Let's see. Zeke and I  woke around 9:30, went down and had breakfast
where we were joined by Tony and the girl from Mons. She said, "'Alo, papa".
The usual fare, cereal, cheese, rolls and coffee, no lunchmeat. Zeke and I
said "adieu" to the girl as she was off to the rail station right after the
meal. We went back to the room and got showers. Hooked back up with Tony and
after checking out, (we would have to check back in after 15:00 a la German
hostels), headed out on a drive through Lambic country.

     Tony had made a couple of calls while we were abluting. He had called a
lambic brewer that had been recommended to us by the guys from Chicago and
made an appointment to tour the brewery. He had also called Continental and
checked on our flight out the next day and found that it was still
undersold, which meant that there was a chance we could get an upgrade to
first class. One can only hope.

     We had a little trouble finding the road out of town that we wanted due
to road work, detours, and the Belgian system of road signs, but after a
little delay we finally found a road to the town of Beersel. I'm not
kidding, Beersel.

     The name of the place was "I Like It Like That." Bet that one goes over
everybody's cranium. It's a song from the Middle Ages. No, The name of the
place was "3 Fonteinen" Cafe-Restaurant. We parked and went in. The guy
behind the bar looked familiar. We walked up to the bar and he greeted us.
We told him we had made arrangements for a tour. He said that his brother
does the tours and he would be available in a little while. So we sat down
and had a beer. It just seemed like the most natural thing to do. We started
with a straight lambic, young, only a year or so old. Man, this was like
nothing I had every drunk before. It was sour but not overwhelmingly so,
cellar temperature, light amber, refreshing and delicious, but not anything
like what most would consider beer. But it was. A completely different and
wonderfully eccentric kind of beer made naturally in only one area of the
world, this one. It looks like we're going to be spending some time at "3
Fonteinen."

     I can't remember who drank what or when, but we had over the course of
the afternoon plain lambics young and old, gueuze (a blend of old and young
lambics, refermented), kriek (lambic refermented with cherries), and faro (a
sweetened lambic). Whew! Not one of them were close to a Linderman's, the
brand I had drunk in the States. Don't get me wrong. I love Linderman's,
especially the framboise (lambic refermented with raspberries), but the
Linderman's is processed, pasteurized while these beers were in a completely
natural state. As a homebrewer I can really appreciate that. It's a taste I
could achieve at home. If I lived 12 miles south of Brussels, had some
wooden casks, had a lot of patience, had some, ahh forget that man. I'll
just buy it.

     Then we took the tour. By this time we had found the guy behind the
bar's picture in the Michael Jackson book, "Great Beers of Belgium", p.104.
The brother turned out to be the other guy in the picture. Big surprise.
Their names are Armand and Guido Debelder. I think Armand took us on the
tour. No, wait, it was Guido, no, Armand, I'm sure now, Armand, I think. He
took us upstairs first to see the brewing operation. Yea, upstairs.

     They had stopped fermenting a couple of weeks before we had got there
because the pollen and extra particulants floating around in the air during
spring and summer add off flavors and generally screw up the process. Pardon
the technical jargon. However, we did see the equipment used to process the
wort.

     Wort is the raw beer, the result of mashing malted barley, and in this
case, wheat in order to extract the sugars from the grains in a liquid form.
They buy their wort from other producers. They boil these worts for 8 hours.
That's quite a while compared to conventional techniques. Then they add hops
that are over a year old, another anomaly. This is because they are not
using the hops for bittering or aroma but solely for a preservative as the
beer will be spending a long time in wooden barrels. Then they take the wort
and put it in shallow, wide, open fermenters in the loft and open all the
windows, for they use the wild yeasts and bacterias floating in the air to
ferment the sugars in the wort. Absolutely amazing. The wild part is, it
works! This plus years of fermenting, aging, blending, refermenting, aging,
and on, and, on, and on until, abracadabra, you have a great alcoholic
drink. Talk about the patience of Job.

     Then we went down to the cellar and the tour got even more interesting.
but that must wait until next time. The cats want to be fed.

Next time - More Lambic Lore

Pictures - In the cellar, A barrel fermenting out the wazoo, er, bung

                          Come on
                               come on, let me show you where it's at
                          Come on
                               come on, let me show you where it's at
                          Come ooonnnnnnnnnnnnnn
                               come on, let me show you where it's at
                          The name of the place is, "I Like It Like That."