Topic Archives: Lambics
Brouwerij Liefmans
You have actually had a beer from Brouwerij Liefmans recently. It was under a different name – Ommegang Zuur. Zuur was a collaboration between Liefmans and the Cooperstown, New York Brewery. Zuur contained a specialty blend of some of Liefmans signature beers. Founded in 1679, Liefmans creates blended beers, originally meant to preserve the beer in the winter prior to refrigeration. The beers were/and still are brewed, and matured for close to 2 years. Before bottling, the beer is blended with young, sweet beer to freshen the beer. Goudenband is the flagship example of this technique.
The three bottles to the left have been out of the market for a while (or not sold in the U.S. at all until now.) Three titles have just appeared –
Liefmans Goudenband – Flanders Oud Bruin, 8% ABV.
is a brown beer of high fermentation, brewed with special malts. This beer will mature for 4-8 months in the cellars. The taste of this typical provision beer evolves positively over time.
Liefmans Cuvee-Brut – Lambic, 6% ABV.
This Kriek is made with a completely different method from Kriek Lambic. It starts with old brown beer which is macerated with fresh whole cherries in shallow, horizontal tanks (every 100 liter brown beer holds 13 kg cherries). Then it matures for about 1 year, afterwards it is blended with both Oud Bruin and Goudenband of different ages. The result is a well balanced sour and sweet Kriek of great complexity.
Liefmans Fruitesse – Fruit Beer, 4.2% ABV
A fresh beer blend, maturing 18 months on cherries in the cellars at Oudenaarde – which is artfully blended with natural juices of cherry, bilberry, elderberry strawberry & raspberry. The result is a pleasantly sweet, sparkling, and refreshing beer with a soft foam head.
Availability: 750 ML, Corked/Caged bottles. Less than $10 a bottle.
Looking for this? In stock, Hop City
NEW: Timmerman’s Framboise
These 2 offerings are new to the United States. They are both lambics, i.e. beer’s that have had fruit added after the beginning of spontaneous fermentation. Brouwerij Timmermans is based in Belgium.
Commercial Description:
Its aroma evokes the perfumes of a lovely summer. Its strawberry flavour confirms the nose’s impression without sweetened saturation. Moreover, it’s even enhanced by a real feeling of freshness, recalling those tiny green granules that are found around ripened strawberries. Its taste is consistent and spreads very quickly throughout the mouth to finish its journey on a touch that is fruitier rather than sweetened.
Style: Fruit Lambic
Flavor Offerings: Framboise (Raspberries, pictured) & Strawberry
Taste Expectations: Fruit! Strawberry, or raspberry respectively. These lambics are fruity & light. Very easy drinking. Almost not tasting like beer.
Availability: 11.4 ounce/ 4pks.
4% ABV – Both Strawberry & Raspberry
Lindeman’s U.S. Debut!
Merchant Du Vin just recently announced the national launch of Lindeman’s Faro. Faro is an authentic lambic from the Senne River Valley, Belgium (near Brussels) brewed by Lindeman’s since 1978.
This lambic is a Faro style beer. Faro beers are indeed lambics, but with the addition of Belgian candi sugar to lighten the body of the beer. It is spontaneously fermented lambic, which are some of the worlds rarest beers and hard to come by stateside. In Belgium you will find numerous brewed with this fermentation. This form of fermentation uses a wild Belgian yeast, instead of a cultivated one. The beer is exposed to wild uninhibited yeast and bacteria. The result is (simply stated) the funk and sour flavors that draw so many to Belgian style beers.
Brewery Description –
“Faro is a Flemish classic, served throughout pubs in Brussels but uncommon outside Belgium. Historically, sugar or sugar syrup was sometimes added to young, unblended lambic by a bartender — it helped balance the lambic’s tart acidity — and soon Belgian brewers began to add candi sugar to lambic at the brewery to make bottled faro.
Lindemans Faro is fermented by the numerous strains of wild airborne yeast that are found in the lambic region — an area only 15 by 75 miles, southwest of Brussels, where all lambics are produced. Faro shows a fruit and caramel aroma, balanced by the subtle complexity and refreshing acidity of the many yeast strains in lambic. The flavor starts sweet, with suggestions of brown sugar or orange marmalade, and finishes with some crispness and a green-apple tartness; the color is deep amber.”
Availability – 12 oz Capped, corked & foiled bottles – around $6- $7 dollars each.
Taste Expectations – Tart, with a cidery mouthfeel. The sweet and sour notes tend to teeter totter across your palette as you drink. A very interesting lambic specimen.
4% ABV
