Beer Style Clarification

I don't like the "Fruit / Vegetable Beer" description here on beeradvocate.com because its tone is so dismissive, but there is clearly overlap between the categorisations of fruited beer and fruited lambic.

 

Admittedly I'm more familiar with BJCP and the other BA's style guidelines, plus there is often a bit of overlap. From a semantical standpoint though, the sections you put in bold don't actually line up. After fermentation is the key part of the BA description that is different. In both of the other quotes you shared it's the fruit itself that is allowed to spontaneously ferment, according to BA the beer has already spontaneously fermented [before] the addition of fruit.

I'm not sure this is the issue or not, but thought I should point that out.

 

The Bros are not trying to be an authority on beer styles. This certainly isn't the only beer style description that is vague or has some inconsistencies with practice. The point is just to give users and brewers some general categories to record their beers in...it's not perfect and nothing will be. Sometime I think it would be nice if the Bros. clarified/fixed some beer style descriptions, but that could have ripple effects changing how hundreds of beers are registered on this site, and people will surely argue/complain about the style specifics.

 

One potential problem which remains to be settled or sorted out is that there are many folks who think that a lambic can only be produced in a particular region of Belgium and that other spontaneously fermented beers are Wild Ales from other places in the world.

There is a reasonable rationale behind this in that the population of yeast and bacteria strains responsible for the spontaneous fermentation of the beer differs from region to region and the flavors will not be identical. Thus calling a beer made in the Russian River Brewery in CA or the Allagash Brewery in Maine a lambic is misleading and those brewers avoid doing that. While I've never had New Glarus, not having been to Wisconsin in 10-12 years, I don't think they call their beers "lambics" but I might be wrong on that one.

Edit: Another complication is that pretty much a majority of the beers in the database are entered by BAs who might make a mistake or have a misunderstanding. Those can be corrected but it requires someone to flag the beer and provide some sort of rationale for why the beer is or might be miscategorized. So lots of discrepancies exist.

 

Spontaneous fermentation alone does not a lambic make.

Dan Carey knows exactly what he's doing with regard to Fruited sour ales, Wisconsin cherry and Wisconsin framboise ales and the difference between those and traditional lambic.

The *closest* beer New Glarus makes to a a traditional lambic is the Thumbprint Series Cran-bic which was brewed using traditional techniques and which he calls a Lambic-style (using the respectful term @drrth noted above). There's also the old R&D Gueuze which employed similar techniques, but doesn't quite fit the definition of traditional (much less oude) gueuze.

 

To some (especially those here in the US trying to capitalize on the current popularity of lamic), this is a point of contention, but you are correct in noting a location connection. One possible (although not authoratative) etymology for the word "lambic" is that it entered English through French, but is actually based on Dutch for the town of Lembeek near the town of Halle in Belgium.

Of the approximately eleven current traditional Belgian lambic breweries producing on a commercial scale (there are some smaller brewers and blenders), ten (Cantillon, 3F, Boon (actually in Lembeek), De Troch, Mort Subite, De Keersmaeker, Belle-Vue, Lindemans, Girardin, Timmermans) are located within about a 30-35 km radius around Lembeek. Only Van Honsebrouck in Ingelmunster is outside this area. Additionally, there are a number of lambic/gueze blenders (who buy lambic wort and ferment/blend it themselves) in this region: De Cam, Tilquin and Hanssens.

There are laws within Belgium that denote a number of specifics for a product to legally be called lambic and the terms Oude Gueuze and Oude Kriek are legally protected terms within the EU.

It certainly could (IMO) be classified as such. New Glarus calls it a fruited sour ale, but notes that wild fermentation is used.

LMK if you want more info.