Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen: Difference between revisions

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.

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. Vanderlinden 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 [[Books#Wild_Brews:_Culture_and_Craftsmanship_in_the_Belgian_Tradition|''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.<ref name=WildBrews>Jeff Sparrow, [[Books#Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition|Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition]], 2005</ref>

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 caveau (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: [[Brouwerij Girardin|Girardin]], [[Brouwerij Lindemans|Lindemans]], and [[Brouwerij Boon|Boon]].<ref name=GeuzeKriek>Jef Van den Steen, [[Books#Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer|Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer]], 2012</ref>  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 [[3_Fonteinen_Oude_Geuze|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.

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.  

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.