Winding between copper vats and oak barrels, a cluster of early-morning visitors walked through a cavernous Brussels building for a closer look at craft beer brewed using a centuries-old method – before tasting the result.

Since it was founded in 1900 in Anderlecht, a working-class district of the Belgian capital, Brasserie Cantillon has produced so-called primitive “lambic” beers steeped in local tradition.

What makes lambics special is that they begin with a process called spontaneous fermentation – through exposure to wild yeast, specifically those native to Belgium’s Zenne Valley – as opposed to cultivated brewer’s yeast.

Aged in wooden barrels for months to years, which allows a secondary fermentation to occur as the beer’s sugars are converted to carbon dioxide, the result is a distinctly dry beer with a faintly acidic aftertaste.

Cantillon’s specialty is an even more niche type of beer known as “gueuze” – a blend of lambics from different years and whose fruity variants include kriek, or cherry in Flemish – which has around 20 brewers in Belgium.

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In the late 1970s, the brewery decided to differentiate itself by turning its operation into a museum that today draws more than 30,000 visitors a year, amid a wider wave of enthusiasm for craft beer and microbreweries.

On this November morning, tourists from Italy, France, Japan and the UK rubbed shoulders in what is believed to be the last working lambic brewery in Brussels, watching its workers ply their craft.

“Long Lost”

With the tourists were two interns from Quebec, Canada, including Isabelle Gignac — a beer pro in her thirties who works at a microbrewery on the shores of the Gaspe Peninsula.

Her boss sent her to Cantillon for five weeks to get some of her skills back.

“What makes the difference between the beers brewed here is how long they are aged and what barrels are used,” she said.

Morello cherry, haskap, elderflower: the brewery uses a whole palette of fruity aromas for its gueuze beers, adding them in the secondary fermentation stage.

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“Lambic is the closest thing to primitive beer – the kind made before Louis Pasteur and microbiologists discovered how yeast works in the second half of the 19th century,” explained one of Cantillon’s co-owners, Jean-Pierre Van Roy.

Compared to the 6.5 million hectoliters of beer imported into Belgium last year, Cantillon’s output is a mere drop, with an annual 2,500 hectoliters (55.00 UK gallons) produced on average. Two-thirds of it is sold abroad.

Along with his wife Claude Cantillon, granddaughter of the brewery’s founder Paul Cantillon, the couple remain majority shareholders in the family business while day-to-day operations are managed by their three children.

John Gallagher, an Irish academic based in Leeds in northern England, inherited his taste for Belgian brewing from a well-traveled uncle.

“This is beer rooted in a ‘terroir,'” he said approvingly as he sipped a red fruit variety, the French term denoting the special mix of soil, climate and culture that gives a product its character.

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“That’s what gives them such a reputation among beer lovers,” Gallagher said. “In England, traditional practices have long since been lost.”

Source: AFP