The Valley of the Lambics

Not all beers are made alike. It may be uncouth to acknowledge this fact, but some beers are so time-consuming and difficult to make that they're in a separate category--"Beer Plus," say. On the one hand, a typical American or English ale might spend as little as an hour steeping in hot water, another hour in the kettle (with some lautering time in between), and then a week or two in primary fermentation and conditioning before being packaged and sent off to market. Some of these beers are triumphs of accomplishment. But a gueuze, which I would argue is one of the signature achievements in brewing, requires exacting circumstances, years of aging, and the totally separate skill of blending. It's unfair to compare a gueuze to a mild ale or even an American IPA--to both beers. Visiting lambic land confirmed in my mind that no beer is harder to make, nor any better when made properly.

I scheduled my arrival in Belgium to coincide with a relatively rare brew day at Cantillon. Lambics can only be brewed in the winter when the air is cool enough to chill wort overnight. Because lambics spend years in wooden casks, lambic brewers are confined to annual outputs equal to the cask space their breweries allow; Cantillon, a small brewery in a small building in downtown Brussels, has a strictly limited capacity. So brewer Jean Van Roy brews only enough beer to fill his available cask space. (Important tip: if you want to see Van Roy in action, visit between November and March and watch the Cantillon Facebook page about brewing dates.)

Lambic brewing is by design an ancient practice, but even among lambic breweries, Cantillon is the most insensitive to time. The equipment, the brewery, the methods--everything could have come straight from the 19th century. (With one caveat: Germans stole all Belgium's coppers in World War I, so the oldest coppers anywhere only dates to about 1920.) Cantillon has a museum at the brewery as well, but you'll find if you visit that this is a bit redundant. Cantillon is a museum.

Unlike that easy pale ale that goes from whole malt to fermenter in a few hours, a lambic is an all-day grind. The turbid mash, designed to create a wort that can stand up to years of munching by wild yeasts and bacteria, takes hours. Cantillon's equipment is steampunk old, and very hands on. When I arrived, Van Roy was pumping the finished boil through a thing that looked a bit like a hop back, except that it's purpose was to remove hops, not add them. Hops are used in lambics as an anti-microbial, to keep the wilder elements of the wild yeasts from getting out of hand; breweries age them so they're leached of all alpha acids and add no bitterness or flavor. (Except in a beer like Iris, where Van Roy jumps off the road of strict tradition.)

The wort becomes a template for feral yeasts, invited to join the party during the next phase of the process, when it goes up to a vessel called a koelschip (cool ship) that looks like an enormous cake pan. Van Roy has a disarmingly democratic approach to visitors: me brasserie su brasserie. He told me to just go wander around if I wanted to see the rest of the place (he was elbow-deep in the hop-catcher). The koelschip is on a loft above the brewery's top floor, where open windows let in the Brussels air. On a chilly day, the steaming wort creates clouds of ethereal mist that waft through the rafters, and I spent probably fifteen minutes communing with this scene. For an American lambic fanatic, this was ground zero for one of the most remarkable events in brewing.

In the romantic story of lambic brewing, you always hear about the pastoral Zenne Valley, laden with fruit trees and farmers smilingly working the fields. My mind conjured a kind of rural preserve where the wild yeasts were pristine and untroubled by modern life. Wrong. Cantillon is in the city of Brussels (it's called a "suburb," though to American eyes this is a bizarre characterization--the city sprawls unending for miles and miles, and Cantillon is in the middle of a gritty urban tableau.) The wild yeasts have definitely been slumming with some street-wise elements, from which I conclude that it's not mandatory to have untrammeled rural wonderland to make lambic--potentially good news for Americans willing to risk experimenting with spontaneous fermentation.

The most important part of the process happens in the wooden barrels, which themselves have their own ecosystems. What develops in the casks is straight lambic, some of which breweries may sell without blending. You get interesting but variable character from straight lambic. The real triumph of this style of brewing comes when lambic-makers blend the barrels and then add younger, fresher year-old lambic to add liveliness and effervescence to the sharp, dry, and completely still lambics that result after three years.

