Fou' Foune
Brasserie Cantillon

Review (11 months of age)- 75cl bottle from August 2012- so nearly a year old- given to me as a gift from Eduardo and shared at a whale tasting last night, 7/13/2013.. poured into a Cantillon stemmed wine glass.

Wow! This beer's nose is basically a lot of acidity along with a delicious apricot fruitiness. There is a good bit of the lambic earth funk that I've come to associate with Cantillons- same kind of smell that you get when you walk into the brewery. But this is a milder funk as the apricot is very strong here.

The beer itself pours a hazy golden-orange body that is very well carbonated, with a massive >3cm head that takes a while to recede and never fully goes away. Lacing is very nice. Just what I would expect from a good Cantillon.

When this beer finds its way into my mouth, it is just so perfectly balanced in terms of the sourness, fruitiness, acidity and funk. It all comes together to create a sweet apricot accentuated with some lemon tartness. Incredible.

Mouthfeel-wise, its more or less what Cantillons bring to the table. Medium bodied, no dryness at all in the finish, sweet but not in a sugary way. The tartness is refreshing and makes for a delicious, refershing in-between beer between Bramble Rye and Vanilla Bean Dark Lord.

This is the best Cantillon I've had and that includes the Lou Pepes.. it's just slightly above Saint Lamvinus, which is a bit unfair as both beers are different. This one brings out the apricot which is definitely strong here like the cherries in a Lou Pepe Kriek, etc. but without the apricot being overwhelmingly sweet. It is so well-balanced and easy to drink. Incredibly refreshing and flavourful. Eduardo tells me that he considers Cantillon to be bottled art. If that is the case, Fou' Foune is a true masterpiece in a bottle and Jean Van Roy is Peter Paul Rubens. This beer is definitely in my top 5 of all time.

Re-reviewed (3 months of age)
Opened up another 75cl bottle from August 2013 on 11/26/2013. So 3 months old the second time around. Poured into a Hill Farmstead stemmed glass. Basically the same as the previous review (with 1 year on it), except this is definitely less acidic and the apricots come out quite a bit more, especially in the nose which is even more perfect than it was before. Phenomenal nose, one of the best smelling beers I've had. Flavour-wise, I preferred the 1-year old bottle's acidity and sourness, but I can definitely appreciate the apricots here more. And the mouthfeel is phenomenal- so well carbonated, so creamy. Reminds me of Hill Farmstead's pale ales actually. But so substantial yet drinkable and refreshing. This beer's appearance isn't as sexy and tempting as its sister beer Blabaer, but the beer is otherwise perfect in my mind.

Re-reviewed (6 months of age): 75cl bottle from August 2013, generously bought over by Dustin at our celebratory whale tasting. Cheers to good friends! Poured into a Three Floyds teku glass today, 3/22/2014. Basically, the beer looks just the same as any of the other times. Smell is very apricot-forward still, but I appreciated more tartness, horseblanket funk. Best thing is that this bought out a lot of geuze-like lemon tartness, pepperiness on top of the funk in the nose. Incredible, sweet yet complex nose. Flavour is very similar- the geuze-like characteristics stand out far more than fresh. Lemon zest, pepperiness, barnyard Cantillon funk. It reminds me so much of Armand'4 Zomer. And you throw some fresh apricot juice on top of that? This merely reinforces how much I love this beer. And mouthfeel is a bit thinner and less creamier than fresh, but still very much medium bodied and refreshing. Again, the only conclusion I'll draw from this is: this is still my favorite beer ever.

Re-re-reviewed (2 months of age): 2014 vintage. Bottled 21 August 2014. Thanks Tim! Poured into a Cantillon balloon glass 10/19/2014 for our first anniversary. Essentially, I just want to re-reconfirm that fresh Fou' Foune is delicious, and this year's Fou' Foune is not lacking in apricots. The best advice I have to anyone who's opening up a bottle soon is to serve it at cellar temperature, aerate it and let it warm up a bit- the apricots truly come out as clean, crisp stone fruits in the nose that dance along your palate as you sip it. Great mouthfeel, soft, velvety but with a nice crisp, dry and thirst-quenching finish. There is no defect to be found in this beer- it is still my favorite beer after all this time, and worthy of its status.

