Two roads "Lambic" series

i think we need to acknowledge that Jean has a different way of thinking than most of the "mainstream" lambic brewers/gueuze blenders.

he *never* uses the "oude gueuze" appelation. he's also fine with gueuze au fut and making Iris without any wheat.

some lambic brewers don't use a turbid mash either.

there's plenty of room for variation in technique/style/process within reason.

the whole HORALS discussion is appropriate here and it's worth noting that highly regarded brewers (Cantillon) and blenders (Tilquin) don't always ascribe to some of the "traditional" limitations for both lambic and gueuze. IMO, this is great, because stifling innovation is a recipe for slow decline and death...and friendly competition (Jean and Armand do get along quite well) is also good for business.

at the end of the day two roads shares almost nothing with traditional lambic brewing or gueuze blending and should be ashamed to characterize their beers as such.

 

I might have exaggerated a little bit, but I was being serious. Not that its a bad thing, but most CT breweries, or at least most of the ones I've been to, are fairly standard startup places with one room tasting counter facilities. You have to admit that Two Roads is a much more interesting place to follow. They have a beautiful facility, lots of cool merchandise, a cool tour, plenty of beer releases and events, collaborations/contract brewing with other breweries, and a decent selection of regular food trucks outside.

Seems trollish to me to accuse random people of being trolls for no reason.

I had a great time at the release yesterday. It was decently crowded, but it was very painless to get the beers being released and it was not difficult to stick around and get a drink at the bar after. I'm glad that they gave out sample of the beers this time. I like Kriek and Gueuze, but I'm not sure if I'm a huge fan of Philsamic though.

 

Where is Two Roads advertising that they used traditional methods? Maybe I'm confused, but it seems like you are lauding one brewery for diverging from traditional methods and berating another for doing the same thing (given, Two Roads' techniques are probably nowhere as close to traditional).

I'm not even sure what you mean when you say "HORALS," so I'm not trying to argue -- I'm no lambic expert -- but the gueuze was actually pretty good. I think they came close enough taste-wise to label it under the gueuze style, especially if Cantillon can do so with LP.

Again, I'm not trying to take a hard stance or argument here; just trying to understand the discussion.

 

Do you base your love of beer on the facility, merchandise, tour, events, etc? That's what you mentioned. You talked a lot about the brewery and only at the end did you mention the beer.

Not being a troll, honestly. But it just seems odd to talk about a brewery without talking about the beers first.

 

good question...i can see how my post was a bit confusing.

you're spot on with your "nowhere as close to traditional" comment.

the 'disagreements' within the traditonal lambic community are really parsing out small differences. while Cantillon is more progressive in their thinking than most, without spontaneous fermentation, calling your beer a lambic is inappropriate. by extension, blending things that aren't lambic can't produce gueuze.

HORALS is a group of Belgian lambic brewers/gueuze blenders dedicated to defending the interests of traditional lambic beers.

i hope the beers are good...they may well be... but lambic and gueuze, no, that they are not.

 

I understand this and don't think your stance is clearly incorrect. I just think the devils advocate stance is also powerful here - that the spontaneous fermentation, which may have been at one point the only way brewers could get local yeasts into the beer, could now perhaps be described as a means to an end (inoculating). And that if the same yeasts make their way into a beer via a spontaneous method or via a much more brewer controlled one - that the result could end up being very, very similar.

so, what makes lambic lambic - how it is produced or how it ends up tasting? I could see an argument that the process is a stylistic choice, but the outcome - that's what people are really going after.

 

for me, there's no question here... for lambic beers it's all about process, not simply how the end product tastes. there are lots of beers that taste "like" lambic in one way or another, but brewing lambic properly is as much of an art as it is a skill.

the first time i visited 3F, i had the privelege to talk to Armand for a good long time...it was just as he was getting his brewhouse back online in fall 2012. hearing him talk bout learning 'how' to brew lambic from his father was fascinating. it took him many *years* of brewing lambic only to get to where he is now. always his father critiqued this or that...improve this, mellow that out, change here. and then one day, when armand asked what to change, his father just smiled and said, "nothing". that, Armand said, was the first time he was confident enough to call himself a lambic brewer after over 10 years of apprenticing.

he and Jean have batches that turn, barrels within a batch that don't ferment and bottles of lambic or gueuze that don't properly carbonate. some batches start to ferment within a day or two...some take months. local conditions, including temperature and weather impact the variety and amount of microflora that settle into the beer and how quickly they propagate to begin fermentation.

for authentic lambic, spontaneous fermentation is an absolute must. analysis of samples of the microflora at Cantillon have shown (according to Jean) over 200 identifiable strains of yeast and bacteria on some days and fewer than 100 on others. that range of diversity can't be replicated through innoculation, nor can the additional bugs present in the barrels (there's always some, no matter how well they're cleaned) be reproduced in short order.

even they don't know which barrels will produce a sharp lactic acidity that needs to be cut with with a softer barrel or blended with another barrel that has some acetic charcter. they can't predict which barrels will not ferment (it happens) or which will turn so sour that they can't be used (that happens too).

that's why blending is such an important part of producing lambic and gueuze. the range of flavors that come out of the barrels after a year, two years, three years or more are staggering and someone's got to have developed the skills to know how to make a (more or less) consistent product.

in short, you really can't cut corners. there's room for variability in the process, but at the end of the day, some things can't be changed. devil's advocate or not, for me that's not open to debate.

i wish two roads well, but they shouldn't try to take what's not rightfully theirs.

