Drinkers acquiring taste for sour Belgian beers
BRUSSELS, Nov 10 (Reuters Life!) - A five-month brewing window, three years in storage and a sour end product with a farmyard bouquet.
Lambic beer risked dying out a decade ago, but its survival and growth now seem assured despite being among the most awkward beers to make, store and market.
"Ten years ago I might have said it was set to disappear. Now there's great expansion of traditional brewing and blending," said Tim Webb, author of the Good Beer Guide Belgium.
Beer can be divided into three basic forms: bottom-fermented lager and top-fermented ale, both of which have cultivated yeast introduced, and a third form, spontaneous fermentation, using only wild yeasts in the air.
Lambic beer is produced in this third way.
The umbrella group for brewers and blenders Horal says it is the oldest surviving brewed beer in the world.
Jean Van Roy, head of the Cantillon brewery in Brussels, has been glued to the weather forecasts since late October.
Spontaneously fermented lambic beer is not a 365-day a year product and can only be made when the night temperature drops to around 5 degrees Celsius (41 Fahrenheit) or below.
That is because the boiled wheat and barley juice known as wort must sit overnight in a large copper vessel to cool and absorb airborne yeasts that waft in through vents.
Van Roy's brewery, which doubles as a museum welcoming about 30,000 visitors per year, boasts equipment dating back to the 19th century and spiders as natural pesticides.
Most beers are consumed within weeks of production, but gueuze, the most commonly drunk form of lambic beer, sits in barrels for an average of two years and then in a bottle for as much as a year before being sold.
Pure lambic, essentially flat, can be consumed as it is, but is generally drunk as gueuze, a sparkling blend of lambics of different ages that ferment again in the bottle, or as kriek, gueuze with sour cherries. Other fruit can also be added.
The very dry and sour taste is a shock to anyone used to standard lager or ale.
"If you approach it as a wine or a traditional cider it's easier to appreciate... The only reason it's not celebrated by people with a taste for excellence is that they have not heard of it," said Webb.