I followed my visit to Cantillon with a trip to Brouwerij Boon the next day. It was a fascinating contrast of styles. Frank Boon is emphatically not a museum brewer; in fact, he's one of the most microbiologically sophisticated brewers I encountered in Europe. He currently has a traditional old brewery, but Boon is in the process of upgrading everything--well, almost everything. He will install the world's first modern lambic brewhouse, purpose-built to accommodate the rigors of turbid mashing, but designed to create absolutely consistent worts batch after batch. The traditional part of the process--koelschip, wood aging, and blending--will continue as it has for centuries.

The Boon brewery is located in Lembeek, the historic capital of lambic brewing--the famous Zenne is just a stone's throw away. (It's tiny.) This is a much more rural location than Cantillon's, but it's still just 13 miles from Brussels' Grand Place--in what Americans would actually call a suburb. Boon told me that valleys were important for lambic brewers--and dangerous to regular breweries, which like to locate themselves on high ground. Valleys create pools of still air, and microfauna collect there. River valleys are even better, because the fog and humidity help keep the wild buggies from drifting away. Even though it's just around the corner from Cantillon, the wild yeasts are definitely different near Boon--as anyone who's tasted beer from the two can readily attest.

Another area where Boon and Cantillon differ is their casks. Cantillon uses wine barrels, but Boon uses vats. They aren't as big as Rodenbach's but they're in the ballpark--and 20-40 times bigger than wine barrels. This has a substantial effect on the beer. The volume of beer exposed to wood is greater in a smaller barrel, which affects the density of resident microfauna and amount of air that permeates the staves. I mentioned to Frank that I've seen Raj Apte's analysis of which yeasts become active in the life-cycle of lambic and asked if his followed the same pattern. Boon has been working with a university microbiologist to learn more about his yeasts--likely the most far-reaching studies into the biology of lambic ever done. He gave me a Cheshire Cat grin and said that Apte's charts don't apply to his yeasts--but he wasn't prepared to divulge how Boon lambic differs.

As with Rodenbach, my tour of Boon was spent disproportionately in the impressive cellar. We sampled lambic at different ages to see what character it would give to a gueuze. On their own, they were all less complex than the finished gueuze--one two-year-old batch was pretty tart and sharp, one was more fruity. The year-old lambic was sweet and uncomplicated.

Just before I left Cantillon, Jean pulled out a bottle of 2006 Gueuze, which was one of the highlights of the trip. It was practically glowing with sharp lemon notes. Boon makes a gueuze called Mariage Parfait, which has always been among my very favorite beers in the world--it's got layers and layers of fruit and sour flavors, a tiny bit of saltiness, and a towering effervescence. Drie Fonteinen, which is in between breweries, uses Boon's lambic in its blends, and that brine really pops. It's actively salty, but also has a kind of umami note.

Lambics, and especially gueuzes, live in that strata of artistic accomplishment that includes stinky cheeses, opera, and abstract art. It's very difficult to come to a gueuze cold and appreciate what's going on with it. If I had three beer wishes, I'd ask that people try several different gueuzes in at least ten sessions--different brands and ages. Unlike a lot of American sour beers, gueuzes don't have super challenging flavors--there's no band-aid, solvent, or burning tire. Because of the blend of young and old beer, they're not intensely dry nor sour, and the effervescence nudges them toward sparkling wine. Once you get past the shock of the experience, you begin to understand the flavors and how they work together. Moreover, sampling a bottle from different breweries makes it instantly clear what role the wild yeasts play. Gueuzes are a bit like dog breeds--they are distinctive and unique, and people have their preferences. I'm a Boon man, but I know people so devoted to Cantillon, Drie Fonteinen, or Girardin that they consider the preference for others a minor blasphemy. That kind of devotion is a testament to just how profound these beers can be.

