Vanberg and Dewulf lambic imports


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

Tonight the founders of Vanberg and DeWulf, Don Feinberg & Wendy Littlefield, will be hosting a tasting of their artisanal Belgian beers at Belmont Station. I have been following Vanberg and DeWulf recent endeavors with interest because they have introduced no fewer than three new lambic products to the United States and innovating while doing so.

For starters, they have introduced the traditional lambic blender De Cam to the United States, which, to my knowledge, completes the project to have all major traditional lambic producers and blenders available in the United States. At least as exciting is that the first De Cam product available in the US is a bottled unblended lambic, De Cam’s Oude Lambiek. There is no lambic style that provides such a great insight into the “terroir” of a lambic brewer or blender than a straight lambic.

Their most innovative lambic product to date is undoubtedly Lambrucha, an accomplished low-alcohol blend of lambic and the fermented tea Kombucha (review here). One of the additional virtues of Lambrucha is that it involved De Troch. De Troch is a beautiful old Belgian lambic brewery but much of its capacity is used to brew sweetened lambics for the national market. Hopefully, Feinberg and Littlefield can induce de Troch to do more traditional products or get some of their straight lambic for the US market.

One of their more mysterious releases is LAMBICKX. During a recent event at Belmont Station, one of their representatives noted that this beer cannot be classified as a Gueuze. A look at the bottle reveals the reason for this. The label shows only one brew year (a 2009 brew year and a 2011 bottle year on my bottle), which indicates that this is a blend of two year old lambic, which would put this beer in the same league as Cantillon’s Lou Pepe releases. I tasted this beer over the holidays and I recall this blend having a smooth and relatively young character. This release has a very nice label, too.


Jolly Pumpkin Baudelaire Beer IO Saison


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

It may strike the reader as strange that I have never reviewed a Jolly Pumpkin beer. After all, Jolly Pumpkin is one of the major brewers of wild and sour ales in the United States. As a matter of fact, I like many of their beers. Their Bam Bière is one of my favorite year-round Saisons and makes a great session beer (if you are in Ann Arbor, MI, you can have it on tap in their pub). Their Calabaza Blanca is an excellent tart wit bier. And they also do spontaneous fermentation. So I was quite interested in tasting one of their limited releases, Baudelaire Beer IO Saison.

Another reason why I was interested in this beer is that it was brewed with rose hips, rose petals and hibiscus. Home brewers often have a hard time producing a beer that is sufficiently sour and one natural way to move things along is to add herbs with tart characteristics. The most accomplished sour beer I have brewed to date involved the addition of a whopping amount of hibiscus and brett to an ale after primary fermentation. Generous amounts of hibiscus also add a nice reddish hue to a brew.

My bottle of Baudelaire Beer IO Saison is blend 7/8 and was bottled on 2-4-2011. The beer pours an opaque reddish amber. The aroma evokes well-balanced and restrainted brettanomyces notes, strawberry, hibiscus, and rose petal. The taste is equally restrained; moderately tart, citrus, floral, slightly sweet (like dry caramel), earthy, and there is a little astringency, too. The beer is smooth and finishes on a slightly sweet note.  This spritzy beer is a pleasure to drink and would constitute an excellent introduction to sour styles. Quite an elegant brew with a pretty label.


L’enfant Terrible


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

The label of De Dochter van de Korenaar’s L’enfant Terrible informs me that this is a “special, gueuze-style ale brewed with wild yeast.” I am not completely sure what distinguishes a “gueuze-style” beer from an ordinary gueuze but perhaps it is intended to convey that this beer was produced outside the traditional Pajottenland region in Belgium. The bottle also recommends to serve this beer “very cold!” which is a rather unorthodox recommendation for a beer that is supposed to resemble a traditional gueuze. As a general rule, gueuze should be served not too cold, and straight lambic is often served at cellar temperature. Some reviewers have noted that this beer starts smelling quite odd when its warms up to room temperature.

L’enfant Terrible has the same base as their lightly smoked amber ale Bravoure but has undergone wild fermentation in wine barrels. I followed their advice and served and consumed the beer very cold. A vigorous pour produced an amber-colored beer with a lot of foam. At such low temperatures the beer reveals little aroma, but I detected some funky, floral, spicy, and caramel notes. This beer is tart, but not nearly as tart as a traditional gueuze. Tasting reveals bread, spice and, most of all, grapefruit; a very strong grapefruit note here. Unlike other reviewers, I did not get the smokey character. The finish is off-dry, slightly bitter, and short. But what sets this strange beer apart from the rest is the EXTREME carbonation. I have had my share of bottle-fermented beers with strong carbonation, but this beer dwarfs most, if not all, of them with its tongue-scraping character. The low temperature in conjunction with such harsh carbonation makes it hard to detect any subtle notes. I purchased this beer more than a year ago and I wonder how much ongoing fermentation in the bottle (and more carbonation) can still be expected here.

