Came across this on YouTube recently: I have always thought of lambics being blended at or close to even 12 month years apart, this suggests a wider variance. Does anyone have experience with the Belgian blenders and brewers that can provide more insight or thoughts on applications for homebrewed gueuze inspired blends?
Cool vid, Mike has some posts about it http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/04/blending-lambic-into-gueuze-with-two.html http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2011/10/beer-blending-experiment.html
Thanks, I actually revisited those and his sections from American Sour Beer before posting. That blog from his blending session with the Pyles is still the most helpful piece I've ever come across on homebrewed lambic. The "Mythbusters" blog post has a few interesting tidbits too.
Jean Van Roy has said the Cantillon Gueuze is a blend of 1, 2, and 3 year old lambic. What the error bar is on the definition of a year is in that case, I'm not sure. But when I visited the brewery a couple weeks ago, the young sample they have at the end of the tour was 16 months old, and the implication was that this was the young component of Gueuze. Not sure if this helps or not...
The lambic brewing season is fall to spring, and as he said the number of summers a beer has gone through is the key determiner of age. At blending it is more about taste, so they won't necessarily be blending the beers from the previous January with those from the January before and the January before that etc. There was a great CBC talk a few years ago with Jean Van Roy and Yvan de Baets where they talk about the practical considerations of brewing lambics (sadly not too much about blending) - moderated by Vinnie. 3F has been one of the more creative lambic producers in terms of the ages of their blends (Golden Blend contains 1/2/3/4-year-old lambic, Blauw was a 1 and a 4 etc.)
I think using beer from 1-3 years in age is what makes it gueuze, but beyond that it's all about the blenders palette. You could do 80% old lambic, 2% two year and 18% young lambic and it would still be gueuze. I'm an curious if they would count 18 months as one or two years old lambic.
That is often the case, but not always. Gueuze isn't a controlled term above and beyond lambic, so it is really just carbonated lambic. Cantillon's Lou Pepe Gueuze for example is straight two year, primed with sugar: "The Lou Pepe Gueuze is a blend of three different 2-year-old lambics. The standard Cantillon Gueuze is a blend of 1,2, and 3-year-olds. The inclusion of the younger lambic (which still has some unfermented sugars in it) sparks a refermentation in the bottle that gives Gueuze its famous champagne-like spritziness. The simple idea behind the special Lou Pepe blend is that it should have much more of the taste of old lambic, which is of course much harder, drier, more sour, and more complex than the young stuff. (Though 3-year-olds are generally more complex than 2-year-olds, it's not necessarily so; the 2-year-olds used in this instance have as much character as most 3-year-olds.) This being Gueuze, it has to be spritzy, so the brewery opted for the same method used in conditioning champagne: everyday refined sugar is dissolved in water and added to cause a refermentation. The sugar ferments out completely, so there is no residual sweetness, which Jean-Pierre famously detests." It would depend. If you brewed a lambic at the end of the season 18 months would be two year lambic because it would have gone through its second summer. If you brewed at the start of the season 18 months would still be one year old. Just mentially replace "year" with "summer" to get the answer.
If I'm not mistaken, lambic and gueuze were controlled appelations in Belgium in the sense that they had to be brewed with a certain amount of wheat and be of a certain density. The EU now has a definition for oude lambic and oude gueuze. The lambic has to contain a certain amount of wheat and be spoteniously fermented. The gueuze has to contain lambic that is at least 3 years old.
LambicLand (pg. 18-19) says: "There used to be linguistic agreement that lambics that have aged for two or more brewing years are considered as 'oud.' That was until the recent EU designation of all traditionally made draught lambics, regardless of age, as 'oude lambiek.' ... The same piece of legislation also defined the correct use of the term 'oude gueuze' or 'oude geuze', now legally defined and referring to a drink made by blending two or more 100% lambic beers." So there is a slight difference between the definitions for gueuze and lambic (re: blending), but I'd imagine two barrels from the same vintage would still qualify (Cantillon doesn't use oude on their labels anyway). The protection for oude is just a Traditional Specialty Guarantee (so not a true appelation which would indicate a production area). Without the "oude/oud" the only definitions for lambics in Belgium are that they contain 30-40% wheat (at least 30% is required to be a "sour beer" more than 40% unmalted wheat and it no longer qualifies as "beer") and that "spontaneous fermentation played a part in the production process." - From the 1993 Belgian Royal Decree on Beer
This was posted on the Cantillon Facebook page with some pictures of the downtown cellar recently; "We continue to bring bottles to the shelter in the city center. This blend was especially made for the cellar. One third 40 months old Lambic, one third 28 months old and one third 16 months old. Average age for this blend, 28 months. A common Gueuze blend turn between 20 and 24 months. We also choose Lambic with more acidity, better for a long aging". ... This seems to confirm our discussion above and might give some insight to blend percentages too. 20 months on average would be something like 1/3 10 month old lambic, 1/3 20, 1/3 30. 24 could be true 12 month, 24 month and 36 month lambic.
Interesting stuff, but again not something to look at as anything but one example of what works for these particular lambics. Tasting is the real key!
