Cantillon 1.5L

i believe there were some st gilloise magnums available if you had some kind of connection to the sports team (season tickets or something?).

in terms of trade value, you are almost definitely better off trading for russian river 3Ls unless you really, really want to have a big cantillon. afaik they are rare as all hell so, like the russian river 3Ls (except moreso), be prepared to spend ungodly amounts of trade value for a large format bottle that adds up to way more than the value of the volume equivalent in small bottles.

 

I feel like I've seen a lot of these popping up lately (Classic Gueuze). Does anyone know if there was a recent release or something?

 

There was a recent release, only available at their shop.

 

This is true. The good people at Moeder Lambic pointed me that way, but they were no longer available last week.

 

Take a look at what people are offering for 3L RR bottles and double that. I think that'd be a good starting point.

 

Considering it was only sold at the brewery in pretty limited quantities, I would say you're going to have to go pretty heavy for this one. International is probably also a requisite, because if someone in the US has gone through the trouble of getting one of these, it's probably not something they did for trade ROI.

 

Can someone explain the fascination with larger format bottles to me. Is it not the same beer as the 375's & 750's?

Not a big deal at all, I am just curious.

 

Same beer when it goes into the bottle? Yes.

Same beer when it pours into your glass? Maybe. That depends on the time it's been in the bottle, storage, frequency of movement, etc.

Bottle shape and size impacts the chemical changes that occur naturally in a live beer as well as the rate of secondary fermentation. Any time bottles are disturbed, it can change the chemistry of what's happening inside the bottle.

During my visits to 3F and Cantiillon both Armand and Jean agreed (and that doesn't happen too too often) that the 1.5L format is the best (in their opinion) for laying down/aging gueuze. Historically, both breweries have stored stocks of in 1.5L (and some larger) formats, but they are rarely, if ever, available to the public.

When I asked Jean last week, he said that there would be more 1.5L bottles of gueuze available in the future and it would be offered "now and then". Take that for what it's worth.

 

Keep in mind that the difference you get from aging 150cl .vs. 75cl bottles is most likely less than the variation between different batches/bottlings/vintages. In other words, the bottle variability is such with gueuze that it really makes it a wash IMHO when it comes to the bottle size.