Jul. 21, 2010 - Issue #770: Draw It Yourself

To the Pint

The sweetness of tart

You'll either love it or hate it, but Lambic beer is worth seeking out

I fell in love in 2007. Now, none of you need to rush off and send a worried email to my spouse about some kind of clandestine affair. She was there. There is no reason to worry because I fell in love with a beer. Possibly the weirdest, oddest, most challenging beer there is: Lambic beer.

Allow me to explain. Lambic is an old, rare beer style that eschews most modern brewing methods to produce a flavour profile more related to lemonade and wine than to beer. It is a slowly dying art, with fewer and fewer traditional brewers producing it. It is uncompromising and decidedly uneconomical, which makes it a labour of love for those who do it.

Lambic is spontaneously fermented, meaning rather than pitching a healthy amount of specific yeast, the brewer allows the unfermented wort to come into contact with the wild yeasts and bacteria that naturally reside in the air. It is then fermented in wood casks for long periods. At bottling time the brewer blends vintages of different ages (usually one-, two-and three-year) to produce the desired flavour. They may also add fruit (sour cherries, raspberries, apricots or grapes). The name of the beer changes depending on what they do with it. If they add cherries, it is called Kriek, raspberries is Framboise and with no fruit it is Gueuze. Traditional Lambic can only be brewed in the Senne river valley in Belgium, due to the particular combination of micro-flora and fauna in the region.
By the way, did I mention they add stale, three-year old hops?

There is a lot more beer geek talk I could do to fully explain the oddity that is Lambic, but I suspect you get the picture. The day I fell in love with Lambic was the morning I visited Brasserie Cantillon in Brussels. My three-hour visit with the brewer of this family operation, Jean Van Roy, and the beer I sampled there turned my beer world upside down. His beers are tart, sour, earthy, sharp and refreshing. I became a Lambic Lover. Sadly, upon my return home, I realized Edmonton was barren of the stuff. I had to resort to bribing friends travelling to Belgium to traffic supplies back for me.
With this backstory you can imagine my excitement when a few weeks back I was informed that a one-time shipment of Cantillon had entered Alberta. This is more than significant, it is earth shattering, for two reasons. First, Cantillon is tiny—I estimate they produce about 1/5 the amount of beer as Edmonton's Alley Kat does (and Alley Kat is pretty damned small, too). Second Cantillon gave up on Canada seven years ago when a shipment to Ontario was refused because of "unusual" organisms in the beer—the wild yeast.

Nine beer were in the shipment. I quickly picked up one of each. Economy alert—Cantillon is not cheap. The price ranged between $24 and $28 for a 750 ml bottle. This may seem outrageous, but think about how much you might spend for a bottle of really good wine or some single-malt scotch.
Each beer, due to its fruit or unique process, is quite different. However, they all share a couple of key characteristics, in large part because most share the same base beer. All are dominated by a sharp tartness and an earthy citrus quality. Hop bitterness is nonexistent and the malt qualities are subdued. The flavour is both complex and refreshing. What you most need to know is that most beer revolves around the dual spectrums of malt sweet and hop bitter. Lambic eschews both for sour tartness and fruit sweetness.

I lack the space to describe all nine, so I will restrict myself to one—my personal favourite. Rose de Gambrinus is a Framboise, meaning it is blended with raspberries. It is a brilliant, gorgeous pink of such a hue that seems unnatural, but is not. Viney, soft-raspberry aroma hits the nose first and is then quickly overtaken by citrusy tartness. The flavour is multi-dimensional. Raspberry is obvious, with its acidic sweetness and seedy tannin. There is also a citrus tartness sweeping across the entire palate, along with some earth tones and a bit of oak. Mustiness and honey make up the under-strata.
As I mentioned, this is no ordinary beer. The tastes and aromas are not found in regular brews. This is not a beer to be chugged after mowing the lawn; it demands slow, intentional appreciation. It is also not a beer for everyone. When you try it, you either hate it, as I did, fall in love.

The shipment was not large, and so if you are curious enough to try it, you should check alberta-liquor-guide.com to find the stores that are stocking it.

If you choose to try some Cantillon, I cannot say whether you will like it. Lambic is an issue of personal choice. What I can tell you is that when you drink Cantillon, you are undoubtedly drinking the world's best example of Lambic beer. No one does it more traditionally, and no one does it with more skill. We are so, so lucky to have it in this city. V

Jason Foster is the creator of onbeer.org, a website devoted to news and views on beer from the prairies and beyond. vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus