Back in Brussels - Cantillon

Once back in Brussels, I took a day or two to sleep in and recover from the traveling. On Friday night, Alex had some friends over and we had a dinner with typical spanish dishes. Gaspacho (made from scratch), some aged raw hams from spain (one which is like 1400euro a kg if I remember correctly), and various other spanish dishes. It was a great evening and we ended up hitting the town until late.


All of Alex's friends were incredibly nice and I had a really enjoyable night with them all.


I also went to IKEA for the first time with Alex to get a table. While she prepared dinner, I put the table together so we would have enough room for all the guests. My favorite dish was the potato egg quiche which Alex made. Also the aged raw ham was incredible.


Before I headed back to Germany, I took the tour at Cantillion which was my favorite brewery tour since I got to go at my own pace. After spending weeks on brewery tours, and studying brewery design and processes for the past 14 weeks, I didn't really need a guide. The great part about Cantillon is that it is basically the opposite of modern.


Their old school mash tun with these crazy flaps.


Aging Cantillon. One of the things that separates Cantillon from other breweries is that they use a strict aging regime paired with a spontaneous fermentation which means that literally every beer will have a different flavor/taste. All of the beers produced are lambics which are basically covers the spontaneous fermentation. Lambics are traditionally very dry and sour with little to no carbonation. This is because that their aging is done mostly in barrels and then transferred to bottles without adding any additional wort/sugars for continued aging.


The brewhouse. All copper!


The coolship is used to not only cool down the wort but also to inoculate the wort with wild yeas and microorganisms which are flying around in the fall and spring air. They do all of their brewing in the seasons not called summer.


Some old barrels in the upstairs room. The place gives off a very rustic feeling.


They actually brag about the spider webs which protect the beer from insects.


Aging barrels. This is where the primary fermentation takes place.


Bottle aging Grand Cru.


They have tons and tons of barrels in this place.


Additional aging. The balance between a brewery which relies on nature to create its beer and the breweries which are full of millions of dollars of stainless steel equipment which is sanitized and sterilized using the most modern techniques and chemicals gives a full perspective of the range of my industry.

Adam Davidson sums it up for me, "This is what we do, humans, we tinker and change and endlessly imagine a more perfect future and at the same time we idealize the past. So we are trapped; progress's constant companion is nostalgia for the way things used to be."

Location:Brussels, Belgium