Why does gueuze have such a long shelf life?

People are still opening Bigfoots from the 80's. I think the effect with geuueuze & other Belgian/Flemish offerings is amplified because the practice of cellaring them has been in place for much longer, so there is a larger population of notably old examples.

 

I think it's more that the active yeasts and bacteria can gobble up any oxidizing agents for a long time, causing off notes to take significantly longer to develop. I know some people like those flavors, but a lot don't, and it takes a very particular flavor profile to handle it well (at least for me). I've had a 40-year-old gueuze that showed few, if any, signs of oxidation (and plenty of younger-but-still-old ones that had held up great), but the only barleywine I've liked with more than a couple years on it was JW Lee's.

That's cultural, as he says. Maybe once Beatification has a reputation for going that distance Vinnie will put that on the label.

 

Well some breweries, notably Deschutes, use "best after" so they are claiming the beer will be drinking well long after the robots win.

 

Because Gueuze is actually the bottled tears of ancient gods.

Or at least it tastes like it

 

Uh, what? Every beer that's sour has some sweetness to it, it's functionally impossible to get rid of all residual sugars. The blending is completely irrelevant to that, so I'm not sure what you're asking. But typically gueuze is going to be very dry, you shouldn't actually taste much sweetness at all (though there's still sugar left). What gueuzes have you had?

 

Yeah, I don't really know what you're describing. When you say lemon drop, do you mean the candy or the mixed drink? If it's the candy then I guess I sort of get what you're going for, though I'm not sure I'd describe Rueuze that way. It's possible I'm more sensitive to sourness so the malt backbone gets less attention from me.

Do you find the same thing with Cascade's sours, or is this only gueuze?

 

Yeah it sounds like your experience with sours and the residual sugars is just different that mine, so I don't think I can help you there.

 

You've phrased this all quite strangely. All BEER has some sweetness to it because: sugar. "that's sour" is neither here nor there.

But not all sweetness derives from sugar, you can create the impression of sweetness from the esters and phenols produced by the yeast. Think: Duvel, which can "taste" sweet even though it's unbelievably dry.

Gueuze is dryer, still.

But the blending is NOT completely irrelevant to that. The blending, how much of young and old lambic (although really most gueuze is 2 year old lambic, with 3 year old for additional character and young lambic to provide carbonation and body, as i understand it) will absolutely impact the sweet/sour ying-yang.

All THAT said... it is true, and I think this is what you were getting at, that OP is not really asking "the right" question. Gueuzes have sweetness because they are beer. Gueuzes are sour because their fermentation includes bugs that produce acidity in high quantity. Good Gueuzes find a balance between these and many other characteristics through blending. But they are not sweet and sour because something young and old got blended together.

 

Keep in mind that the amount of variability in lambic/gueuze is pretty dramatic due to the way they are made. It would not surprise me at all if someone were to age ten bottles of the same gueuze for the same period of time (five, ten, twenty years, whatever) and not be able to guess blind that any of them were the same beer, particularly at older ages. People may not like the subtle creep of oxidation in a barleywine or an imperial stout, but like it or not there is probably a greater consistency in the flavor profile of any single aged barleywine or imperial stout than any single traditionally made gueuze.

Unfortunately, I don't have the money to test that experiment.

 

The answer may lie in the definition of the beer style:
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/style/14

To suppliment what beeradvocate defines a Gueuze to be... I have heard you blend 1, 2, and 3 year lambic to make a true/traditional Gueuze. Depending on the "bugs" that are used to brew each lambic that gets blended to make the Gueuze, probably adds to the shelf life. If you used brett and lacto in two seperate lambics and then used both those lambics get blend... both of these "bugs" will peak at different times. Brett is also said the give preservative qualities to most beers because it aggressively eats all the oxygen in the beer. Oxygen causes oxidation; ect, ect, ect...

 

Lambic brewers don't add any yeast or lactic bacteria to the beer intentionally, they expose the pre-beer to unsanitized air and then to unsanitized barrels, thereby causing an infection. The species/strains of yeast/bacteria depends on the time of year the exposure takes place, the length of the exposure and the age of the wood. The barrels are also reused, allowing for some control (they only use barrels that develop "tasty" infectious agents, when a bad one develops they dump the barrel).

I don't really think there is any one single reason they are said to age better than others. Containing virulent organisms that eat pretty much anything ensures a certain longevity to the fermentation process not possible with brewer's yeast, which can't ferment certain sugars that brett/lacto/pedio can. They can also inhibit oxidation, but that includes "good" oxidation. And of course "better" is a matter of perception. Outside of American beer geekdom lambic/gueuze does not seem to be looked at nearly as favorably, either fresh or aged. Beers like Thomas Hardy, Fuller's Vintage Ale, J.W. Lees Harvest Ale and Courage Imperial Stout were and probably still are much more sought out for cellars outside the U.S., not to mention the various Belgian strong ales (St. Bernardus, Westy, etc). Based on trends in failing breweries if it weren't for American's discovery of lambic most of the current lambic breweries probably would not have survived very long. You can see this in the complete disappearance of Cantillon and near-disappearance of Drie Fontenein from store shelves in just the past four years. Their primary market is now the U.S., and their demand has quickly and dramatically grown beyond their ability to meet it.

Also, not all gueuze is a 1-2-3 blend, as you said that is the "traditional" blend. Tilquin was one notable exception, though they have since changed their blend (unfortunately so, in my opinion).

 

I said this upthread, and e-mailed a beer chemist about it. He said that this is true, but at the same time you'd get some off-flavors from autolysis, so while they may go longer they may also end up worse after a lot of time. I've never really gotten autolysis flavors from old lambic, so perhaps that's not a big concern with the quantities of cells in lambic, maybe I'm insensitive to it, I don't know.

Also, not all oxidation is from oxygen. Modern canning techniques at the big brewers let in basically 0 oxygen, but they still experience oxidative stalling. So there are other agents at work too.

 

Interesting. Was mostly speaking in general terms. You definately got serious with the details. Bravo!

 

Isn't the oxidation due to there already being O2 in the can? I know cans don't let any in, but there's still a bit in there at canning.

 

No, as I said, there's basically no oxygen in the can.