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Brasserie Belle Vue

46 bytes added, 03:56, 21 May 2014
History
The journey to the top of the lambic world for Belle-Vue began in the 1949-1950 season when they 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 at the time. Business was so good that the brewery went on to two more takeovers, this time of the De Coster lambic brewery in 1952 and Brouwerij Timmermans in 1955.
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. Yet again in 1969 Belle-Vue acquired two more breweries: Brasserie De Boeck and Brasserie Goosen (known together as Brasseries Unies (United Breweries). These two breweries together had already acquired Brasseries De Kroon, Espagne, De Coster-Heymans, and Van den Kerckhove. Again in 1970 Bell-Vue acquired [[Brasserie_Brabrux|Brasserie Brabrux]] which had already acquired other well known lambic breweries [[De Keersmaecker]], [[Van Haelen]], [[La Bécasse]], and [[Vandeperre]]. At this point, Belle-Vue controlled approximately 75% of the lambic market. [[Brouwerij De Never|Brouwerij De Neve]], whose old brewery building is now a set of luxury apartments was also taken over by Belle-Vue in 1975 <ref name=“GeuzeKriek”>Jef Van den Steen, [[Books#Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer|Geuze & Kriek: The Secret of Lambic Beer]], 2012</ref>.
Belle-Vue was riding a wave of success that very few lambic breweries were achieving at the time, but to do this they needed the help of one brewery still bigger than them in Belgium: Artois. Belle-Vue partnered with Artois to help expand its brand in the export market. The cost of this was a 43% minority share for Artois in Belle-Vue with Constant still remaining in charge of Belle-Vue. When Artois merged with Jupiler in 1991 to create Interbrew it effectively put an end to the Vandenstock family stake in Belle-Vue.
Today Brasserie Belle-Vue exists under the AB-InBev umbrealla and consistently puts out non-traditional, sweetened lambics for the masses. No longer producing a traditional lambic or gueuze, the final true-to-style Belle-Vue product was the Belle-Vue Selection Lambic released in 1999. Belle-Vue beers are now produced at the brewery in St. Pieters-Leeuw located just outside the Brussels Capital Region in Flemish Brabant <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>.
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