The idea for this research came to Mark and Asa Stone, naturally enough, during a brewery tour. They both have doctoral backgrounds in climate and environmental science, and Asa is an Advanced Cicerone. On a visit to Cantillon in the winter of 2016 their academic interest was piqued. “Just listening to everybody and understanding how everything is done here, and since I work on climate change issues, it struck me that, ‘Jeez, this could be an issue’,” says Mark. “I just started playing with the data, saw the trends, and it looked like this is real.”

An email followed to Jean Van Roy, Brasserie Cantillon’s owner. He in turn passed it along to Adam Harbaugh, one of two administrators of the archive/encyclopaedia/community/keeper of the lambic flame that is Lambic.info. Adam jumped on-board to give a socio-cultural perspective, and their little research group was complete.

Reviewing a century of weather trends

The trio worked with Jean to install a weather station on the roof and temperature sensors in key locations around the brewery. Future research will be able to use this data to look at exactly what is going on inside the brewery, for example being able to match weather trends with the progress of fermentation in particular barrels. “We could probably in the future link some type of lambic with some temperature,” says Jean.

While that data was being accumulated, Mark, Asa, and Adam reviewed publicly available meteorological data going back to 1901, looking out for trends in night-time temperatures in winter, and day-time summer temperatures. Both are vital to the making of good lambic.