The Mysteries of Lambic

Lambic’s that girly beer, right?  That sweet, syrupy, berry-flavored beer-that-doesn’t-taste-like-beer?  Served in a flute for your girlfriend/wife when you want to impress her, or there are no wine coolers available?  And all lambic has a pink head, right?  NO!  First of all, stop being so sexist & condescending.  And B, there’s waaay more to the world of lambics than that ubiquitous raspberry example whose name everyone mispronounces (yeah, you’re supposed to say the ‘s’).  Nothing against Brouwerij Lindemans – they make a damn good sweetened lambic if that’s what you seek.  But the larger drinking community has been given a biased view of what lambic can be based on the commercial success of just one example.   

In truth, many lambics are complex, rustic, organic beers.  One using more flowery language might call them romantic, enigmatic, mystical.  They are fascinating examples of a near-extinct method of producing beer, one that invites & incorporates the environment rather trying to wrest control from it & shut it out.  The hot side of brewing a lambic is its own ball of strange, as lambic brewers use a large proportion of unmalted wheat in a turbid mash, creating a thick, goopy wort that’s barely filtered.  That’s right: lambics are wheat beers.  And instead of the fresh hops on which most brewers put a premium, lambic brewers used aged hops.  It’s still not clear to me why this is practiced; aged hops lose their bright character, turning cheesy & hay-like, but these notes are boiled off in the kettle anyway.  The popular reasoning is that lambic brewers are just interested in the preservative qualities of the hops, but my hunch is that the practice started out of necessity & has continued by tradition without anyone really knowing why.  Again, just a hunch.  After mashing, lambics go through a looong boil – we’re talking five or six hours, a stay in the kettle usually reserved for the biggest malt-monsters, which lambics certainly are not. 

When the wort hits the cool side, the magic starts.  The hot wort is pumped into a large, shallow, rectangular vessel known as a koelschip (“cool ship”), usually right under the brewery’s vented roof.  Overnight, the wort cools & the vents usher in the area’s native microflora – wild yeast & bacteria - who camp out in the delicious, sugary liquid.  When the wort is good & inhabited, it’s transferred to open wooden casks where it ages, allowing the zoo of microscopic critters to gorge itself.  Really, it’s more like a rain forest than a zoo, with its own ecosystem of bugs: species of enteric bacteria, lactic bacteria, saccharomyces, brettanomyces, acetobacter, kloeckera, & who knows what else.  Each of them have their go at the wort in their own time, some taking months to fully develop & metabolize – it’s a fascinating process if you’re into microbiology!  The lambic develops alcohol, acidity, & all sorts of funky, complex flavors: tart lemon, vinegar, fruitiness, vinous flavors, that famous barnyard/horse blanket character. 

One can argue that lambic is never really “finished” fermenting, but once it reaches a certain point – at least a year – it is blended with different vintages & bottle-conditioned to create gueuze, or refermented with fruit to create kriek, framboise, peche, etc., sweetened to create faro or more commercial lambics, or bottled as a straight lambic.  These funky beers are indigenous to the Senne River Valley in Belgium, & there is some controversy as to whether they can be produced elsewhere.  Many old school lambic breweries, protective of their craft, say no; others (including the brewer of Cantillon), have encouraged American brewers to try their own hand at spontaneously-fermented, eco-inclusive brews.  Allagash has had success with their own coolship – watch a video of their endeavor here.  We at House of 1000 Beers are thrilled to carry some great examples of both sweetened & “traditional” lambics, such as St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition, Oud Beersel Framboise, & Lindemans Cuvee Rene on the dry side, & the Lindemans & Timmermans lines on the sweet.  We’ve recently had some of the big names of lambic grace our shelves as well, from Belgium’s esteemed Cantillon & Drie Fonteinen breweries.  These beers are terrific paired with some funky washed-rind or blue cheeses, their close cousins in the food family tree.  And it shouldn’t come as surprise that they’re not cheap, given the time & care put into these sensitive brews.  There’s an occasion for the sweet, viscous  fruit lambics you can find on tap at most good beer bars, but there’s a whole other dimension to these wild beers.