A History of Brussels Beer in 50 Objects // #30 "Curiosités et Anecdotes: La Gueuze" - 1962
Find out more about Brussels Beer City’s new weekly series, “A History Of Brussels Beer In 50 Objects” here.
Object #30 - "Curiosités et Anecdotes: La Gueuze" - 1962
20th century
Brewery Life
If Constant Vanden Stock was the future, by 1962 Albert Vossen was the past. Waiting to be interviewed by TV journalist Sélim Sasson for “Curiosités et anecdotes : la gueuze”, Vossen must surely have known this.
Albert Vossen was a second-generation brewery owner, his father Theophile having started Brasserie Vossen on Brussels’ Rue des Capucins in the early 1900s. Despite its name Vossens didn’t brew, instead sourcing Lambic from other breweries, including the De Keersmaeker brewery in nearby Kobbegem. In 1927 Théophile bought the Mort Subite café, which subsequently lent its name to Vossen’s Gueuze.
By the time Radio-Télévision Belge broadcast his interview, Albert had been fighting a long rearguard action in defence of traditional Lambic. In 1954 he’d given a lecture that, while ostensibly about similarities between Champagne and Gueuze, was ultimately a plea for the protection of Lambic culture against industrialisation. Albert lamented how “deeply sad and regrettable” it was that price wars and a decline in the quality of Lambic meant producers were “disregard[ing]...the personality of the Gueuze of our fathers.” By 1959 Albert had closed Brasserie Vossen, handing over its 3,000 Lambic-filled pijpen (old Porto barrels) to the Union des Marchands des Bières, a Lambic blenders’ cooperative of which he was the secretary.
It was in this role that he appeared on Belgian television avuncularly explaining Lambic. But everything about the four-minute segment confirms the Vossens’ world as one passing into folklore. The clip’s title - “curiosities and anecdotes” - suggests traditional Lambic was already a relic of a bygone era rather than the staple beer of Brussels’ estaminets and cafés it had been for almost two centuries. The footage - a dusty barrel-filled cellar populated by cloth-capped men wearing aprons, pencil moustaches and cravates - evokes a cottage industry aesthetic rather than a thriving contemporary business.
Then there’s the interviewer’s attitude. Sasson says he’s looking for “historical truth”, pitching questions about Lambic’s nausea-inducing properties and if it’s just a beer for the “common man”. Vossen, all jowly smirk, twinkling eyes and expressive eyebrows, jovially disabuses Sasson of his muddled thinking: “It's a beer that gives joy! A beer that makes you sing, monsieur!” But there is, in his animated defence of Lambic, a sense that perhaps Vossen knows his world is slipping away.
Mid-way through the interview, talking about Lambic’s long fermentation, Vossen says of his tribe: “We are fatalists”. Fatalism was an understandable emotion for Lambic brewers in ‘60s and ‘70s Brussels. Those not bought out by a bigger rival went through the motions as production slowed, their Lambic vinegared in barrels, and their breweries eventually closed. In 1970, the Mort Subite café and brand was sold to the De Keermsakers, though the Vossen name remains above the bar’s entrance. Albert Vossen died in 1978, the same year a young Lambic brewer in Anderlecht rejected the fatalism of his peers. Jean-Pierre Van Roy was determined to save the brewery he’d taken over from his father-in-law - even if it meant turning Brasserie Cantillon into a working museum.