Below are a few more photos:

Cantillon

The undisturbed cobwebs at Cantillon.

Faro, a sugared, low-alcohol, young lambic, is now all but extinct. (Even Cantillon's is well stronger than the traditional 2-3% ABV.) Still, Jean Van Roy serves it from the clay pitcher that at one time would have been found in cafes all around lambic land.

The soon-to-be-replaced mash tun at Boon.

Every lambic brewer has a mark that identifies a cask of their beer when they send it out to blenders. The stylized "L" at the top is Boon's.

Brouwerij Boon.

American Lambics: Allagash Spontaneous and Jolly Pumpkin Lambicus Dexterius

The history of modern brewing can be described as the triumph of sanitation--keeping wild yeasts out of beer. The central achievements of the past 150 years do not involve flavor innovation but the mastery, through refrigeration, pasteurization, and the application of industrial chemicals, of yeast. The one way to ruin a good brewery was through lax standards and the introduction of infectious, unwanted yeasts. This is why the experiments at Allagash and Jolly Pumpkin are so remarkable. Not only are they not trying to keep wild yeasts out, they're actively encouraging them to wander in.

Last Tuesday, I had the opportunity to sample the lambic experiments* of these two breweries, and it was like witnessing a birth. This process is ancient, obscure, and onerous. To see it transplanted and revived in the US borders on miraculous.

Spontaneous fermentation is an ancient practice--yeast wasn't even discovered until the mid-1800s. By then breweries had more or less figured out that leaving inoculation to chance was unwise; they re-pitched by dumping dregs of one batch into the next. They effectively domesticated yeast without knowing it existed. Before that, they brewed a batch of wort and let it sit out. Some natural process unknown to the brewers--God perhaps, or magic--caused the liquid to ferment.

A few breweries still make beer this way, and until five years ago, they were all located in Belgium. These breweries have special facilities where they allow wort to cool, taking in the microflora from the countryside. The vessel in which the wort rests is called a "koelschip," and once the wort has spent a night there, it absorbs the final ingredients to turn it to beer. Brewers return the liquid to casks, where it sits for months or years, waiting while throngs of micro-organisms slowly turn the sugars into alcohol, acids, and other compounds (brief primer here) and create some of the most interesting beer in the world. Only a handful of traditional lambic breweries remain, and their annual production is like a rounding error for a larger brewery.

And yet Allagash and Jolly Pumpkin have taken up the old ways. Both have hewn to tradition, too: they use the appropriate amount of wheat in the grist (about a third), employ a turbid mash, use aged hops (to impart bacteria-inhibiting compounds but no bitterness), and both used a coolship. I visited Allagash in November 2008 and wrote about the brewing process here. Jolly Pumpkin's Ron Jeffries describes his process here. Given these similarities, the lambics we tried on Tuesday, including two Belgian examples, were differentiated principally by the wild, native buggies of the regions they were fermented: Maine, Michigan, and Belgium. And different they were!

The Allagash lambics are not commercially available. I begged and wheedled and managed to get brewer Jason Perkins to send me some samples. They almost certainly will be at some point--everyone was so impressed with their character and accomplishment I can't believe they won't get released. In some ways, lambics are more like wines than beer; they depend so much on factors beyond the brewer's control that vintages vary widely depending on when they were brewed. Some measure of consistency comes from blending, but what you mainly get from a lambic producer is a house character. Boon's is more lactic, Cantillon's drier. I suspect the general character we found in the Allagash beers will carry through on future vintages. The Jolly Pumpkin is commercially available, though you probably have to go to Ann Arbor to get a bottle.

The tasting notes are arranged in the order we tasted them. The tasting panel** consisted of Derek from Beer Around Town, his friend Josh Grgas, Sally, and Upright's Alex Ganum. My sense is that we generally shared similar experiences, though we related to the beers a little differently. I was very happy to have Alex on board--as a proxy brewer for Ron, Rob, or Jason, we couldn't have done a lot better. Geoff Phillips was kind enough to lend us a table at Bailey's to host the tasting, too. Here goes.