I find this an odd beer to review. It is great to see more Belgian brewers outside of the Pajottenland experimenting with wild yeast. Aside from the strange “very cold” serving recommendation and excessive carbonation, I liked it quite a bit. But from a reviewer’s perspective, I am a little perplexed as to how this brew could win the silver medical in the Gueuze category at the European Beer Star competition.


Mikkeller Yeast Series: Brettanomyces


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

Admittedly, I was a little hesitant about this beer because Mikkeler seems to show little restraint in what it releases to the market. But this “educational” beer designed solely to showcase the Brettanomyces yeast was too tempting to leave untouched and I was not disappointed at all. The base for this beer (and all the others in the yeast series) is a strong pale ale, and it was brewed and bottled by Mikkeler at the Proef Brouwerij in Belgium.

Brettanomyces pours a dark orange / amber with a good two finger head. For an 8% beer I find the aroma quite crisp and restrained with notes of musty tropical fruit, green apple, and hops. I am not sure about the brettanomyces strain(s) used for this beer, but I suspect it may have been one of the milder strains (Claussenii?) – not of the barnyard, band-aid variety. The beer is mildly tart and has a nice European hop character to balance out the malt and yeast expression. Not terribly complex, but that is a good thing in this beer, I think. The finish is dry and pleasantly bitter. Not too cloying or sweet, inviting one to take another sip. Carbonation is quite high, which could be the result of the higher attenuation induced by the brett during bottle fermentation.

Brettanomyces is too strong to be an easy-drinking session beer. But considering the alcohol percentage, I found it quite smooth and light. Although this beer was designed to showcase the brettanomyces yeast, I think it would not have been nearly as refined without the generous amounts of hops. I can see how this beer could be disappointing to people who want more fireworks from the brett, but simply judged as a balanced beer, I think it is a good effort.


Hanssens goes experimental


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

Cantillon is my favorite brewery in the world, but I have a weak spot for gueuze blender Hanssens Artisinaal from Dworp, Belgium. Everything about Hannsens screams “authentic.” The brewery goes back to 1871, it is a part-time, wife and husband farmhouse operation, and there are few concessions to modernity. Seeing the archaic equipment, including the 1954 bottling machine, at Hanssens during a Toer de Geuze is one of the highlights for many visitors.

The first beer I ever tasted from Hanssens was their geuze, with its characteristic wildness and raging acidity. Their kriek is one of my favorites; when young – vintage Hanssens kriek can get very sour. Despite its traditionalist, hands-off approach to making beer, the owners are not shy to experiment. For example, in one of their experiments Hanssen’s geuze was blended with English mead (fermented honey), culminating in an intriguing concoction called  Mead the Geuze, which I was fortunate to experience some years ago. Supposedly, some exploding bottles have been reported for this beer, according to Tim Webb in his book LambicLand.

Another experiment that has become a more permanent feature in their line-up is their strawberry lambic Oudbeitje, a young lambic blended with whole strawberries, matured for one year. With little refermentation going on in the bottle, this rather pale beer has little carbonation. Jeff Sparrow’s report a pH of 2.8 (!) for this beer in his book Wild Brews.

When I saw the export-only Hanssens Experimental Raspberry and Hanssens Experimental Cassis in 2010 I wasted little time ordering a bottle of each. Some complicated logistical problems prevented me from tasting them until December 2011. The labels of the beers are virtually identical, with only slight color differences and, of course, the “raspberries” and “black currents” (sic) on the two labels being the other difference. Interestingly, Hanssens seemed to have arrived at exactly the same alcohol percentage (6.0%) for both beers… There is little information about the how this beer was produced (“matured in oak barrels”) but Hanssens might have just followed the same procedure as for Oudbeitje.

Hanssens Experimental Raspberry pours a dark orange and is relatively clear for a lambic. No one should have problems recognizing the raspberries in this one! The aroma is round and fruity and, if one is not familiar with the style of Hanssens, one would not expect the sharp, pungent, lactic, sourness that follows upon drinking. My drinking partner characterized the beer as “drinking a bacterial culture.” Carbonation is absent and the beer is weightier on the palate than I expected. The beer ends on a very dry note. The fruit and dry sourness make this beer ideal for a hot day. I would have preferred some carbonation in this one, though.

Hanssens Experimental Cassis pours a dark red / purple, and a beautiful, bright red when held up to the light, which reminds me of oxygenated blood. As with the other beer, no head and as “flat” as a straight lambic. I find this blackcurrant lambic more mellow and less funky than the raspberry lambic. The taste is more vinous and there is a subtle sweet note and some bitterness. There is also a nice astringency to this beer, reinforcing its earthy wine-like character. Not as sharp as the raspberry lambic, this medium-bodied lambic ends on a similar dry note. I think the lack of carbonation is less of a problem in this one.

I would not recommend any of these beers to lambic novices or lambic drinkers who like a balanced, carbonated gueuze or fruit lambic. As for myself, I cannot help immensely enjoying Hanssens “savage” lambics, although it is doubtful that all their experiments will end up being classified as historical, complex lambics. Looking forward to future Hanssens experiments!