Sour and Sweet

The production of Lambic style beers is both a wonder of science and a labor of love. Once relegated to farmhouse production amongst southern Belgium’s paupers, the practice basically involves brewing beer and letting it grow mold. Unlike the pious Monks’ practices which involved painstakingly crafted house strains of yeast, old school Pajottenlanders would leave their cooling brews out in the fields to await inoculation from wild yeast strains. Occasionally fruit would fall in. The fruit would ferment in the young beer and aid in the transition from wheat juice to proper sauce.
Cheap production of different styles of Lambics gave way to a style of beer on the distant and opposing horizon from our beloved stouts and I.P.A.’s; Geuze. Typically Geuze is a blend of a young and an old Lambic that ferments finally in a bottle. When referring to lambics as young, don’t think born on dating; usually the babies in this equation are about a year old, and the seniors are up to five. Both beers have been aged in oak casks that start to literally foam at the mouth when fermentation occurs. When the geezer and the whippersnapper unite in a champagne bottle, the beer ferments a second time due to the not-fully-formed-fermentation of the younger ale.

The result is nothing les than spectacular, and Geuze Fond Tradition made by St. Louis brewery is a golden example. Upon the first taste, one can’t help but remember the eternal (and some say fabled) exclamation of the Benedictine Monk Dom Perignon upon his first taste of Champagne: “My Brothers! I’m tasting the Stars!” The bubbles produced by the age imbued second fermentation are explosive but soft compared to their vinous cousins. Unlike French bubbly, the complexity of flavor in Fond T. is unplumbable on the first gulp. Dry crisp apples lead into the sour pucker that barrel aged ales have made famous. The slight tinge of aged hops is almost invisible to the thousands of taste buds struggling to deal with the near shock of so strange a flavor. Eventually the sourness gives way to a savory, wheaty, mouthful: crackers and cheese, old wood, lemon oil, maybe a little cat piss. Nothing else can taste like so much, so lightly, with so little alcohol…
This beer screams summer like you used to scream for Kool-Aid and over-chlorinated water. It might take a few bottles for you to agree with us–Geuze and their ilk are not beers for the faint of heart. It’s an acquired taste, certainly. But its perfect on these hot days when all there is to eat is salad, and all there is to think about is how wonderful things happen with time. And bacteria.
Dairy Pairy: Petit Mothais
Soundtrack: Jonathan Richmond’s “Parties in the USA”