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Jo Panneels and Jozef Van Bosstraeten raised the idea of starting their own lambic brewery whilst drinking geuze in a café in the Payottenland. Back in the mid-2000s, Jo Panneels worked in the retail business and Jozef Van Bosstraeten worked as a plasterer. Each year the two friends – who have known each other since childhood – went to France to help the winemakers with the grape harvest in the Burgundy region. The winemakers were intrigued when they found out about the lambic project the two friends wanted to set off, and offered some oak barrels of both 400-liter and 220-liter sizes. Lambic wort could relatively easily be sourced around the mid-2000s, because it was not as hyped as it is nowadays. The Lambiek Fabriek founders had not grown up in a brewer’s family, but gained their technical beer knowledge by taking professional classes in COOVI Anderlecht, which is a school specialized in the catering industry.
A two stories high garage in the Fabriekstraat in Ruisbroek (Sint-Pieters-Leeuw) was transformed into a warehouse where Jo & Jozef could produce their first lambic around 2006 – 2007. Between 2008 and 2015, the future Lambiek Fabriek founders purchased some wort, young lambic, and old lambic from: [[Brouwerij_Lindemans|Lindemans]], [[Brouwerij_3_Fonteinen|3 Fonteinen]], [[Brouwerij_Oud_BeerselBrouwerij Oud Beersel]], and [[Hanssens Artisanaal bvba]]. They began to experiment making only kriek lambic in small 20 and 60 liter carboys for non-commercial use. While beginning to contemplate the logistics of blending lambic commercially, lambic was at the same time in one of its most popular and rapid upswings in popularity. This made the market for lambic wort from other producers much tighter due to demand at their own breweries and blenderies as well as making any available wort more expensive.
By 2015, the decision had been made to start a new commercial-sized lambic brewery. Their tasks were quickly defined because the two friends know each other for over 30 years and know how to work complementary. They agreed on Jozef Van Bosstraeten taking on the role of master brewer, and Jo Panneels as zythologist assisting in blending and responsible for all non-production tasks such as: finance, sales & marketing distribution,... Given the fact that they were not able to purchase wort from the bigger lambic brewers at the time, Jo Paneels approached a clean top fermentation brewery in Zuun (Sint-Pieters-Leeuw) to let Lambiek Fabriek brew lambic on-premises. In the beginning of the brewing sessions, the coolship was not present at the brewery. Instead, it was located at their original warehouse in Ruisbroek, approximately 3 kilometers away from the brewery. The first two seasons (2015-2016 and 2016-2017), freshly brewed wort was transported approximately 4.5 kilometers away from the brewery to another warehouse where it was pumped into the coolship to cool overnight. Logistically, this was a strain. To solve the problem of having spontaneous fermentation alongside a clean brewery, a separate warehouse was chosen on-site to house the barrels and all of the necessary pumps and hoses. Eventually, it was decided that the coolship should be moved to the brewery for logistical reasons, and it was installed under a roof outside of the brewery in the fall of 2017 so as to not interfere with the clean fermentation at the brewery.