Cantillon Bruocsella 1900 Grand Cru

Brewed by Cantillon
Style: Lambic - Unblended
Brussels, Belgium

Thanks to Cmillward for the taste! Pours a cloudy golden color. Aroma is strong funk with apples, pears and lemon rind. Flavors are more funk and sour fruits with some vanilla and honey. Very good.

Golden orange colour, no head. Acidic aroma. Extremely sour taste: you can almost feel your teeth dissolving away. On the more delightful side of the lambics.

I think this is my favorite Cantillon. Pours a dark golden color, still, no carbonation. A mild flavor for Cantillon, but it is unblended and aged for 3 years! A tart sourness, some oak in the flavor.

Some of the previous commentators have good points: some carbonation wouldn’t hurt, however, it is a beer with many subtle nuances, and some of that subtlety might be lost with aggressive fizz. Acidity isn’t overpowering. It almost reminds me of a good white burgundy.

This rating is for the Bruocsella 1900. I tried this at the first BA Nashville tasting alongside a 2002 Bruocsella Grand Cru. Pours honey golden with no head. Aroma of Belgian "barnyard" funk. Flavor has a medium to strong sourness, along with some honey and grassiness. There is enough sweetness to keep this drinkable. Not bad. Now for the 2002 Grand Cru (not rated), it had much more of the less desireable barnyard qualities in the aroma. Bugs had done their thing and made this far less sweet and more dry, making it far too acetic for my tastes. 8-3-7-4-14

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.

Tasting@beermouth. 75 cl bottle bought at Biertempel, Brussels. Cloudy orange with a sprinkly off white head. Sour acidic, vinegar, Fresh & crisp. Wood/cask notes. Bitingly sour on the tongue & cheeks. This, I think, was a breakthrough for my gueze career. Highly enjoyable!

Bottle from 2001 - Orange golden slightly hazy body, big bubbled white head; Great deep warm a little greasy nose, not as fresh as your usual Lambic, aroma: wet oak and horseblanket are the most predominant elements, sugared rotten apples and some fresh green fig peel behind, way back there is something fresh like green apples and orange juice and peel; The body has an almost oily texture, (almost) no carbonation, but lots of fresh fruity and lactic acids, it is actually a little bitter as well; It finishes very long, starting a bit slow almost thin, but soon evolving with a very balanced amount of lactic acids, again a small amount of bitterness, it has lots of aroma, more aged then fresh: overripe pear, overripe apple, cowshit, wet oak. Very special, I don’t think I have ever smelled the "classic" lambic/geuze (horseblanket, cowshit etc.) notes as clear as in this beer. I poured a glass from some hight, like with a Spanish cider, and it actually brought some freshness to the beer.