 

ok fair enough. good points

 

you can get things to taste barrel-aged without aging them in barrels too. should you therefore call things that have never spent time in barrels "barrel aged"?

edit: and i'm not being a stickler or anything here. i don't give a shit if you call an APA a "session IPA", we all know what you mean. but all 'lambic' and such means is the process; there's lots of other sour beers.

 

no but "barrel aged" is clearly something objective while some other definitions are more open to interpretation, imo.

 

of course. but not lambic and such; that's the whole point. if you make a sour beer, or a wild ale, call it that. why call it something that just means a bunch of processes you didn't undertake?

 

to be honest I think the descriptions above...leave a lot to be desired. one describes the flavor, one describes the type of yeast used (I think?) and "wild ales" can taste wildly different from one another - the range of flavors IMO is just do much larger than with some other styles. IOW I think it's just a general catch all so I can see the desire for more specificity

 

but lambic isn't any more specific when it comes to how the end product will taste.

 

Wow this thread fell way off topic.

You guys should start a thread arguing about what to call beers. In the meantime, this thread should move forward letting the 2Rs beers speak for themselves. I thought gueuze was awesome, kreik needs some time to age with the fruit forward a bit strong for me, and Philsalmic was very interesting and complex. Overall an incredible release.

 

Thanks for clearing things up. I definitely appreciate any efforts that keep traditional methods like lambic brewing alive, as well as the fact that adhering closely to these traditions helps safeguard integrity, quality, and distinctiveness.

Most people would probably assume modern science/technology would be able to replicate something pretty close to true spontaneous fermentation without referring to traditional methods. I know that developing the flavour of spontaneously fermented beer is a very involved process, especially with lambics... but other than the fermentation method, has Two Roads really strayed so far from traditional conventions that it's undeserving of being called a lambic, or at least lambic-like?

I'm not trying to compromise the integrity of traditional methods, but I think the average American lambic consumer's lack of knowledge regarding the brewing process makes it pragmatic for companies like Two Roads to label their beer as "lambic." Also, the brewers at Two Roads would probably be honest about this if you asked about the differences.

I like that RR came up with the term "Sonambic." Perhaps we need a term like this? I think the real problem here is that if you asked me what it tasted like, I wouldn't really know what else to say other than "lambic." Maybe some would disagree, but I think the "Gueuze" and "Kriek" offerings are distinct from wild or brett ales.

 

It's been a few years, so I can't quite recall the exact nature of people's reactions, but did New Glarus get this much shit when they released their R&D "Gueuze" and "Kriek"?

 

hmm I do think that if I could "mentally taste" what I think a gueze tastes like, I would have a pretty good idea of what to expect. far, far more than if you asked me to "mentally taste" what a 'wild ale' tastes like.

now, I don't know if this 2roads beers tastes like (more like a gueuze or just...something that might fall into a general wild ale bucket)

maybe "American gueuze" or something like that. something that makes it clear they are not from Belgium, may or may not be using traditional methods, but are trying to get to that taste profile.

 

people say the same nonsense about porter vs stout, or old ale vs barleywine.

just because lambic connotes some particular wild ale to you doesn't mean the word actually refers to that taste. it's like saying fantome saison doesn't taste like a saison because it doesn't taste like saison dupont.

i think you're simultaneously taking styles too seriously (they are just guidelines) and not seriously enough (lambic doesn't mean "what i feel like it means," but rather a specific set of processes. there is no point to use the word when all you mean is wild ale; it's misleading).

 

One thing I will note is that under Belgian law as well as an EU ordinance from 1992, lambic *must* be spontaneously fermented. Of course, that wouldn't apply here in the US, but it's respect for that kind of protected status and appellation (similar to wine) that leads many of the most respected US brewers to shy away from calling their versions "lambic".

To your other question, wiithout knowing the specifics of the brewing process used, it's very hard to say. There are a number of more or less unique processes that separate lambics from other beers.

