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Brasserie Belle Vue

268 bytes added, 14:50, 8 July 2022
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The journey of Belle-Vue’s slide into non-traditional lambic started immediately after the death of Philémon when his son Constant took over the business. Until then, Belle-Vue was producing only traditional fondgeuze; however, like many other lambic breweries at the time, Constant began to use artificial flavorings to adapt to the changing palates of Belgian lambic drinkers. Belle-Vue began sweetening, filtering, pasteurizing, and carbonating its gueuze so that it could be consumed more like a traditional European pale lager rather than a traditional lambic. Belle-Vue also was one of the first, if not the first, lambic breweries to move away from using the traditional 75cl bottles to using capped 25cl bottles. This provided an easy “one bottle for one glass”<ref name=GeuzeKriek>Jef Van den Steen, [[Books#Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer|Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer]], 2012</ref> strategy and did away with specialty corkscrews needed for opening the larger bottles.
The journey to the top of the lambic world for Belle-Vue began in the 1949-1950 season when Belle-Vue began to send lambic across the country and into France and the Netherlands. Belle-Vue, who was at the time the only lambic brewery with filtered and pasteurized gueuze, managed to escape the heatwave that resulted in exploding bottles for the majority of the lambic brewers and blenders that season. Business was so good that the brewery began buying up other breweries in the 1950's and 1960's.<ref name=MonsieurConstant> Eoghan Walsh, "Monsieur Constant // How One Brewer Defined Beer and Football in Brussels for the 20th Century", Beercity.Brussels, Jun 3, 2020. [https://www.beercity.brussels/home/2020/belle-vue-constant-vanden-stock-anderlecht Link]</ref>
Constant, who was always involved with the football leagues in Belgium and Europe brought his son, Roger, as well as Roger’s cousin Philipe, into the business in 1962. In 1969, Belle-Vue acquired two more breweries: [[Brasserie De Boeck| De Boeck]] and [[Brasserie Goossens| Goossens]], known together as [[Brasseries Unies]] (''United Breweries''). These two breweries together had already acquired Brasseries [[Brasserie de la Couronne]] (De Kroon), Toussaint Frères, [[Brasserie De Coster-Heymans | De Coster-Heymans]], and [[Brasserie Vandenkerckhoven | Vandenkerckhoven]]. Again in 1970 Belle-Vue acquired [[Brasserie Brabrux| Brabrux]], which had already acquired other well known lambic breweries [[Brasserie De Keersmaeker | De Keersmaeker]], [[Brasserie Van Haelen-Coche | Vaan Haelen-Coche]], [[Bécasse-Steppé]], and [[Brasserie Vandenperre | Vandenperre]]. At this point, Belle-Vue controlled approximately 75% of the lambic market. [[Brasserie_De_Neve | De Neve]] was also taken over by Belle-Vue in 1975, which is now a set of luxury apartments in the old brewery building.<ref name=GeuzeKriek>Jef Van den Steen, [[Books#Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer|Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer]], 2012</ref>
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