The Champagne of the people (Cantillon)

Belgium’s Cantillon Brewery makes stunning beer using 6,000 year old technology. It’s an acquired taste worth acquiring says Andy Burnyeat

Mice?!!” As my order at a Brussels bar was repeated by the gentleman standing next to me, I thought I had met the real Arthur Dent.

My fellow customer seemed just as dumbfounded by the concept of ordering mice in a bar as was Hitchhikers Guide hero Arthur when Slartibartfast casually informed him that the Earth had been ‘commissioned’ by furry, white rodents to produce the answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

But the furrowed incredulity vanished from the face of my quizzical pal as I pointed to the bottle of Maes I had asked for, and politely informed him: “It’s pronounced, ‘mice’.” I had repaired to the bar after a visit to Brussels’ Cantillon Brewery, which had actually left me rather dumbfounded.

The brewery messes with your mind. You have to get your head round the idea that everything you’ve tasted before is sweetened beer made with modern industrial technology and equipment.

Difficult enough, but wait till you taste the beer – it’s as eye-wateringly sour as eating a grapefruit first thing in the morning, which you blearily mistook for a melon.

But this is how beer tasted for 6,000 years, from the time it was invented in Mesopotamia until the era of Louis Pasteur.

This is a lambic brewery, which means the beer is made in a way which the vast majority of brewers would blanch at.

Basically the beer is left to react with the bacteria in the open air. This sparks off a ‘spontaneous fermentation’ of the kind which must have happened seren.....

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By Andrew Burnyeat

Section : International Brewery

Page number : 44