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Object #22 - Tire-Bouchon

19th century

Pub Life

By the late 1800s, traditional Belgian brewing needed a lifeline. Their country had never had as many breweries or cafés, but it was Bavarian Bock beer not Belgian bières brunes these new brewers were making and cafés were serving.

How could these traditional brewers compete with foreign beers offering a clarity, effervescence and crispness that had thus far eluded them? The new Spéciale Belge, or Belgian Pale Ale, style made famous by Palm and De Koninck, was one answer. But brewers in Brussels came up with something different: Gueuze.

Well, not exactly. Before it became synonymous with a sparkling, bottled Lambic blend, “Gueuze” had long been in use as a term for unblended Lambic served flat from wooden barrels. In fact, many variations on the name - Lambic des gueux, Lambic Gueuse, Geuzenlambic - with one source suggesting it originated from French drinkers exclaiming “cette gueuse de bière!” (“That wretch of a beer!”) after a few glasses. 

As early as the 1850s “Lambic et Lambic (gueuse)” were sold side by side. Once Lambic brewers and blenders mastered the bottle conditioning of Lambic, Gueuze began to take its now-familiar form: a blend of variously-aged Lambic, conditioned in green champagne bottles, and corked. Once opened by a countertop metal tire-bouchon (corkscrew), this Lambic Gueuze was (relatively) clear, foamy, and highly carbonated.

Its big break came at the Brussels International Exposition in 1897, when over 9 months Expo visitors drank 4,405 litres of “Lambic-Gueuse”, compared to 49,500 litres of Faro, 24,000 of Brune, 18,000 of Bock, 17,700 of Petit-Bavière, 8,000 of Munich and 12,417 litres of Lambic. 

Gueuze’s popularity continued to grow in the immediate pre-WWI years, but instead of outmaneuvering Bock beer it cannibalised its Brussels stablemates. Bad Lambic could always be rescued by a canny blender with a bit of sugar and post-production adulteration. But Gueuze had to be right from bottling.

And because blending a Gueuze required more precision than Lambic or Faro - requiring the right balance of young beer for carbonation and old beer for character - brewers and blenders tended to reserve their best Lambics for Gueuze production. The two beers were also competitively priced; for 10 centimes more, a drinker could get a foamy, sparkling Gueuze instead of a flat, turbid Lambic.

One brewer, Albert Vossen, writing in the 1950s, attributed Gueuze’s success to another, less obvious benefit, proclaiming it “excellent, smooth, [and] easy on the digestion….a marvelous beer for weak people, fortifying and restorative…[and] an [excellent] beer for diabetics.”

Health merits or otherwise of Gueuze aside, its supplanting of Lambic and Faro in the hearts and glasses of Brussels drinkers was inexorable. It accelerated after 1918 as consumer tastes shifted once more. Lambic was a 19th century beer, a hangover from Brussel’s pre-industrial past. Gueuze, a product of its modern, industrialising future, was a beer for the 20th century. And on café shelves across the city, earthenware Lambic jugs eventually ceded their place to the tires-bouchons of the iron foundries.