoculate the wort with the wild yeasts and bacteria floating in the air, officially turning the "wort" into "beer". Magic happens in this room :)

 

Vents where the air flows in...



Coolship

After oogling the coolship for a while, we made it to the room where barrel upon barrel of lambic was fermenting and aging away in oak & chestnut barrels. I tried not to think about the spiders in this room (that we were told about in the intro to the tour) that are integral to the process in that they control the insects attracted to the sweet malt liquor & fruit that makes up the beer...so they are a good thing here. At least it's not snakes that are neccessary to take care of the insects :) We had also been told that they used to have a cat in the brewery to control the rodent population...we forgot to ask why they no longer have a cat.

Almost the last stop on the tour was to see where the barrels get cleaned & where the bottling happens. Rob was interested in seeing the machine he heard that they use here where the barrels get strapped in & then a heavy sharp chain rotates inside to scrape the edges. After the barrels are "clean", they are steam sanitized and then smoked with a sulfur candle to kill any mold spores trying to get a foot-hold in the wood of the barrels.

Washing machine, chain hanging on the left

Bottling Machine

Now, the last stop was to get a taste of some of the goods...we had a taste of the Gueze which is a blend of 1, 2, and 3 year old lambic, the Kriek which is a lambic fermented with cherries, and the Rose de Gambrinus (framboise) which is a a lambic fermented with raspberries...all wonderful! The toughest part was deciding what we might be able to bring home with us :) We wanted to take as much as we could, but also need to figure out what weight & space we can finaggle in our backpacks...so Rob settled for 6 bottles, but might be back.

Rob with Jean Van Roy

Thoroughly impressed with the tour, we set back out onto the street for our next stop. Rob immediately realized her forgot to get a picture with Jean Van Roy - who wasn't brewing today, but was in the tasting room helping out & talking with customers, so we went pack in for a quick picture. When we asked for a picture, he was more than obliging but asked if the sweatshirt he was wearing was ok to be in the picture...it was a Pliny the Elder hoodie, and we told him it was perfecly fine (of course!). When Rob told Jean that we were homebrewers & it was such a thrill to get here, he told us that he would be brewing Tuesday & Thursday if we wanted to come by and see them in action. Oh so tempting!

Now, finally we were onto our next stop of the day - to a beer bar called Moeder Lambic - that was on our list and the bartender at De Wildeman told us we must get to. We sat down for a drink and some late lunch before the trek to our final planned stop in Brussels. Moeder Lambic did have a great beer list, but the ambiance was just ok (very modern looking), and our server was not very attentive...maybe we were there just a bit too early.

Last up on the Brussels agenda was Delirum Cafe - which we'd been warned might disappoint...but had to go anyway. I do love the pink elephant, and wanted to get a Delirium Tremens from the source. The first time I tried a Delirium Tremens was a few years ago in Chicago, and loved it then...and it did not disappoint here. We were also pleasantly suprised by the cafe itself - yes it was crowded and the music maybe a tad bit loud, but it was full of character & we thoroughly enjoyed it. Apparently this place used to be very smoky when busy, but there was not an ashtray in sight when we went in - new smoking laws in Belgium maybe?

With our fill of Brussels for this trip, we made our way back to Ghent where we wandered around a bit more at night looking for a bite to eat (I found the most delicious & tender Flemmish beef stew) before calling it a night.


New Beers for the day: Cantillon tasting (Gueze, Kriek, Framboise), Lambic Cantillon, Kriek 3 Fonteinen, Delirium Tremens, Delirium Christmas, Oude Lambiek Oud Beersel, St. Idesbald Tripel, t'Stropke Huisbier, Augustine Blond, Klokke Roeland (Waterhuis house beer - menu stating max 3 per person), Quintine Hercule Stout, Boon Kriek