Fresh 2015 vintage. Poured into a Cantillon balloon glass 1/30/2016. I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, but this 2015 vintage is drinking quite well. Plenty of stonefruit on the aroma and flavour, nice perfectly ripened apricot flesh paired with the classic brewery funk, mild acetic presence, mild wheat. Again, it encapsulates the perfect essence of what a fruit lambic can be, and accomplishes that in spades.

Appearance - The beer was an orange yellow color with visible carbonation and bubbles rising to the top of the glass.

Smell - The sourness was evident in the nose, but the fruit profile was also apparent.

Taste - I felt like I was drinking fresh peaches, but the bottle said apricots. I’m not sure about the distinctions between either. That said, there were a lot of apricots in the flavor profile. It was not overly sour and had a nice dry finish.

Mouthfeel - The body was smooth and bubbly, sweeping away the sweet and leaving the dry.

Overall - I approve of this beer.

Ok, so I posted this in NBW as I was sharing it with friends. I totally screwed up the details (apricot, not peach), but said screw up was educational in a way. I will use this review to account for the mixup.

Poured with kind of a peach color, maybe a tad bruised. (I stand by this, despite the snafu) An orange-heavy amber, let’s go with. A little bit of head, but a solid collar of white - which isn’t bad for spurs in general, per my experience.

(not so bad)

I get a typical wild-aged funk in the nose, but also quite fruity, including some less-ripe pineapple (a component one of our friends noted). I get both peach (power of my own suggestion) and pineapple, with the sour notes being a rich fruit vinegar and some lime.

On the palate, there is a gentle but obvious carbonation. The sour bite brings as much feel initially. The ending is a bit more raw and dirty dry.

All of us agree that the peach isn’t dead obvious in this beer (obviously because it is apricot, no?).

I think the sour mix of lemon, lime, and white grapefruit interfere a bit. The peach hits middle-taste...
here is where I think if you combined the white grapefruit with the peach I was searching for, it was the apricot coming out.
...along with the funkiness that I think leads to that bit of dirty dryness mentioned in the feel. I think there are vague recollections to Orval in that specific note.

And that I think tries to adjust the post made the same day as this review in the forums.

Sour apricots, lime, green apples notes. Fruity, with sour finish. Dry.

First sips are medium tart. 2nd glass turns to high tart, and less fruity. No brett. Surprisingly refreshing, and velvety smooth. Well-balanced. No complexity though.

Bottled 080625

 

 

Pours an opaque light orange, light foamy soapy minimal lace. Nose is lactic, stone fruit, tiny amount of herbal, grassy hop; light marmalade. Solid but not bracing sour, enough sweetness to dial it back, but then the sour comes in once more; like an apricot that is just short of ripe but with enough sweetness to poke through now and again; grain as it warms on the finish. Moderate, soft, light carbonation. Highly enjoyable and pretty close to perfect.

(750 ml bottle, dated Aug 2025, shared by my brother and I at Monk's 25 Oct 2025... poured into Gibraltar glasses)

Hands down the most fascinating fruited lambic I've had the pleasure of tasting. Quite unlike any other... poured with a generous swell of curiously dense, rocky, but airy foam that maintained and laced like a fresh dusting of powdery snow... delicate-bodied, but fuzzy, fluffy-foamy on the palate, with a slight nectary slush on the finish... As for the apricot flavor, it was bold, but kind of ghostly, frayed on the edges, marginally obscured by a cloak of rustic, wheated grain wash.. sip after sip though, the apricot never abated, replenishing and re-establishing its initial expressive impact... it's hardly fruit laden and ne'er sweetish, the balance and interplay of the wheat vs apricot driven by understated funk and frothy textures pushing against each other outward, creating some dynamic dimension and perspective I've experienced in few brews... my brother and I each felt helplessly forced to savor and contemplate each sip, no kidding... very privileged to have scored this bottle with its numbers being limited at the event... I waited a long time to finally try this but it left me too eager to seek out more asap. I can't imagine a draft pour (if one were to be had) would come remotely close to replicating all the nuances from that bottle. Simply stunning, and I wasn't prepared for that. (2462)

Hazy pale orange with a nice white head. Apricot and strawberry in the nose. Sour and tart. Super fruity. Medium bodied with strong, soft carbonation. Absolutely delicious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Really nice yellow color that's bright and inviting. Aroma has plenty of apricot but in a discrete, balanced way. Taste is wonderful. Nice acidity with delicious apricot notes. Light and lively. Overall, excellent beer.