Cantillon Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru

Brewed by Cantillon
Style: Lambic - Unblended
Brussels, Belgium

2004 bottle. A night that starts with Westy needs to end with something that can distinguish itself, and this seemed appropriate. Warm macro gold with no head other than extraneous large bubbles at the edge of the glass. Big sharp pungent lambic nose. Salty yogurt. Dry tannic oak, perhaps suggesting tea. A bit of fruity acetic acid, but not overwhelming. Carbonation is lacking, completely. Thin body, light and refreshing, like lemonade on crack. SO TART! Dry! Salty. big lactobacillus flavor. So tannic it almost tastes a bit like overbrewed tea. A bit of floral hops, surprisingly? Sharp with a good bit of acetic acid. A little sock-like. Lemon tart. Bracing. My first and hopefully not last unblended lambic.

Pours hazy golden with no head. Aroma is classic lambic but subdued/implicit. Very flat and discrete sourness.

I’m not sure I am a fan of this style. I’m certainly not at the price. To me, something like Rodenbach Grand Cru has so much more character and is so utterly quaffable. The body is too thin, with just the faintest hint of fizz. When held and swooshed in the mouth for too long, the finish resonates with something warm and uric. Deep snorts in the goblet and it smells like an old piss pot. This beer really, really sucks. Somewhere down the line, someone believed this style to be classic , elegant, and worthy of an acquired taste. It’s plain awful.

Cantillon! Yes! Pours an absolutely utter lack of head and a body the color of filtered apple juice. Oily lacing. Immediately, an odor of sourness envelopes my room. Huge sour in the nose along with aromas of apples and pears. Incredible tartness in flavor and more sourness in the finish with potatoes and pancakes. This starts out sour and loses tartness the longer its consumed. Unusually flat for most gueuze I’ve tried besides the contaminated Lou Pepe I shared with SoLan. There was no carbonation in this beer at all. Palate is watery and thin. Though I wasn’t floored by it, I thoroughly enjoyed this brew.

Pours a murky orange with no head. Aroma is tart funky barn and cheese. No real fruit taste at all. Watery mouth feel. Funky yeast and barn/hay make up the flavor. The lack of fruit really detracts from the flavor to me. A slight sour/tart, but nothing compared to the brutal aromas and flavors of fruit lambics.

750ml bottle - My first unblended as well... pours yellowish with very little head. The aroma is sour and funky and obviously so is the taste. Like a gueuze, this lambic does not have fruit added and the typical wild yeast lambic funk really dominates the flavor. It didn’t blow me away though it was enjoyable enough (or maybe not given the high price point).

Sample from a friend at Pizza Port bottle shop; Drank with Shawn and others. $15. A real treat. Low to no carbonation. I was reading this is the nature of a true lambic, as the aging and use of Brett yeasts super attenuate the beer, leaving no sugar. It is bottled this way. for Gueze, additional lambic is added with higher residual sugar, which ferments in the bottle to carbonate the Gueuze. Thus lambics: uncarbonated, and gueuzes are carbonated. Looks terrible: very light yellow and flat. I was surprized to find the lambic to have little sourness. Possibly the souring yeasts were added late, or just provided by the barrel/air after sacc yeasts ate most of the sugar. Very very easy to drink.

My first unblended. I’d expect more complexity instead of so much cask aroma and flavour. Lot of suranné. Little tartness.