Cantillon brewery/Brussels geuze museum

Today we made a pilgrimage to the Cantillon brewery. They make lambic beers, a traditional, totally unique beer style. Yeast is not added to the wort. Instead, while the wort is cooling after boiling, wild yeasts and other microbes enter the wort, causing spontaneous fermentation.

Unblended, completely fermented lambic is uncarbonated and is rarely served. It is usually only used as a base ingredient for Gueuze, Kriek etc. Gueuze is a mixture of old (3 years) and newer lambic. New one has still sugars left and it undergoes second fermentation in the bottle, giving carbon dioxide to the beer. Gueuze is very sour. I'd say it tastes more like wine than your regular lager.

We took a look around at the brewery and in the end we enjoyed some old lambic, gueuze and kriek (cherry beer). As you can probably judge from the look on my face, I liked them. And this truly was one of the most memorable events on the journey.