Scott S.
Yelp
If you have heard of 3 Fonteinen prior to actually looking this place up on Yelp, chances are you already know that they produce some of the greatest beers of the lambic styles available to man. For those of you that fall into that strata, my advice is to look very closely at their opening hours (or days, specifically) and also make sure you get here around noon-ish when the restaurant around the corner is open unless you have a way to keep yourself occupied during the two hour gap between when the Brewery/Brewery shop is open and when the Restaurant-Café opens up. Unless of course, you know exactly what you're doing and you're only interesting in purchasing beers and not trying them.
For those of you not familiar with 3 Fonteinen (other than what I just mentioned above) this is quite possibly one of the few places in Belgium where you'll be able to purchase their beer without a mark-up or getting ripped off. Why should you care, you ask? Chances are during your time in Brussels you may have come across what the locals called "Brussels Champagne" or "the local beer style" and tried that odd, grainy, mouth-puckering, yet refreshing beer called "lambic" or "gueuze." Chances are you really liked it, but wondered "hey can I get more of this, but with a little less sweet and a lot more sour?" because you were holding a bottle which read "Lindemans" or "Mort-Subite" or even "De Troch" in your hands.
Whereas a lot of lambic and gueuze producers are now bankrolled by big name corporations or even banks, few breweries are still to this day managed by the families that originally created them, and handed them down through the generations, and 3 Fonteinen is one of them. I won't bore you with the story of how the Debelder family and 3 Fonteinen got settled down at Beersel (that's what wikipedia is for) but there aren't very many on God's green earth that can parallel the love for the lambic style and want to keep it in its pure and unadulterated form as much as the Debelders. If you don't believe me look up Armand Debelder and HORALs, and you can get a glimpse of how much the family has done for the preservation of the style.
I can go on day after day about 3 Fonteinen's prowess but it wouldn't do anyone any good so I'll just get back to the important details. As aforementioned the brewery shop is only open two days a week, and chances are you will see M. Armand Debelder himself manning the post at the brewery shop ready to tackle any questions you may have about his beer, the company, and etc. Armand is very approachable and he isn't joking when he says he is happy to answer any questions; in fact he gave me a short 7-minute lecture on the proper storage of lambic beers and how temperature and storage conditions in the past have affected the way his beers are drunk, which was unexpected but pleasant to say the least.
Like most other breweries in Belgium, the brewery tour at 3 Fonteinen is by appointment only; on any regular opening day your access is limited to the brewery shop where you can buy his year-round beers (Oude Gueze, Oude Kriek, Beersel Lager, Beersel Blond) plus whatever seasonal/special that may be available at the time. The brewery shop also sells the gueze pâté, gueze cheese, and also some brewery stemmed glassware as well as the tumbler; I've seen Armand pour a cup of coffee for a delivery guy that entered around the same time I arrived, but otherwise there doesn't seem to be any consumption allowed while on premises.
My recommendation is to make the trek to Beersel on a Saturday when this location, the Restaurant, and the Oud Beersel Brewery are all open for visits. If after visiting those three places you still haven't gotten your fill of lambic beers, you can always drive a little South East to De Lambiek and visit the lambic museum, or further down south to Lembeek to visit the Boon Brewery.