Jolly Pumpkin Lambicus Dexterius
A gueuze of lambics aged 4, 3 1/2 and 2 1/2 years. This was, by an order of magnitude, the most funky beer at the table. Bottled still, it poured out like apple juice. The nose was sharp and solventlike; imagine a bottle of nail polish. Sally, who is sensitive to oak, picked this up right away. Very dry, with a grape-skin pucker. As the beer sloshes around the mouth, it seems funky but not deadly; swallowing it, though, is like taking a hit of acetic acid from a chem lab beaker. Easily the most acidic beer I've ever tasted. We were all left a little shell-shocked afterward. My comment is that I hope the intensity can be adjusted through blending. Even for lambic freaks, this is likely a bridge too far. Sour-o-meter reading: 6.

Allagash Coolship Resurgam
A gueuze of 2-year, 18-month, and six-month lambic. A livelier beer, but not exactly effervescent. Right after we opened the bottle, I was picking up a sharp note in the sour nose that I think might have been butyric acid. With a moment of breathing, this vanished, leaving a peppery, lemony scent. It has a soft, dry palate that suggested wheat. I found it far less acidic--with the lemon, it was more on the tart side. We were all picking up a bit of hoppy bitterness on the palate, too. I know Allagash is in the process of aging their hops, but possibly they haven't been aged enough. (Though to tell you the truth, the mild hop bitterness did not clash with the beer--it was just less traditional.) My favorite gueuze is Frank Boon's, which is drier, sharper, and extremely effervescent. Allagash's is not yet as complex as that, but it is remarkable for a first draft, and makes me think it may one day ascend to that level. Given that it's a beer made with the wildest, untamed new world yeasts, I expected something a little more nasty--like the Jolly Pumpkin. Yet it was almost gentle. Sour-o-meter reading: 4.

Oud Beersel Gueuze
Typical for style, the Oud Beersel boasted champagne-like effervescence. I noticed a distinctive inner-tube aroma that could also be called skunk. A bit musty, cellarlike. The flavor, though, is much more approachable than either American example. It was the sweetest of the non-fruit lambics, but Alex was certain these were esters. We had a mini debate about whether it really was sweet or just tasted fruity. Alex brews with one of the driest yeasts available, so he should know; still, my tongue tells me what it tells me: sweet. The finish is light and refreshing. An uncomplicated gueuze--if such a thing exists. Sour-o-meter reading: 3.

Allagash Red
I assume it's the same recipe as the cherry blend (see below), but I haven't found confirmation; though the blend was definitely aged on raspberries for three months. Even in the bottle, you could see the vivid red of this beer. It was fairly effervescent, and easily the prettiest beer of the afternoon. Reminiscent of Cascade's Apricot, the aroma was saturated with fresh raspberries. Interestingly, their flavor was quite subtle. Instead, it was a drier, more tart and more refreshing version of their regular gueuze. The body was quite thin--too thin for some of the tasters. I sensed some disappointment around the table that, after the splash of color and rich aroma, the beer lacked the intense flavor of raspberries. I thought it was quite stylish, though--so flashy to see and smell, but then coy and reserved on the tongue. It was my favorite of the night. Until we cracked the cherry lambic.... Sour-o-meter reading: 4.

Allagash Cerise
A blend of 90% 2-year lambic with 10% six-month, then aged for three months with local Maine Montmorency tart cherries. Brewer Jason Perkins calls it "albino kriek," and it's easy to see why: the cherries give the beer almost no color. The nose carries a bit more cherry, but not a great deal. But then, in a mirror image of the Red, the flavor explodes with fruit. It pops with cherry--deep and peppery. The sour is softened a bit by the spiciness and pit bitterness of the fruit, but the cherry is softened by the lambic--its bright, fresh flavors smoothed and darkened. (There's a reason cherries are the go-to fruit with sour ales.) The body was a bit fuller than either of the other two Allagash beers. The table was unanimous in declaring this the afternoon's best beer. Sour-o-meter reading: 3.5.

