"When I go in and come out anywhere, I will say, 'Daddy, here I am,'" Brouwerij Drie Fonteinen's Armand Debelder says. "Always. I will tell that to my father although he is now dead for nine years. Just for myself. 'Yes, I did it. I was right.' Because he didn't believe what I was doing. He called me crazy."
Debelder looks to the heavens as he pours a bottle of Zenne y Frontera during a chat for my podcast this summer in the courtyard of St. Pieter's Abbey in Ghent. The beer is a lambic brewed in January 2012, refined in Pedro Ximénez and Oloroso sherry barrels, bottled in March 2014, and released in small quantities—4,500 750ml bottles—in August 2015.
"In a certain way he was very proud of what I am doing," Debelder continues. "But he would never say that to me. I just got one compliment in all my life: 'You don't have to change anything, Armand—anymore.'"