A Toast to Armand, with 3F Oude Lambik

About This Event

On Monday, March 26 at 5pm, the Monk's Café family will join our friends around the world to raise a toast to Armand de Belder, vanguard lambik producer and master blender of Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen in Beersel, Belgium. Armand was loving called Opa Geuze ("Grandfather Geuze") by devotees of this wild, historical style. On what would have been his 75th birthday, Monk's will tap a very special keg of Oude Lambik brewed with 100% Pajottenland barley and wheat. "Anyone who's visited 3F will have seen the foeder with a carved portrait of Armand and his father, Gaston," writes Christian Gregory, of WildKolletief. "This foeder was commissioned back in 2019 as a gift for Armand's 68th birthday, and it was filled with lambik (brewed with 100% Pajottenland barley and wheat...a project he started and was very proud of) on November 28, 2019. Armand loved the gift and made a point to be there for the filling despite already being ill; sadly this was the very last time he was present in the brewery and barrel room. That same lambik was finally kegged this summer, so after almost seven years we have super limited quantities available now." In addition to Oude Geuze, we will have on hand a variety of exciting lambik and geuze from 3F. It was our joy and privilege to know Armand, and to witness his dedication and passion for his craft. Though Armand succumbed to metastatic cancer after a three-year fight, his life's work lives on in the 3F "kids" who took up his craft. "And that is how not a day goes by where Armand’s passion and stubbornness do not play a part in the choices that Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen makes," write his successors. "In the brewing, in the blending, in the tasting: he is always present. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it will always be."