Tag Archives: Puckerfest

Belmont Station’s Puckerfest


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

From July 18-24, 2011, Portland beer store and café, Belmont Station will host its annual Puckerfest, a festival for “sour, wild and funky beers.” To promote this annual event, Belmont Station has decided to roll out an exclusive website. The Puckerfest website not only has the latest information on Puckerfest events and the beers on tap, but also contains a little history of the event.

The beer list is starting to shape up and there is detailed information about each of the beers, including Russian River’s extremely limited Publication (a brett saison), Upright’s  First Anniversary Beer (Upright #4 in Old Tom Gin barrel with apricots and wild yeast), and Cantillon’s Saint Lamvinus (red grape lambic).

Interestingly, the beer list also includes Mestreechs Aajt from the Dutch Gulpener brewery. Mestreechs Aajt is a rather peculiar sweet-sour blend of Dutch Oud Bruin, lager bockbier, and a (presumably) spontaneously fermented base beer.  In his seminal book Wild Brews, Jeff Sparrow discusses the history of this “style” and the brewing of Mestreechs Aajt in some detail but concludes by noting that production stopped in 2005. A recent sales sheet indicates that Gulpener resumed producing this beer again in 2009 and that it is available in kegs for draft.


New Belgium Le Terroir


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

Sour beer does not commit one to a particular malt or hop bill. It is possible to leave out the wheat (Cantillon Iris), add oats (Cantillon Zwanze 2010), or (partially) substitute fresh hops for aged hops (Cantillon Iris). Jef van der Steen has documented that traditional lambic brewers did not always exclusively utilized aged hops. But there is a difference between allowing (a portion) of fresh hops with low alpha-acids that add little to the bitterness of the beer and explicitly aiming to add hop bitterness to a sour beer. Cantillon’s Iris is currently the finest example of a sour beer with subtle hop notes, but the sheer amount of hop varieties and (dry) hopping suggest endless possibilities.

I was quite pleased to see that New Belgium had bottled Le Terroir for its Lips of Faith series because it was my favorite non-lambic sour beer at the 2009 Belmont Station Puckerfest. Le Terroir is a sour ale that is dry hopped with Amarillo hops. The New Belgium website also indicates that Target  hops were used during the boil. Le Terroir has a very distinct aroma, unlike anything I have ever smelled in a sour ale. The sweet and peachy Amarillo hops are certainly there and there is also a little wood. I did not detect any signs of brettanomyces yeast in either the aroma or the taste. Le Terroir does not hold back on the (lactic) sour scale, which makes for an interesting combination with the earthy green notes in the beer. Light bodied and smooth (oats), the beer ends with a fairly long sour/bitter finish. Its alcohol content puts it somewhere between a real session beer and a sipper.

With the exception of Cantillon’s Iris (and perhaps Cantillon Mamouche) I have little context to go on as far as imparting green notes to sour beers is concerned. If such brews become more prevalent I doubt that Amarillo will be my favorite hop to use, but as someone who is quite interested in imparting an herbal character to wild beers, I am quite impressed. I did have a hard time establishing whether wild yeasts were present and perhaps some additional “barnyard” character could have improved the beer. Le Terroir certainly induces one to ponder the topic of harmony versus contrast in sour beers.  This is a very interesting beer from New Belgium, and the best I have ever tasted from them.


Week of Wild Fest in Eugene, Oregon


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

The 16 Tons Beer & Wine Bottle Shop and Tasting Bar in Eugene, Oregon is organizing the Week of Wild Fest, which will culminate on Friday the 17th with a festival featuring 10 wild ales on tap and more than 50 bottles, including many of the major traditional lambic breweries and American wild ale producers. A number of these beers have been reviewed on this website.


A celebration of sour beers


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

I have been reluctant to write about Belmont Station’s 2010 Puckerfest because there were few local sour beers on tap that I find appealing, and this opinion is not due to a lack of trying! I still am not aware of any Pacific Northwest brewer who can consistently produce a good consistent sour ale. I am inclined to think that this is the result of the tendency to engage in excessive experimentation in the world of microbrewing. Experimentation is great for innovation but the usual order of things is to master the basic style first. One of the sour ales on tap tasted like the soft drink Fanta, another one displayed a rather unsuccessful combination of brett and oak, and one brew could only be classified as “theoretical” because it probably sounded good on paper, but the execution left a lot to be desired. Like last year, I liked the Russian River and New Belgium brews the best. New Belgium has the annoying, but understandable, habit of producing its best beers in tap-only limited quantities, although their more available La Folie is a serious contender for the best sour ale in the United States.

