Beer – #158 – Lindemans – Gueuze Cuvée René
Ok don’t judge me, Lindemans – Gueuze Cuvée René. It looked pretty on the shelf. Brewed by Brouwerij Lindemans in the style of a Lambic – Gueuze and that in the mysterious St Pieters Leeuw-Vlezenbeek, Belgium
375ml of a 5.5% ABV thing (thats all of a 1.48 standard drink unit) in a bottle.
After 6 months the Gueuze obtains a golden color and a cidery, winey palate; reminiscent, perhaps, of dry vermouth with a more complex and natural flavour. It is often served as an happy hour drink in Brussels. It is the traditional beer for carbonade, as well as a beautifully based beverage with seafood or other salty meals. It’s also delicious with cream sauces.
Beside the traditional Gueuze (the Gueuze Grand Cru “Cuvée René”), there is also a more commercial Gueuze that dominate the market. It is filtered, pasteurized and has a more sweet taste.
It’s babycham! No it isn’t it’s just a sour bubbly drink. And the weird face thing was before I opened it.
There is no expectation with this at all, none. I get what I get and I’ll be darned it I know what that’s going to be. Except I should say that my experience with “lambic” beer has been nothing but positive, although I have it in my head that “limbic” and “fruit” beer goes together and that lambic beer is that of being produced by spontaneous fermentation of the being exposed to the wild yeasts and bacteria. Just like nature.
So you open the cap, and there’s a cork. So wasn’t expecting that! And it popped like a champagne thing, or a fizzy wine. And there are sour apples on the aroma.
Pours a very pale golden yellow, and hell’s teeth that’s fizzier than a fizzy thing. all head and bubbles, in a rush. the aroma is then of dusty mould fruit, apples mostly, but fruit. the taste is sour beyond the pale. This could be a long drink.
I don’t know on what menu that this would be something you’d liven up the evening with, this must be a local thing that only about 9 people get, or those that a pretending to get something that isn’t a thing.
I’ve not had a sour beer like this for since ages, and I’m thinking now I wish I’d done my homework a bit more before this managed it’s way into the house.
The sourness stomps all over anything that might be considered a sweet, and it had a bitter ping at the end that reminds you that it is control of the all. I can imagine that if you said this was the “tradition” and said it long enough you could fool all of the people all of the time.
I can only then judge it in and of itself. Cidery yes. Sour yes. Sparkles yes. Delicious not for me. The pdubyah-o-meter scouts around and comes back with 8. This is all it says it is. There’s nothing that isn’t announced or declared, it is the label.
The most bizarre beer I’ve had for a long long time, one that might take me the rest of the evening to finish. I would like it to have had more body and not to have been so thin, but then I’m a newbie to this and this may be the benchmark.
It might be the weirdest and sourest beer I’ve ever had but it’s not unfinishable, close but I’ll soldier on.
Related articles
- Lambic and Gueuze (beermerchants.wordpress.com)
- Where to Drink Sour Beer in Chicago (drinks.seriouseats.com)
- Brouwerij Boon Oude Gueze (beerscout.wordpress.com)
- For the Beauty of Gueuze (beermerchants.wordpress.com)
- Mort Subite – Oude Gueuze (beerscout.wordpress.com)
- Oude Gueuze Tilquin A l’ancienne (coffieandbeer.wordpress.com)
- Stouts and sour beers rule St. Louis this weekend (stltoday.com)
- Armand’4 Oude Geuze Lente (Spring) (thebeerauthority.com)
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