Ep.11 - Jean Van Roy // Moeder Lambic

My guest on this, the penultimate episode of this season is Jean Van Roy. Van Roy is the owner of Brussels brewery Brasserie Cantillon.

Brewery doesn’t quite cover it though, because Cantillon is also a museum and a living piece of a part of the city’s heritage that almost disappeared - the funky, tart, confrontational spontaneously-fermented wheat beers called Lambic (here’s a beginner’s guide to what Lambic - and Gueuze - is for the uninitiated) that are indigenous to this part of Belgium.

On a scorching hot early September day on the eve of brewing season for Cantillon, we met at a bar influential not only for the city but also for him, and his family brewery.

We talk lambic evangelisation in a country that still doesn’t really get it, his youthful escapades drinking crap beer with friends, how is approach to brewing has changed thanks to his relationships with winemakers and chefs, and how the brewery’s corridors ring hollow and lonely in the absence of American, Italian and other foreign accents.

I hope you enjoy.