Lambic... The most refined beer in my opinion, I was always amazed with this style of beer, but the fact that I live in Georgia (country), it's always difficult to get my hands on Lambic beers, almost never available in the market... I love travelling, especially in Belgium and whenever I get there, I always drink my favourite Lambics, like: 3 Fonteinen, Struise, Cantillon and etc.
I was lucky enough to get my hands on very limited supply of Lambics (and other sour beers) and of course I didn't even hesitage to buy them despite of price (whenever Lambics or high quality sour beers appear in our local market, they are extremely expensive).
Lambic is a type of beer brewed in the Pajottenland region of Belgium southwest of Brussels and in Brussels itself since the 13th century. I would say this is the most traditional type of beer. What separetes this style from other ones, is the fact that the fermentation process is spontaneous. We have wild yeast and bacterias fermenting the beer in the most traditional way and the result using these ingredients is that we are getting beer which has funky and sour flavour, which is of course quite different from what people think the beer is, when you taste this type of beer for the first time, there is a huge chance, that you won't like it, but it has the amazing nature within it, which grows on you from time to time and at the end you absolutely fall in love with sour beers.
My preference is sour beers with red fruits, which is perfect mixture of aroma and taste, mostly I like when brewers use cherries or raspberries to give the extra tartness and little bit of sweet flavour as well to the beer, it goes extremely well with the flavours of wild yeast and as a result you are getting fruity, sour, crisp and very drinkable liquid.
Today I want to share with you some of sour beers, which I found in Georgia, Tbilisi and my personal opinion is that, this style of beers are not seasonal at all, I would gladly drink them on every season, every weather and it would make my day happy anytime.
The fact that Lambics are so appreciated in beer geeks, brought us to reality, where craft breweries are also creating some amazing "lambic alike" sour beers and they are quite popular among beer lovers.
Not all sour beers are similar, mainly people loving this type means, that they are amazed with the funky flavour and sour aftertaste, there are some examples, where the beer should be full of flavour and bring the vibe of lambics, but the product isn't quite there, for example the first one I want to share with you is cherry flavoured sour beer from Omnipollo, as much as I love Omnipollo and I honestly think that they are in the top best craft breweries in the world with their innovative and creative products, I was not happy with this particular one.
Before we go to Lambics, I want to share one more style of beer, which I also love and which is very similar to Lambic, this is Berliner-Weisse, style comes from Germany and its also sour one, the fermentation is produced with a mixture of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Brett) and lactic acid bacteria, a prerequisite that gives us the lactic acid taste. Mikkeller did extremely good job with this one and it directly went to my top favourite Berliner-Weisse beers without a doubt, very refreshing, full of fruity flavour, nicely sour in the aftertaste and the aroma is just amazing.
I was lucky enough to find 2 Lambic beers, both flavoured with cherries and I have no words to describe them. they are simply one of the best example what fruit flavoured Lambic should be, everything about them was just perfect (except the price :D, app. $20 per bottle, but totally worth it), this is the example of sour beers, which you can share in couple and have amazing experience, literally no other style comes close to traditional Lambics and I hope the production of this old-fashioned beer will never stop and we will always have access to them.
Hi, your posts are great! Lambics is that typical example of having no middle ground in terms of taste: either you love them or you don't. Fortunately I've been able to try some of that style here in my country and I'm definitely of the team that loves them!
Thanks ^^