Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen

Website (Dutch/French/English): http://www.3fonteinen.be

Lambik-O-Droom contact:

Address: Molenstraat 47, 1651 Lot

Brewery location (not open to public): Hoogstraat 2 a, 1650 Beersel

Overview

Entrance to the 3 Fonteinen Brewery in Beersel

3 Fonteinen is a lambic brewery and blendery located in Beersel, and Lot Belgium. As of 2019, Armand Debelder is officially retired from the brewery due to severe illness and no longer holds a financial stake though he still regarded as the father of the 3 Fonteinen family. 3 Fonteinen is currently headed by Michaël Blanquaert and Werner Van Obberghen after a nearly 6 year transition that began in 2014. Previously Armand took over the brewing and blending operations of the business from his father Gaston. There is also a cafe attached to the original brewery in Beersel, which is overseen by Armand's brother, Guido and nephew Thomas though it is considered a completely separate entity. In addition to lambics, 3 Fonteinen also produces several other non-lambic beers in small quantities including a blonde, lager, and porter.

History

Like many lambic breweries and blenders, the history of 3 Fonteinen starts well before the official founding of the brewery as we know it today. The founding of 3 Fonteinen dates back to at least 1883 (though possibly as early as 1849) when Jacobus Vanderlinden and his wife Joanna Brillens opened an inn with a beer blending business on the side in the town of Beersel, now Hoogstraat 13, Beersel (currently “De Drie Bronnen”, renamed after Gaston and Raymonde moved out).^[1] In Dutch, the name 3 Fonteinen means three fountains and originally referred to the hand pumps that were used to serve the three types of beer at the inn: lambic, faro, and kriek.

Gaston Debelder preparing to bottle

The inn and café changed hands several times over the years until finally coming into the possession of Jean-Baptiste Denaeyer Vanderlinden, son of Jacobus, who also became the mayor of the town of Beersel. Vanderlindend was widely considered to be the best lambic blender in the town. In 1953, Gaston Debelder, along with his wife Raymonde, purchased the building and named the business “3 Fonteinen”. In Dutch, the name 3 Fonteinen means three fountains and originally referred to the hand pumps that were used to serve the three types of beer: lambic, faro, and kriek. In 1961 the Debelder family bought property on the Beersel church square. The building was demolished, but the warehouse underneath was preserved. Though Armand (Gaston’s son) refused to put his lambics in kegs today, the original 3 Fonteinen lambics were indeed kegged. In Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition, Sparrow notes that when Gaston and Raymonde took over the brewery, bottled beer was still a niche product. Before the war, “there was only lambic that you bought from brewers. The kegs that were kept in café cellars had to be emptied within 14 days. If the beer was not sold, it was tapped into bottles.” It is important to remember that at this point, the use of the term keg still referred to a small wooden cask rather than the modern, industrial steel kegs.^[2]

Gaston and Armand Debelder

Gaston was eventually convinced to begin bottling his beer regularly. By all accounts, he was very pleased with the results. The bottles were being stored underneath the building in the caveaus (hand-dug by Gaston), where bottling operations took place as well. The bar experienced vast popularity in the 60s and 70s. Working with his two sons, Armand and Guido, the inn, café, and lambic blending business continued to be successful, though 3 Fonteinen continued to experience the same ups and downs that every lambic brewery experienced in the last half of the twentieth century. Gaston eventually handed the business over to his two sons full-time in 1982. Armand became the head blender (and eventually brewer), while his brother Guido managed the café and restaurant. According to Van den Steen, by the 1990s the lack of popularity in lambic had reduced the number of lambic brewers available on the wholesale market to just three: Girardin, Lindemans, and Boon.^[1] Though Girardin is no longer used by 3 Fonteinen, at least part of 3 Fonteinen's blends may contain lambic whose wort originated at Boon or Lindemans. Though lambic and geuze beers lacked the widespread popularity of other beers, Armand’s Oude Geuze blend won the OBP (Objective Beer Tasters) award in 1993. From then on, the outlook for Belgium's lambic tradition began looking up.

3 Fonteinen's first brew, December 1998

In 1997, Armand became a founding member of HORAL, the High Council of Artisanal Lambic Beers, which strives for the protection of traditional lambic beers.^[3] Until 1998, 3 Fonteinen was strictly a blendery. In 1998, Armand leased a computerized brewing system and had it installed, becoming the first new lambic brewery in decades, with his first batch brewed on December 16, 1998. In the meantime, Armand saved up for his own installation. As this was the first new lambic brewery to be seen in Belgium for nearly eighty years^[4], many banks were unwilling to fund Armand’s venture to buy the necessary equipment. To help facilitate the purchase, Armand and his brother split the business, with Guido taking the restaurant café and Armand forming AD Bieren bvba, the corporate entity under which 3 Fonteinen beers are brewed.^[4] Brewing his own lambic, Armand was now able to fully manage his own product.

