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Lambic, the complex and misunderstood teenager of the beer world
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Lambic, the complex and misunderstood teenager of the beer world
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| A few examples of Belgian lambic bottlings. |
Lambic is one of the most misunderstood creatures of the American beer scene. I can't count the times I've offered some insanely beautiful, tart and wonderful lambic to a drinker who doesn't like traditional (read: yellow, fizzy) beer, and they respond with "No, I hate lambics. They're too sweet."
This conception of lambics as sweet is utterly wrong. People who think lambics are syrupy, sickly, fruity pink brews have generally only had Lindeman's Framboise, which is totally atypical for the lambic style. Lindeman's are very popular because they are more like an alcopop — low ABV, super sugary, marketed to girls who don't drink beer. A true lambic is a different animal altogether.
Lambeek is a region in Belgium where the style originated more than 500 years ago in the Senne Valley. The beers are unique in that they are brewed with at least 30 percent unmalted wheat in addition to malted barley, preserved with aged hops, aged in oak barrels, and most differently, are spontaneously fermented. In traditional lambic brewing, the beer is boiled for an extraordinarily long time — usually at least three hours — and then the warm beer is pumped into a broad, shallow vessel called a koelship. The brew is left to cool overnight, uncovered, and the microbes that live in the brewery and blow in through open louvers settle into the liquid and begin the fermentation process. The "infected" liquid is then pumped into oak barrels to ferment and age for at least one year.
This is a method that horrifies many brewers, who pitch their carefully controlled house yeast into scrupulously clean tanks. Before there were chemical and enzymatic cleaning methods, Brettanomyces, one of the native yeasts that lend lambic its characteristic sourness, was impossible to remove from an infected brewery or winery. You'd have to burn the whole operation down to get rid of it. Even today, there are winemakers in the Russian River valley who will not enter Vinnie Cilurzo's Russian River Brewing pub because they fear bringing home the Brett he uses in his beer, and totaling their own wineries as a result.
Lambic brewers, paradoxically, welcome Brettanomyces. Its nose and taste in finished lambic is described as horse blanket, barnyard, band-aid and wet leather. The nose of these beers can literally smell like the business end of a horse. It is truly a love it or hate it style; fans seek out the funkiest unpasteurized brews in existence, while haters wrinkle their noses and condemn the stuff as nothing but vinegar.
Ten years ago, lambic was dying. People in Belgium didn't even drink it anymore, and no one anywhere else had ever heard of the stuff. Who wanted sour beer, anyway? These days, with Belgian beer bars springing up like mushrooms after a rain, lambic is experiencing a renaissance.
Lambic is bottled and kegged in several different ways. Unblended lambic is beer aged from 1 to 3 years that is drunk straight. It is extremely tart and generally has little remaining carbonation, since the oak barrels in which it was aged are permeable and the CO2 escapes. Gueuze (pronounced Gooze, or Gher-ZE, depending on who you ask) is blended beer, usually a mixture of old (3 and 2 years old) and young (one year old) lambics. The nature of the spontaneous fermentation means that each barrel of lambic is different — blending many barrels creates a balanced and recognizable product from year to year. Gueuze is also quite tart and usually low in carbonation and alcohol. The best-recognized type of lambic has fruit added to the aging barrels, especially cherries and raspberries. Blueberries, peach, banana, cloudberries, cassis and strawberry-flavored lambics are also available. The well-know Lindeman's fruit lambics are much sweeter than a traditional, unsweetened example.
The most revered producers of heritage Belgian lambic are Cantillon, Drie Fontanen, Girardin, Boon and Hanssen's. Their lambics and gueuzes are available in several beer bars in Philadelphia, including Eulogy, Monk's Café, The Memphis Taproom, Jose Pistola's and Zot. Tomorrow Meal Ticket will review a one-off, single barrel cherry lambic specially selected at Cantillon by Monk's co-owner and lambic booster Tom Peters.
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