La Gueze
Ferme Brasserie Schoune

12 oz bottle again from the beer store in Quebec that I can't spell. Poured into a tulip.

A: A strange ambery/brown color pours forth from the bottle. Very minimal head accumulates on top of this producing just liquid in appearance and no lacing. There is some nice beading from the carbonation that lines the glass.

S: Smell is of some serious fruit. Sour, Granny Smith apples are most prevelant. Apricots and Pear also show up. Serious sour aroma.

T: Taste is of sour apples predominantly. As the apple taste develops you can seriously taste the apple skin. There are also notes of the fruits in the nose along with some sweet malt and caramel. Pretty nice.

M: Medium in body with some heavy carbonation. It kind of has the feel of a cider. The sour notes really linger in the after taste and accumulate throughout the palate. Aftertaste is of solely apple skin. Very nice.

D: This beer is strange but good. The most impressive element is the pronounced apple skin flavors. My first gueze and I feel that it was not bad but I look forward to further exploring the realm of this style.

On tap at the Mondial De La Biere in Montreal. This brew looked good. A dark peachy orange colour with a small off-white cap of foam. The aroma was promising with some real lambic-like funk in there, as well as strong honey notes, and a slightly hoppy smell. The taste did not deliver well at all. There was absolutely no sour funk in this beer at all, in fact this was like a sweet honey ale, more than anything else. The mouthfeel was thin and sharp but in an anti-gueuze bad way and the drinkability got worse with each sip that I took. Basically, I was horrified that they could call this beer a gueuze and get away with it! If this was labeled as a strong honey ale, it may have scored higher in my eyes....but as it is, I can not recommend this "gueuze"!

This is an interesting effort from the brewer, Patrice Schoune. It is not a true spontaneous fermentation as in those lambic gueuzes created in Belgium. Rather it uses cultured strains of yeasts from belgium and a very long fermentation to achieve what you would normally find in a Boon Geuze for example. Quite surprising.

Liquid is the colour of ripe peach flesh. Cloudy appearance prevents one from properly observing the bead. Very little head builds atop the fluid and what little there is doesn't stick around or stick for that matter.


Fruity aromas up front, of green apples and some pears. Light hints of vanilla and some caramel are chased away by a mineral dryness reminescent of apple peels.

Dry mouthfeel and flavours of grannysmith apples fight for dominance with a citric acidity initially, but rapidly give way to a pleasant sustained and slightly heady bitterness in the back of the throat.

Lambics are hard to come by in my region so this offering appeases my constant craving for these sour and magical brews. It may not be an authentic gueuze from Belgium but does the job of stand-in quite well.

Bottle – Poured a yellow hazy colored brew with almost no carbonation or head. You can detect some sourness through the aroma. Taste is partially sweet (lemon, orange?) with some acidic note. The sourness is missing as well as the usual tart associated with gueuze. Overall, this one is too expensive for the result but I still welcome the fact that this brewer was up for the challenge of brewing something different.

It pours an amber body with timid head. Aroma is wet hay, rather sweet peaches, pears and apricot. Fruity apple juice, not as sour as I'd like. Low bodied with light carbonation. Nope... expensive at 6$ and doesn't deliver quite what I look for in a gueuze.

A cloudy light orange/yellow pour with a large foamy head. The nose was very light and mild with just a hint of woodiness. The mouthfeel was crisp and fuzzy. The taste had many interesting woody notes to it, mostly oak, but there was a lack of complexity. Almost no tartness whatsoever. A bland finish that was dry and, once again, woody.