Brewery 3 Fonteinen

We write in the early 50s when Gasten Debelder and his wife Raymonde Dedoncker exchange the farmer's stable in Halle for a beery existence. In 1953 they took over a building, located in the current Hoogstraat, which had housed a café and geuze distillery since 1887.
Gaston and Raymonde immediately christened the brasserie "3 Fonteinen" after the takeover and Gaston quickly mastered the noble craft of stitching.
In 1961 the Debelder family bought a building on the church square of Beersel.
The building was demolished, but the warehouse under the current banquet hall was preserved. More and more driven by the gueuze sign, Gaston single-handedly digs caveaus under the café-restaurant. The cellars of the restaurant are still adjacent to the current brewery.
The café was extremely popular in the 60s and 70s.
Witnesses to this was the club of 'De Mijol', led by the artistic jack-of-all-trades Herman Teirlinck.

In 1982, Gaston and Raymonde left the business to their two sons: Armand and Guido.
While Guido was responsible for the management of the hall, Armand ran the kitchen and gueuzestekerij. Around 1990, the consumption of gueuze reached its absolute lowest point, as a result of a wider movement towards cheap pilsner beers, sweet varieties of fruit beers and wine. It was therefore thought aloud to stop the gueuze stitching, because the authentic way in which Armand and Gaston practiced this craft requires not only a lot of time and patience, but also capital. This is because the production and the entire lambic stock must be financed more than three years in advance.

In 1993, the trophy of the objective beer tasters - which is awarded to a deserving person from the Belgian beer brewing world - was awarded to the three remaining gueuzestekers: 3 Fonteinen, Hanssens Artisanaal and Moriau.
This was the proverbial heart that Armand strengthened even more in his conviction. "The lambic and the gueuze have a future because that is from here and that is ours"; Lambik beer has a clear link with our terroire and such precious heritage that cannot be imitated.

We write 1997.
That perseverance and belief in a future for lambic would not be easy was evident when Gaston himself experienced the decline in gueuze consumption, his own son truly declared crazy "Guis, da zèn allien nog d'ou peikes dat dat drinken" Armand Gaston still hears him say.
Fortunately, Armand had also inherited his father's stubbornness and perseverance and opted for lambic and gueuze and started his own business in 1997.
That same year, Armand founded 'HORAL' with a number of fellow brewers and pluggers.
In November '97 Armand starts brewing his own wort.
Meanwhile, the brewery is growing steadily and around 2008 the company is also financially healthy.

Everything seemed to go well for brewery 3 Fonteinen until the night of 15 to 16 May 2009. When Armand opened the door of the warehouse in Halle, a gust of heat literally blew him away. This room, which was full of bottles that were fermenting and maturing, normally has a constant temperature of 18° C.
There were about 80,000 bottles at the time...
Due to a malfunction of the thermostat, the temperature then rose to 60-70 °C.
Meanwhile, 13,000 bottles had already exploded due to the heat.

Nailed to the ground by the shock, the only thing Armand can think about at that moment is "We are bankrupt".
A handful of sympathizers helped Armand and the brewery get on top of it. Friendly brewers have helped 3 Fonteinen with deferred payments and even with donations from the sale of special brews. A former teacher of distilling techniques at Elishout suggested distilling the gueuze.
Two weekends, about a hundred volunteers came to help pour out 65,000 bottles of beer.
These became the basis for the Armand Spirit, a fine eau de vie with gueuze character; distilled by the Distillerie de Biercée.

By 2011, Armand had also sold the brewhouse and invested a large part of his equity in the business. Together with the support of friends, family and fans, there was just enough money to allow the brewery 3 Fonteinen to survive and put back gueuze.

With his head above water but more motivated than ever before to continue, Armand started looking for a new production employee in 2010.
Soon he sees in Michaël Blancquaert, at that time 26, a younger version of himself. In September 2012, a custom-made new brewery will be put into operation.

From mid-2013, they are looking for a new location to centralize everything except the brewing itself, preferably in and around Beersel.
In 2015 the location was found, in the Molenstraat 47 in Lot, a few meters from the Senne.

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