In the 1999-2000 season, Armand began to make preparations to begin foreign exports. In 2006, 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze and Oude Kriek received recognition and protection as a traditional Flemish regional product.^[3] As the lambic revival picked up in the early 2000s, 3 Fonteinen continued to be one of the most prolific and traditional producers.

Bottle storage at 3 Fonteinen Lambik-O-Droom

This all changed on May 16, 2009. As Armand entered his warehouse in Essenbeek that day, he was met with a blast of hot air that signified a massive failure of the climate control mechanism. The "Thermostat Incident," as it would come to be called, was the result of a faulty thermostat causing the hot air blower to not turn off. As a result, the temperature had risen to as high as 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) essentially cooking over 80,000 bottles of lambic and causing some of them to explode. Only some bottles of the Oude Kriek were salvageable and today are affectionately known as “Hot Cherry” bottles amongst lambic aficionados.

This huge financial loss of a year’s worth of product, coupled with the fact that the ten-year brewing equipment lease was about to run out, caused Armand to rethink the future of 3 Fonteinen. The remaining capital invested in his own brewing system had to be divested to meet other financial obligations of the brewery. Armand’s last official brew of the pre-Thermostat Incident era was in March of 2009.^[1]

Not all was lost, however; and the remaining bottles of Oude Geuze that had not been damaged beyond repair were distilled into an eau de vie called Armand’Spirit. This, along with the sale of special blends of Armand's remaining pre-incident lambics, has helped to re-secure 3 Fonteinen’s future. In 2012, the brewery installed a 40-hectoliter brewing system. The question of a successor to Armand is often brought up. Previously, Michaël Blancquaert, who had been helping with brewing and blending operations since 2010 stepped in and began brewing alone in 2013. At the same time, he began selecting which barrels of lambic to blend, and together with Armand started to learn how to blend. In 2015, Michaël's firt solo blends were the Cuvée Armand & Gaston blends.

Entrance to the 3F Lambik-O-Droom

In the summer of 2015, 3 Fonteinen signed paperwork to purchase a new warehouse facility in the city of Lot, near Beersel which consolidated the various locations where barrels were being stored between Beersel and Halle. That same year, barrels, and foeders began to be filled in the Lot facility. On Thursday September 1st, 2016, the 3 Fonteinen lambik-O-droom officially opened to the public for 3 Fonteinen Open Beer Days, while the process of moving all of the barrels was finally completed in 2018.

This new facility currently houses barrels and foeders of lambic, the bottling and labeling line, as well as all of the conditioning bottles. In addition to the production facility, the lambik-O-droom houses a full tasting room including current, vintage, and specialty bottles and a retail shop.

Production Notes

Drie Fonteinen follows traditional lambic brewing processes, with the following notable facts:

Until late 1997, 3 Fonteinen bottles were sealed with a cork and cap.

Until 2011, some 3 Fonteinen beers were bottled at Boon. Boon's bottling line at the time was faster so larger, overflow packaging jobs were sometimes completed there. Boon corks say "SB" rather than the normal "3 Fonteinen" cork.

As of 2016, 3 Fonteinen uses two colors of bottles: Green (for blends containing lambic that originated as wort brewed at other breweries), and brown (for blends containing lambic that was brewed only by 3 Fonteinen).

As of 2019, 3 Fonteinen no longer receives wort from Boon after having departed HORAL.

In 2019, 3 Fonteinen received wort from De Troch.

In 2020, 3 Fonteinen received wort from Lambiek Fabriek as well as De Troch.

Beers

Geuze

Faro

Fruit

Jonge Lambiek

3 Fonteinen Jonge Lambiek (Cask)

Oude Lambiek

Speling van het Lot (Twist of Fate) Series

The Speling van het Lot (Twist of Fate) Series is a series of very small, experimental batch lambic blends bottled by 3 Fonteinen. These are sometimes served during special events as well as during dedicated tastings, the first of which took place in April 2018. These experimental blends will continue in the future and be released (for drink-in) when deemed ready. Starting in 2019, selected bars around the world receive small amounts of the current bottlings to serve in-house. By 2020 and 2021 some bottles were being offered for take-away by the brewery.