CantillonPublic brewing session at Cantillon brewery in Brussels. 8 November 2008 Ok, this is an Antwerpian tourist guide and I don’t like sending people out of my city. But some things are so amazing that I have to break this rule from time to time. Visit this brewery and wonder where you are. The moment you pass the heavy wooden gate, you’ll be thrown back in time for at least 100 years. Since 1900, nothing has been changed in one of the most remarkable breweries in the world.Red copper barrels, walls of bottles of beer maturing and waiting on the time they can be consumed. Attic’s full of weed, hops and grains. This is the place where a few of world’s best beers are produced. They are sour and harsh but also fine and tender. You probably have to get used to the taste, but once you bite through the sourness, a full palette of indescribable, unknown tastes appear. This is Geueze, the proud of ‘Pajottenland’, one of the most unknown famous beers in the world. This brewery is, and I quote Michael Jackson, the beer hunter, an essential visit for anyone with even the slightest interest in beer. This very traditional beer maker brews a beer of the type that you can see on Breughel’s paintings and represents the oldest beer type readily found in the developed world using a wild, spontaneous fermentation. Note: A few years ago, this beer was threatened to disappear on the foreign markets as the EU forbids this kind of use of wild yeast. Luckily enough, the same law threatened the French and English raw cheeses, Spanish ham etc… in the end the law was altered and the beer survived. Return from Cantillon to Belgium Beer or to Antwerp Events
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