[Beer Lecture] Chapter 21. Rose of Brussels

Sergey Konstantinov
3 min readOct 17, 2022

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One more universally acclaimed beer style (a set of styles, to be precise) also tracks its history from the beginning of the 20th century: fruit lambic. We will probably not be grossly mistaken if we say that’s the most popular Belgian beverage in the world, of which even those who are not interested in beer at all have heard something about.

Some sources claim that using cherries in brewing had been known since the 18th century[1]. However, those cherry beverages should have had very limited popularity — all in all, there is no traceable continuous tradition. The oldest known recipe of kriek lambic was published in the ‘Petit Journal du Brasseur’ in 1907 and requires macerating blended lambic in wooden barrels with cherry berries for 4 to 5 months and then additional maturating in bottles for at least half a year[2]. Though the style should have enjoyed some popularity by this moment, it’s unlikely this popularity exceeds the 20th century’s boundary.

Two years later, raspberry beer came into play: the framboise. Paul Cantillon wrote that he had had more barrels of raspberry lambic than the cherry one. Looks like the public’s tastes were changing fast and unpredictably — so fast that framboise was already forgotten in the 1930s, and restored only in 1973[3].

Fruit lambic of the 1970s was much paler than the modern one and was often used as a cocktail base (for example, the mix with the strawberry liquor was known as ‘Kir Brussels’). Jean-Pierre Cantillon started experimenting with visuals, finally resolving on a gentle pink hue — which, in turn, inspired Belgian watercolorist Raymon Coumans to draw a famous frivolous label for the beer, depicting a naked woman with a skin of the color of roses sitting on a lap of mythical king Gambrinus. Coumans made the artwork after taking Cantillon’s word the beer would be renamed to Rosé De Gambrinus[4].

It’s interesting

For the US market, the label was considered ‘indecent and obscene’, and Coumans had to cover the woman with a long light-blue dress — saying that ‘but most importantly, and the Americans need to know this, underneath the dress she’s in the buff’. The Playboy Magazine even published an article on the matter, comparing the two variants of the label.

In the 1980s, with the Cantillon beer popularity growth, fruit lambic saw the Renaissance. Brewers started to make it using every kind of fruit available: peaches, black currant, grapes, strawberries, apples, bananas, pineapples, apricots, plums, blueberries, lemons, and also even kiwifruits and cloudberries.

How to taste

It looks like the only kriek that had existed before the 1980s is Cantillon Kriek. It’s rather hard to find it, and it’s a brave man’s beverage as Cantillon doesn’t sweeten their beers. Conversely, the only authentic framboise is Cantillon Rosé De Gambrinus.

Interestingly, the 1907 recipe recommends using not just any cherry but a very specific variety — that of Schaerbeek. Some brewers are nowadays producing kriek made specifically with the Schaerbeekse cherry:

  • 3 Fonteinen Schaerbeekse Kriek
  • De Troch Oude Kriek
  • Hanssens Scarenbecca Kriek
  • Oud Beersel Schaarbeekse Oude Kriek

The notable exclusion from the rule is none but Cantillon Kriek itself, which is being made using Turkish cherry. However, the Schaerbeekse variety is also represented in their assortment under the ‘Lou Pepe’ brand.

Apart from those, kriek, framboise, and all other kinds of fruit lambic are nowadays produced by many breweries, both in Belgium and abroad. But be warned: words ‘kriek’ and ‘framboise’ are not protected designations, and the base beer might be of any kind. Many cheap ‘krieks’ are actually just sweetened lagers. So choose carefully: search for beers explicitly marked as ‘lambic’.

Sculpture of mythical King Gambrinus with beer mugs. Photo by Thomas Quine.

References

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