Cantillon Brewery: The Last Lambic Brewery in Brussels

The Essentials

The brewery sits in the Cureghem district of Anderlecht, close to Gare du Midi, the Brussels-South station that handles Eurostar and TGV trains. See U Brussels describes the walk from Clemenceau metro as 15 minutes. Clemenceau station opened in 1993 and serves metro lines 2 and 6, and line 2 runs directly from Gare du Midi to Clemenceau as the next stop, which makes the trip from the station simple. Contact the brewery on +32 2 521 49 28 or by email at visit@cantillon.be for anything the site does not spell out.

One honest note on money: the brewery's own site lists no visit price. Third-party sources disagree. One summary gives 9 euros for a self-guided visit and about 13 euros for a guided one, while See U Brussels gives 12 euros for tours with two tastings. Because the brewery itself publishes none of these numbers, this page does not quote an official price. A 25 euro annual membership with free entry and a 5 percent shop discount is listed on lambic.info if you plan repeat visits.

How Long It Takes and What You Get

The brewery publishes no stated visit duration, so plan around the opening window itself: the last full visit needs to start early enough to finish by 16:00. Guide booklets in French, Dutch and English explain the equipment as you walk, and the brewery welcomed over 45,000 visitors in 2014 according to lambic.info, while Cities of Making gives about 35,000 a year. Both point to a popular stop.

What is poured during a visit is not stated on the official site. What is certain is what Cantillon makes: roughly 400,000 bottles a year, all lambic, with half of production being gueuze and kriek brewed once a year. Shop bottles of 75 cl cost about €6 to €8 according to See U Brussels. The museum has featured on the European Route of Industrial Heritage under production and manufacturing since ERIH listed it, and ERIH notes the brewing methods are unchanged since the early 20th century.

Timing matters more here than at most attractions. Cantillon brews only in the cold months, running 46 to 48 brews per season on average. The official site announces public brew days, so check cantillon.be for the next one if you want to see the coolship in action. Jean Van Roy calls the brewery a seasonal factory, and the reason is further down this page. Sources: cantillon.be, lambic.info, Cities of Making, See U Brussels, ERIH.

Spontaneous Fermentation

Lambic has been brewed in the Pajottenland south west of Brussels since the 13th century. What makes it different is that no yeast is pitched. The boiled wort, a mash of typically 60 to 70 percent barley malt and 30 to 40 percent unmalted wheat, is pumped into a shallow open vessel called a coolship and left overnight.

More than 120 types of microorganism can settle into the cooling wort from the air, and those wild yeasts and bacteria do the fermenting. Cooling takes about 10 hours, and it only works when night temperatures sit between minus 8 and 8 degrees Celsius. That is why the brewing season runs only in the cold months: Wikipedia gives October to May, while other listings shorten it to the end of October to the end of March.

Cantillon refuses artificial wort cooling, so weather sets the calendar. The ideal brewing window has already shrunk from about 165 days in the early 1900s to 140 days in 2018, and a 2003 heat wave cost the brewery 6,000 litres of lambic, after which some barrel ageing moved to the basement.

• Cantillon uses a turbid mash and a mix of two thirds malted barley to one third unmalted wheat
• Aged dry hops go into lambic for their antibacterial effect
• The beer matures from one to several years in oak or chestnut barrels, with lambic generally matured in used wine or sherry barrels

Gueuze, Kriek and the Fruit Beers

Gueuze is what happens when a brewer blends young one-year lambic with lambic of two to three years and bottles the blend for a second fermentation. It reaches 3.5 to 4.5 volumes of carbon dioxide in the bottle. The word geuze-bier first appeared in print in 1829, and gueuze received EU Traditional Speciality Guaranteed status in 1997 or 1998. Wikipedia lists Cantillon Gueuze 100% Lambic and Lou Pepe Gueuze, both at 5 percent alcohol.

