someone just told me about a Belgian brewery that supposedly never cleaned up since it opened hundreds of years ago and continues to brew in the same equipment. its got cobwebs and dust like its abandoned. the person who told me isnt a beer guy, does this exist or is he making it up?
A lot of Belgian breweries are like that. The attic is where they ferment and they don't want to disturb the cobwebs because yeast particles get trapped in them and they don't want to disturb the process. I'm sire they clean the tons and tanks but leave the fermentation area untouched. Mainly it's farmhouse breweries that make lambics and saisons.
Anything is possible, and should be. Especially when it comes to Belgians and their beer. If you are dealing with open fermentation which I'd surmise this Belgian brewery does exclusively. The less you change about the original 'terrior' the yeasts are derived from, the better. In fact, invite them in; feed them, and give them love and the beer you get back will show it. A lot of them as they are hundreds of years old find that with encroaching civilization, pollution and the related stresses on the land the brewery is in increasingly find the brewery itself is the source of the terrior their yeasts rely on and not the land.
As RochefortChris said, this is actually pretty typically for the older lambic breweries. Everything from the cobwebs, to the fermentation vessels, to the very wood of the building itself, harbors the specific strain(s) of yeast that they use to ferment their beer. Cleaning these areas would, in effect, destroy their propagation of what makes their beer truly unique. Fortunately for us, any baddies (bacteria and such) that could lead to sickness or rancidity are killed of with a very small amount of alcohol, and therefore do not affect the final product. I've even heard that some of the much older lambic breweries refuse to replace roof boards or other wooden materials that are decaying within their brewery for fear that the new wood may contaminate the older structure and kill off their yeast. It's essentially the same principal as sourdough bread. There are sourdough bakeries that have never cleaned or restarted their culture for over 100 years!
I love watching those videos. No one takes it the level of detail that he did. Well delivered and so informative.
Cantillon for example built a new roof right on top of the old one, rather than taking the old one off. Among others, Vapeur in Pipaix uses equipment in place since the industrial revolution (with a few rebuilt pieces).
Something else not already mentioned. Leaving the spider webs undisturbed helps to provide a biological control on flies. Some of the barrels foam out of the bung hole during fermentation and the sugars attract flies.
Cantillon is this way. The warehouse at Drie Founteinen is similiar. Most of the older breweries do this, and to be honest why mess with a good thing.
3F is a young brewer (blender until not long ago) but still nice cobwebby ambiance in the cellar with the barrels. About the video posted by TongoRad, Lindeman now definitely has a modern brewhouse and I'm sad not to have seen the old.