One real problem for the American sour beer consumer is that even the better producers like Russian River have to release their beers with a price tag that is usually higher than, let’s say, a great traditional Gueuze blender like Hanssens – and that is after import from Belgium to the United States! It is interesting to note that the Pacific Northwest is plagued by a similar curse in the case of wine. Pinot Noir is a notoriously challenging grape to grow and the price reflects this. For a fraction of the price of a decent Oregon Pinot Noir, good organic reds from France are available at local wine retailers like Liner & Elsen. This should not be read as a United States vs. Europe issue. The United States can claim some world class beers (Deschutes’ Green Lakes, Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, Great Divide’s Yeti Imperial Stout) but I am not holding my breath for an affordable year-round top-notch sour ale anytime soon.

At this point in time, Portland’s best local sour drink on tap (!) remains Kombucha.


Belmont Station Puckerfest 2009


Posted by Aschwin de Wolf

One of the most interesting innovations at Cantillon are the Lou Pepe lambics. Unlike the traditional gueuze, which is made by blending lambics of various ages, the Lou Pepe beers are made by blending 2 year old mellow lambics from wine barrels.  This method produces a wonderful “gueuze” that is distinguished by its  smooth and elegant character.

There is no young beer to start fermentation so the Lou Pepe beers are  fermented through the addition of a sweet liquor. This fermentation method opens up the possibility of creating distinct fruit lambics with a higher proportion of fruit (300 grams instead of 200 grams per liter). Since this is Cantillon, the fruit is completely fermented (Trimbach-style) producing an intense fruity lambic that has more emphasis on the acidity and fruit than the Brett. These beers should be consumed at a relatively young age to experience the expressive fruit notes.

It is rare to find lambic on tap in the United States. It is even rarer to find traditional lambic on tap. And is it extremely rare to find Cantillon Lou Pepe Framboise on tap. Therefore, it was extremely encouraging that Belmont Station in Portland tapped a keg of this beer during its annual celebration of sour beers called “Puckerfest.”

Another debut at Belmont Station was New Belgium’s “Le Terroir.” Le Terroir turned out to be a pleasant surprise.  Presenting itself with a golden-orange lambic-like color, the beer fused grapefruit and lemon with hops. This medium bodied, moderately carbonated beer had a fascinating tart taste of grapefruit and tangerine, more reminiscent of a traditional lambic than a Flemish Red. Great drinkability. Less obscure is New Belgium’s “La Folie,” a Flemish Red that gives most Belgium beers of this style a run for their money. Dark red and brownish with an aroma of brown sugar, vinegar and wood, La Folie has a soft taste and light tannins; the sweeter brother of Le Terrroir. If Le Terroir announces the end of summer, La Folie rings in the beginning of autumn.

It is impossible to beat Cantillon so Belmont Station should be praised for tapping another great beer of their impressive line-up; Saint Lamvinus, a lambic made with merlot and cabernet-franc grapes. Sporting a cherry  red color, this beer has the classic Cantillon signature aroma of brett and focused acidity but more vinous. Like all great lambics, mouthfeel is on the lighter side and carbonation is moderate with a slightly astringent aftertaste. It cannot get any better than this.

The real surprise of the event, however, was Le Terroir, the best New Belgium creation I have tasted to date. This is yet another example of the magic that is possible when wild yeast and hops meet.

Professional obligations prevented me from sampling some of the other beers on tap. As much as I like the idea of supporting the local “sour” beers, as a general rule, most of them are just too sweet and “boozy” for my liking and no amount of innovation or complexity can make up for that. For a thoughtful review of some of the beers that were on tap, see Beervana.

The prospect of sampling new sour and wild ales gave me some pause to reflect. I think that most craft beer drinkers enjoy the idea of a brewer trying “something different” and releasing all kinds of seasonal and experimental brews, but I find myself more drawn to the idea of brewing one basic style and mastering it. This may explain my preference for brewers with a distinct house style like Deschutes (brewer of the magnificent Green Lakes amber ale) and Sierra Nevada. And what else do most traditional lambic brewers do than create gueuze and kriek? When any special releases are made available to the general public, these are typically hand selected vintages or lazy lambics (Loerik, Doesjel). Like a good wine, the wonder of lambic is the subtle variability that is associated with the brewing process. Things happen but one does not “push the sound around” as the American minimalist composer Morton Feldman once put it.

Less is more.