Kriek is lambic fermented with sour morello cherries, the name coming from the Dutch word for the cherry. Traditional versions used Schaarbeek cherries grown around Brussels, and Wikipedia names Cantillon Kriek Lambic as a traditional unsweetened kriek. Half of everything Cantillon produces is gueuze, and kriek is made once a year. The fruit range also runs to Fou' Foune apricot and Lou Pepe Framboise. The raspberry lambic has carried the Rose de Gambrinus name and label since 1986, described on the original label as 75 percent framboise and 25 percent kriek with 0.05 percent vanilla, with artist Raymond Coumans behind the name. Jean-Pierre Van Roy restarted raspberry lambic in 1973 when a friend brought him 150 kg of raspberries.

Cantillon bottle conditions its beer for one year and makes about 400,000 bottles a year. The brewery also runs the Zwanze series: zwanze is Brussels slang for a semi-sarcastic humour, and the series began in 2008 with a rhubarb lambic. Zwanze Day became a worldwide simultaneous tapping in 2011, and the 2024 edition reached more than 90 venues in over 20 countries with a lambic made with sea lettuce. Cantillon sells no Zwanze bottles, so the only way to try one is at a participating venue. Sources: Wikipedia on lambic, Wikipedia on gueuze, lambic.info on Framboise.

The Cantillon Family

Cantillon was founded in 1900 by Paul Cantillon and Marie Troch in Anderlecht, though Cities of Making places the founding in the 1930s, so the exact start year is reported differently across sources. What is not in dispute is the trajectory: when the brewery opened, Brussels had more than a hundred breweries, and Cantillon is the only one that kept working through the 2000s. Today it is the last lambic brewery inside Brussels.

Jean-Pierre Van Roy is the fourth generation brewer and owner, and he took over in 1969 according to Cities of Making. He restarted raspberry lambic in 1973 and opened the Brussels Gueuze Museum in 1978, turning the working brewery into the museum visitors walk through today. Jean Van Roy is also quoted as the owner, calling the brewery a seasonal factory. Cantillon began exporting to the United States in 1990 and makes about 400,000 bottles a year on Rue Gheude. Belgian beer culture as a whole was added to UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2016, and Belgium counted 411 breweries in 2024, which makes Cantillon's survival as the last of its kind in the capital all the more visible. Sources: Wikipedia, lambic.info, Cities of Making.

Three Beer and Chocolate Tours

None of the three beer and chocolate tours compared on this site names Cantillon in its itinerary, so book one for the chocolate and beer side of the day and keep Cantillon as its own visit. The full comparison sits on chocolate tours in Brussels with every listing.

Hungry Mary's Famous Beer and Chocolate Tour in Brussels costs $113.04 per person, runs 4 hours in groups of up to 25 and carries a 5.0 rating from 2,477 reviews, the most of any beer tour on the site. It includes 10 chocolate tastings and a guided tasting of at least 5 different beers in 2 to 3 taverns. No museum or attraction admission is listed, so nothing on the walk covers a brewery entry. The Brussels Walking and Tasting Tour with beers, chocolates and fries or waffle costs $79.93 per person for 2 to 3 hours, capped at 20 people, rated 4.9 from 1,036 reviews, with 8 premium chocolates and a flight of 4 Belgian beers in a local bar. It starts in front of the Hilton entrance facing Central Station. The Chocolate, Beer, Waffle and Whiskey All-in-One Small Group Tour costs $170.14 per person, lasts 5.5 hours in groups of up to 10 with a minimum age of 16 and a minimum booking of 2 travelers, rated 5.0 from 555 reviews. Beer, whiskey and wine are all listed, with soft drinks as the non-alcoholic option, plus a plated waffle in the Royal Galleries.

A practical pattern: the tours start from the city centre and Cantillon sits south near Gare du Midi, so do the brewery first and check each tour's start time before you plan the rest of the day. All three offer free cancellation 24 hours ahead.