For example:

• Was there a minimum of 30% unmalted (!) wheat added during the mash as part of the grain bill? That percentage is stipulated under Belgian law, but numbers range from 25% to nearly 40% in practice. This is why Cantillon Iris (no wheat) is technically not lambic...but Jean likes to play around. His standard lambics adhere to the age old 35% raw wheat / 65% malted barley grain bill.
• Was a turbid mash used? If you're familiar with decoction brewing (e.g,. for bocks), a portion of the mash is taken from the main mash, boiled separately and then returned to the main mash. A turbid mash turns that on its head by removing liquid portions of the mash (rather than solid), boiling it separately and returning it to the mash. This results in a very high percentage of unconverted starch in the final wort. Normally, you want as much of your strach converted to sugar as possible (within style guidelines) prior to fermentation since a "standard" fermentation will only convert sugars to alcohol. The wild yeast and bacteria present in a spontaneous fermentation of a lambic allows for conversion of starches to sugar over time (we're talking years long time) which in turn adds to the complexity of flavors found in tradional lambic. Turbid mashing isn't 100% required (at least one Belgian brewer, Boon, uses a highly simplified turbid mash metho) but it is, by and large, a standard. A standard grain to water ratio (e.g., Cantillon) is ~ 1.52 kg grain/L of brewing liquor (a fancy term for water in brewing).
• What were the mash-in tempertures and the sacchrification/protein rest schedules for the boil? The use of unmalted wheat (which is also a PIA to mill) requires some non-standard temperatures and timings to effect proper conversion and processing. Standard temperatures at mash-in (after all the water has been added to all the grain/wheat) are often as low as 45C (113F) where a normal single temperature infusion mash-in will run between 65C and 70C (148F-158F) depending on the amount of converstion desired, etc. There's often a step rest at 58C (136F) and themain rest for a lambic is typically about 72C (162F). Meanwhile you're also running the inverse decoction at least twice. Probably a bit too technical there. Lambic boils range anywhere from 6-8 hours as compard to a standard 90 minute-2 hour boil for a pale ale. Also, the mash is often sparged with water at temperatures of 93C (200F) or higher to promote extraction. Single temperature infusion mashes typically sparge around 75C-80C to avoid extracting harsh tannins, but the lengthy fermentation period and wild yeasts/batceria can break those down in a lambic. Incomplete extraction is typically the place where those not experienced with lambic brewing falter most.
• Were old/oxidized hops added? Typical lambics use 2-3 year old hops...not so much for bittering or aroma as for sanitation/control of certain wild bacteria. A typical hopping rate for lambics is ~ 5 g/L. You know how fresh hops smell? The ones Jean let me add to the mash at Cantillon open brew day (crazy good fortune!) smelled like old cheese. Srs.
• Was all of the fermentation in oak casks? Stainless steel is a no-go fro lambic fermentation and aging. Some producers use chestnut wood for lower end products and/or fruited lambcs (e.g., De Troch's fruited Chapeau beers) or special blends (e.g., Vanberg and DeWulf's LambicX series) but oak is the standard. Most brewers have a specific temperature (e.g., 18C-20C) that they *always* use when transferring wort into barrels.
• Was there blending of multiple batches/barrels? If there were only ~ 700 bottles (750 mL) that's only ~ 525 L of base beer or about three standard 53-55 gallon barrels (or six if a single base beer was used to make both beers). It's rare to see commercial unblended lambic on the market. Typically, it's only seen at special events, in-house, etc. For gueuze, even a stretch would blend 1 and 2 year old gueze (e.g., the first bottling of Tilquin gueuze), but the standard would be 1, 2 and 3 years with a proprortion determined by the blenders taste/experience/desired taste profile. That's something that only comes with expereince?
• How long were the beers aged? Even a simple jong lambik that you might be served at a lambic brewery/gueuze blenderie will be at least 10-12 months old. Most fruited lambics are somewhere between 20 and 24 months old. The time that fruited lambics sit on the fruit, the mechanism for introducing fruit and the fruiting rate are all brewer specific. For final blending, it's not unusual to mix fruit that has undergone two extractions with fruit that has only undergone a single extraction to maximize flavor and then add in young lambic to allow for refermentation in the bottle (or a small amount of sugary liquor can be added as in the Cantillon Lou Pepe series). You see gueuze out there now (e.g., 3F) that's a mix of 1, 2, 3, 4 and sometimes even 5 years although the standard (appellation protected oude guezue) is a mix of 1, 2 and 3 as noted above).

I'm sure there's other stuff I'm missing, but this is information that I could remember pretty easily. Yeah, I'm *bit* of a lambic geek.

 

I think the source of my comment was that there simply aren't that many gueuzes I can (easily) get my hands on. so when I'm referring to gueuze, it's really Cantillon / 3f and maybe 3f golden blend / Tilquin, and maybe a couple others. others are a lot harder to try so I end up really not trying most of them - so I have a very small mental picture of what gueuze tastes like, vs "stout" which I can walk down to my corner store and buy 50 of.