Belle-Vue Sélection Lambic

Formerly brewed at Belle-Vue (InBev)
Style: Lambic - Gueuze
Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, Belgium

Bottle from PlanB @ European Beerfistival. Pours a hazy orange with no head. Sour and bitter. Some vinegar aromas. Very harsh and bitter finish. Hint of mint /toothpaste. Mellow carboantion. Tart finish.

[bottle at plan b in Copenhagen] Sour and vinegary aroma with strawberry and cranberry and crabapple and horseblanket notes. Dark, unfiltered apple juice appearance with no head. Quite sour flavour, but not too vinegary and with plenty of fruity notes: peach, apple, dill pickle, slight horseblanket (I like). Very dry but tingly with medium carbonation, nice tart finish.

Bottle, bought @ plan B, Cph.
Pours muddy orange with no head. Aroma is tart, oranges, ginger, oak, apple, peach and a good degree of vinegar. Low carbonation, good oily mouthfeel. Super flavour, good oranges, geat tartness and dryness. Good oak with peach and apple. Good, but just a tad too much vinegar that gives a light burning feel in my throat.

(Bottled, 0.75l, vintage 1999) Opaque darkish amber with no head. Tart aroma with aged vinegar dominating, but also sweet-sugary notes. Sweetish, tart-vinegary flavor with apple acidity and some earthiness. Finishes tart and astringent, lightly sugary. Somewhere between regular geuzes and vinegary sour ales.

Bottle into tulip. Crazy-ass lambic tasting in our hotel room, GABF 2007. 1999 vintage. Cheesy as a mo-fo in the smell, wow, with chardonnay oakiness, vanilla, sharp acid and lacquer. Huge sour bomb in the mouth (me likey), balsamic in quality and tempered by sour apple notes, which stay on the tongue as the acidity fades into the finish. The acidity seems to coat the mouth like La Folie. End of the finish is dark, yeasty, echoing a little bit of the pale malts in the middle. Wonderfully tart. This is my kind of lambic. Still, might have been a little bit past its prime; a little thin, I think this would have been optimal a couple years earlier. Drink ’em if you got ’em.

Huge thanks to miketd! Pours a somewhat coppery color, with a thin beige head. Aroma is vinegar, marashino cherries, funk. Flavor is tart vinegar, again those maraschino cherries, hint of musty cheese, vanilla. Palate is medium to light bodied, mild carbonation, finished refreshingly tart. Great!

A real treat to find a highly rated retired beer. Poperinge opened it to celebrate a recent publishing coup. Good pop. Light tight head. Dark cloudy orange, moreso towards the bottom of the bottle. Big sharp sour aroma with essence of cheese. Refreshing, tart, citrus, cheesy and mouth puckering. Ounce for ounce maybe better than a good Hefe on the patio although scarcity and price may say otherwise.

[Rating salvaged from the archive] 1999 vintage. Amber with almost no head. Fair bit of carbonation from the looks of it but far from crazy. Aroma reminiscent of preserved cherries and vinegar. The yeast and the hops, cheesy, show through. Quite dry but not so much as many others and it’s quite full in the mouth. [I was probably quite... erm, invigorated by the beer as I wrote this "prose".] Hint of preserved peaches but not that fruity or sweet, though. Might be toned down by the musty, cheesy hops? Hardly bitter and that despite what tastes like citrus fruit peels. Even a hint of aniseed on the exit. Maybe I just dreamed it all?