Changes

This process is as much a tradition as a recipe. With the intense physical demands, the constant attention and care required, and the seasonal brewing cycles, being a lambic brewer is not just a job, but a way of life. This is passed down from generation to generation.

Returning to our question of the viability of a non-Belgian lambic, let’s examine one step in the process of lambic brewing: spontaneous fermentation. A spontaneously fermented beer gets its yeast naturally from the air during the wort cooling process. This is perhaps the best known part of the lambic-brewing process, and every lambic brewer will tell you that if it is not spontaneously fermented, it is not a lambic. Given the balance of yeasts found in the Senne Valley is a primary creator of lambic’s flavor profile, and that spontaneous fermentation is equally crucial to the proper production of lambic, any attempt to move lambic production elsewhere creates a tension between these two aspects of lambic brewing which were previously in perfect harmony. It forces the brewer to ask which is more important: the biochemical composition/yeast content or the method of brewing. This is not a question that any lambic brewer in Belgium has to ask, or would want to – these two aspects of lambic production work in harmony in the Senne Valley, and elsewhere they would likely be in tension. Which is more important: that lambic tastes like a lambic, or that lambic be made like a lambic? In other words, what prevents someone from replicating all of the above? From a scientific perspective…nothing.