A friend brought beer a flat single barrel lambic (or was it gueuze?) from Belgium in a wine-in-a-box bladder. I could see why sour beers are often blended. Like homoeccentricus said, would be easy to add fruit or blend in a younger sour.
No, it’s geuze in Dutch and gueuze in French. I normally use the Dutch version, I simply thought most English people use the French version. Hey, now I’m confused too
I’m moving to Denver next month so I’ll bite the bullet at some point and try it.
I wouldn’t say uncarbonated sour beer is my favorite but I’ve tasted enough while blending and bottling my own that I have some sense of how it should taste.
So I found this beer at a beerfest here in Colorado and tried it out as promised.
The beer is served out of a plastic bladder in a box. The bag is thick–a lot thicker than the mylar bags I’ve seen for boxed wine (although my experience with boxed wine is minimal). It reminds me more of IV bags at a hospital. I guess it serves the intended purpose but I still don’t understand the appeal personally.
The beer is minimally carbonated but not flat. It holds carbonation similar to a gravity keg. I’ve drank a lot of minimally carbonated and flat sour beer from my own brewing but I’d be surprised there’s a big market for this. It’s a little heavy and dull in the mouthfeel.
Flavor-wise it reminds me of some not great spontaneous experiments of my own. It’s not particularly sour and the flavor profile is mostly earthy flavors in the forest floor/damp basement profile. They definitely need some work on these beers (like most breweries state-side brewing spontaneous beers) and wish they would have spent more time perfecting the beer over rushing out an unusual concept.
I live not too far away from primitive beer and I went to their grand opening. I love that there is a big enough beer scene in Colorado to be able to support experiments like this: we have some a few all craft lager breweries popping up and now we have a traditional lambic brewery — it’s a great time to be a craft beer lover in Colorado.
In addition to serving beer in boxes, at the brewery they serve it using beer engines and ferment in a ton of barrels that are stacked everywhere. Their coolship is in the corner of the taproom so I got to lean in and look at it up close which is super awesome.
The beer was not the spectacular lambic that you get in Belgium, but it was interesting. They’re still very new and they are passionate enough that I imagine it will only improve over time.