Winter Lambiek Sparkling Infused
Brouwerij Oud Beersel in Beersel, Flemish Brabant, Belgium 🇧🇪
Lambic Style - Untraditional Regular|
Score
7.17
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Kerstbier Festival. Clear golden beer with a white head. Aroma of tart apples, grapes, brett. Taste of sour apples, white grapes, lime, flowers. Moderate carbonation.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8
The bottled and refermented, spiced version of a ‘winter lambic’ originally devised by Oud Beersel as a lambic flavoured with spruce tips. From a 75 cl bottle shared in mid-summer with tderoeck and Craftmember. Dense and pillowy, thick, egg-white, stable head, misty deep orange blonde robe with rusty-amberish glow. Aroma of not just pine resin and spruce tips but also pine-scented air freshener (think of these ‘Arbre Magique’ things people hung in their cars in the old days), strawberry candy (weird!), vague star aniseed and only then the trusted aspects of barnyard, damp hay, lemon zest, freshly baked bread, old rusk and dried lime peel. Spritzy, tart onset, lemon zest and unripe plum, some astringency but no harsh puckering sourness at all, lively carb, bread-crusty to even somewhat walnutty malt core dried by lactic tartness and strong woodiness – all drenched in this dark green pine needle and spruce tip ‘resinousness’, adding this weird air freshener thing retronasally but also astringent bitterness, which nevertheless matches quite well with a lingering lemony lambic sourness. I had the unblended lambic version so I was expecting a lot of pine resin, but this bottled version is much more odd than I anticipated, with added sweet (raspberry candy) and spicy (star anise) aromas which were not there in the unblended tap version and which I was not expecting at all. To this day, I am still unsure whether these added flavours help the lambic forward or not – this was definitely the weirdest of all Oud Beersel lambics so far, at least for me, though I have no unpleasant memories of it either – so, and also because it is Oud Beersel, I am giving this weird combination of flavours the benefit of the doubt.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
18/VIII/22 - 75cl bottle @ Alengrin’s place, BB: 8/V/26 (2022-1012) Thanks to Alengrin for sharing the bottle!
Clear blond to orange beer, small creamy off-white head, stable, non adhesive. Aroma: wow, a lot of candy aroma, bit weird, pine tree, sweet and sugary impressions, quite some strawberry jam, very confusing I must say! MF: very lively carbon, medium body. Taste: lots of strawberry jam, very weird, sweet impression, a bit sourish, dry, funky, lemon notes, a bit spicy, nice. Aftertaste: pine tree, fruity notes, spicy, dry and funky, sweet impression, a bit oxidized, very intense, some bubble gum, tannins, bitter notes, laurel and eucalyptus notes, interesting one, but not my favourite.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8.5 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8.5
Towering, dense, whipped eggwhite-like head over lively carbonated copperish golden beer. I Badedas /I, pine, spruce, with farmyard/horseblanket hiding behind. Smelling as childrens' sweets and X-massy. I Badedas /I again, lol! Less lambic-y than the draft version, the spruce even more imposing. Could become more balanced, more integrated with a bit of aging. Bit of lemon. Light body, not very carbonated. As said, I prefed the boxed version, but aging might solve the difference. Thanks to Stef!