3 Fonteinen

3 Fonteinen about

The origin of 3 fonteinen brewery goes back to 1883, when Jacobus Vanderlinden and Joanna Brillens opened a blendery in Beersel, called De Drie Bronnen. This blendery had 3 pipes (3 fonteinen in Dutch) that served lambic, faro and kriek beer. The blendery changed hands serveral times until it was bought by Gaston and Raymonde Debelder, changing its name to 3 Fonteinen. Originally, they brewed lambic and stored it in wooden kegs, althought nowadays they don’t sell kegs anymore. Their son Gaston was the one that started bottling their beers, storing them in the cellar underneath the building—that was hand-dug by Gaston. In 1982, Gaston sons Armand and Guido became the owners, although in the nineties, the popularity of Lambics was in its lowest point. In 1997, Armand became one of the founders of HORAL In 1998, they became the first new Lambic brewery opened since eighty years ago. They quickly began to export and with the craft beer revival, business started flourishing again. But in 2009, and accident in one of the thermostats caused the cellar to heat up to 60 degrees Celsius, wasting over 80.000 bottles and even making some of them explode. This almost lead 3 fonteinen to bankrupt, but some of the remaining bottles were distilled and sold in special sales, helping to rise enough money to make the brewery viable again. In 2015, they already moved to a new location in the city of Lot, not very far away from Berseel, where they also have a taproom.