Getting into lambic and gueuze

Yeah, Hanssens is one of my favs. The Oude Gueze is pretty awesome as well (I think I rated both very close to the Kriek in my ratings), and quite a bit cheaper than the Kriek from what I've seen in shops. That was just my preference, so try them out for yourself and report back.

 

Also you could trade with someone from Wisconsin whom can get you various New Glarus fruited beers easy and cheap. Sold in grocery stores up there. Their Thumbprint series Cranbic I had over winter was delicious and would rate it up there with some of the better ones I've had from Belgium.

 

I love Duchesse... in my humble opinion it's a perfectly balanced sour that one's sour beer journey could begin and end on. But, I hesitated to suggest it because I wasn't sure if @jp_4 was looking for only lambic and gueuze, specifically, or was open to sour beers more generally. If the latter then, yes, absolutely Duchesse de Borgogne is a must try, especially considering it's much cheaper and more readily available than many of the other sours discussed above.

 

Get the Fou! It's amazing. You don't need a lambic resume to enjoy it.

 

I was just thinking this. Fou Foune was one of the best beers I have ever had. EVER! Get it. In fact the next time you are at a beer fest do what I did. Notice the line backing up for small pours of fou foune? Butt to the front with your cell phone in hand and say to the person you wish to depose ; " did you know that fou foune means crazy p**** in French?" Then when they are all looking it up abcond with that place in line. ^ this is true story and also could be part of another thread.

 

Enjoying lambic can definitely take time. I couldn't get through more than a couple of sips the first time I tried it. The next few times got gradually better until I thought, "okay, I almost like this." Now I love them. Eventually, it may click for you or it may not, but just have fun with it and try as many as you can.

Cantillon makes world class beer, but it's entirely up to you whether you want to spend $50 on a bottle just to figure out whether you like it or not. Personally, I think I would pass at that price, even for something like Fou' Foune or Saint Lamvinus, which I have had before and know and love. I haven't seen a bottle of Cantillon in over 6 or 7 years now, so if I did buy some it would be more of a rare treat/special occasion type of thing.

The Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René and Oude Kriek Cuvée René are excellent suggestions for all of the reasons that @THANAT0PSIS mentioned above. The Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait and Oude Kriek Mariage Parfait are both very good too.

 

Yep, we're totally on same page. Meant the rec if goal is broader than lambics/gueuzes. Cheers.

 

This is great advice. Cheap, easily available, and delicious. It's a great example of a gueuze and an unsweetened fruit lambic.

I wouldn't recommend spending more money if you don't like the flavor of those. If you tried a $30 Cabernet Sauvignon and didn't like the flavor, I wouldn't recommend you buy a $150 bottle. If you don't like the flavor of a $10 unsweetened fruit lambic, I would never recommend jumping to $50+.

 

I find this American approach to lambic pretty interesting, I love reading treads about it. I usually convince people to start drinking lambic by offering a Geuze Boon, Frank Boon has achieved so much with a geuze that is drinkable for almost everyone. I live in the Senne valley and basically every cafe here serves Boon, a local monument.

Once you like it, try a Lindemans, Hanssens, Morieu and Deconick and keep going from there. Its strange that most non beer people here have no clue about Cantillon or 3F. It baffles me that Americans have a much better knowledge about lambics then most Belgians

I started drinking Framboise lambics at the age of 16, before I even liked the flavor of beer, you basically grow up with it around here. And the best advice that I can give is this : try every lambic out there and don't focus on Cantillon/3F

 

A bit of "local" information both to confirm your observation and that may also that may help a bit with some understanding.

Not too many years ago I had the opportunity to spend almost two weeks in Brussels for some work related purposes that left me a reasonable amount of time to explore. My experience was, as yours has been, that hardly any Belgian I met in Brussels had even heard of Cantillon, let alone tried one of their beers. For many their opinion of beer was clear from the number of empty Jupiter cans on the ground to be found in certain areas of the city. Now this was a beer I didn't even know existed until being a guest Belgium.

In the hotel where I was staying the tables were set based on the automatic assumption that a diner would order wine and I had to explain to the servers that I would be ordering from the beer menu since I hadn't come to Belgium to drink French or German wines. My host for the visit, who had lived in Brussels all his life, decided to accompany me on my first visit to Cantillon since all he know of it was from my interest in going there. As a wine drinker he wasn't willing or able to recognize the qualities of what he was having with the glass of kreik he chose after the tour. (So I left him behind when I made my second day trip there to spend more time developing my understanding of the brewery, the brewing, and some of the beers.)

But why did I know I wanted make a special effort to visit and tour Cantillon? Because I live in an urban/suburban area of the US where one beer writer has claimed that we collectively consume more Belgian beers than the entire city of Brussels. (This I can actually believe since when I went to a few of the more famous bottle shops in central Brussels I had a good bit of difficulty finding very much new to try beyond the three Westvletern offerings.) In this urban/suburban area we have multiple restaurants modeled after those in Belgium and doing the cuisine fairly well. At least one of them has sponsored, during Philadelphia Beer Week a few years ago, a combined panel discussion and beer tasting/pairing dinner that included folks like Frank Boon and Jean Van Roy and bottles of their beers. The limited number of tickets were sold out long before the event. (Van Roy himself is reported to have been amazed that the logo on his shirt and he himself were immediately recognized by the clerk in the hotel where he stayed.)

But the whole of the United States is not like that and despite the rapid growth of interest in flavorful beers there are still many folks in many areas of the US who, if they have heard of it at all, think that Stella Artois represents Belgian beer and routinely consume Budweiser, Millers or Coors. So on this site you are encoutering a group of folks who are not at all representative of the typical American beer drinker.