Girardin Gueuze
We finished up the tasting with a visit back to Belgium. Like the Oud Beersel, Girardin's Gueuze was very lively, sending the cork up toward the ceiling. I was pleased to find the inner tube aroma again--an expression of Belgium's unique character. It was more lactic and more peppery than Oud Beersel, akin to a Berlinner Weisse in its sharpness and thin body. Not so much funky sourness, just a crisp, sharp, citric sourness. Sour-o-meter reading: 4.

It was a truly singular experience. I feel most indebted to Derek for sharing his Jolly Pumpkin, to Josh for sharing his Girardin, and to the folks at Allagash for sending me three precious bottles of their lambics.
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*The word "lambic" is somewhat fraught. The most exclusive definition limits its application, like a wine appellation, to the Zenne Valley in Belgium. I've also heard people call beers "lambics" if they use wild yeasts--even ones pitched from a Wyeast starter. In my mind, any brewery that is willing to subject a turbid-mashed wort to a night's fresh air and adds no other yeasts has brewed a lambic, full stop. I am prepared to risk Belgian terrorists who dispute this use.

**The tasting panel was supposed to be bigger and include more bloggers. We had several cancellations, and by the time of the tasting, we hadn't had enough time to get the word out to other bloggers. I regret that I wasn't able to share it with more of you.

Boon Geuze

As it turned out, I did end up blowing off the Spring Beer Fest (I may have a guest correspondent with some reax, though). Instead, I pulled a bottle of Bone Geuze out of the fridge and had it instead. Originally intended as a yeast-culturing project, I got busy, six months went by, and I finally decided to bag the culture and drink the beer. I don't report back all the non-Oregon beers I try, but some, like this one, are worth a mention.

Gueuze (Bone's spelling is idiosyncratic) is generally a blend of young and old lambic. It goes through a secondary fermentation in the bottle and, unlike some lambics, is extremely lively. This is perhaps the origin of the name, for "geyser," or maybe not. (Pronunciations vary, depending on who's speaking, but the Flemish is gerz or gerz-ah. Oh, and incidentally, Boon is pronounced "bone.") As with other lambics, gueuze is made with a partly-wheat malt bill, is originally spontaneously fermented, is mostly absent hop flavor, and is characterized by a flavor spectrum ranging from sour and tart to dry and sherrylike. Since they are spontaneously fermented, these characteristics are uncontrollable and variable not only brewery to brewery but year to year.

Frank Boon
As proof that the microbrewing phenomenon was international, in Belgium a wave swept the country that was roughly contemporaneous with the US's. Frank Boon founded his traditional brewery in Lembeek on the River Zenne in 1982--in the town lambics were originally born.

Tasting Notes
There are two versions of Geuze: one featuring his best lambics ("Mariage Parfait," 8%) and the standard version, which is milder (6.5%) but still one of the most complex lambic-family beers I've ever tasted. It is corked, and true to the "geyser" of possibly apocryphal fame, the cork rockets off in the manner of champagne. The beer doesn't bubble out of the bottle, but it does have an almost violent bead that roils off the bottom of the glass, feeding a fluffy white cloud of sustained head.

The aroma was dominated by grapefruit and sourness at first pour. When it opened up with warmth, I found elements of coriander, lavender, and a wheat-breadiness. The palate was remarkable: aggressively sour and acidic on the first taste, so that I expected it to overwhelm any other note. But like a grapefruit, it gave fairly quickly away to bitterness. As it continues to evolve on the tongue, there's a soft, bready middle, and a long, dry, sherry-like finish. There's also a salty quality, sort of like bicarbonate, that combines with the wheat to taste a little like Irish soda bread. In passing, I also discovered some pepper and that lavender note from the nose.

It is a little beyond rating in its singularity, but I would strongly recommend it for anyone who likes the sour ales of Belgium.