Belgium: Lambic beers under threat due to climate change

Belgian beer styles are a hit with consumers around the world, but environmental scientists in Brussels claim that climate change could make the sour serve extinct, putting artisan brewers out of business, The Drinks Business reported on September 11.

Climate change scientists working on beer research site lambic.info have said that rising temperatures in Brussels and the Pajottenland region south-west of the Belgian capital — where Lambic beer is produced — could cost brewers thousands as their stocks develop bezomerd, a colloquial term for overexposure to heat, or “too much summer”.

Lambic beer is made using wild yeast and fermented in the open-air in order to react with bacteria present in the atmosphere. Many brewers rely on the natural environment to regulate temperatures, cooling their beers overnight in conditions ranging between -8 and 8C. The beers, which are brewed between October and April, are then stored in wooden barrels and must be aged below 25C.

But lambic.info’s researchers, in partnership with Belgian beer firm Cantillion, found that the window for brewing in Brussels has shortened by around 15 days since the 1990s, as climate change has forced temperatures to rise worldwide, and predicted the window could become even shorter in the years to come, according to Belgian website BeerCity.

Mark Stone, one of the scientists behind the research, said: “Jean-Pierre van Roy (Cantillion’s owner) pulled together the brewing records for us going back into the 1930s and we could see it was tightening up.”

“You could see that they were able to brew into October and April consistently in the past. For Jean-Pierre, because of warmer autumns and springs, that sort of window is impossible now.”

“The threat of climate change on traditional lambic production at Cantillon is indicative of the broader issue. That is, the impacts are not fully recognised until a threshold has been crossed, and adaptation strategies often exacerbate the problem while delaying the inevitable.”

Cantillon produces 400,000 bottles of Lambic beer annually. Van Roy said that artificially cooling the beer would alter its flavour profile, and incur heavy production costs.

“If tomorrow I would have this problem every season, financially it could be a bit difficult, so we would have to change something.”

11 September, 2018