Cantillon FouFoune

Brewed by Cantillon
Style: Lambic - Fruit
Brussels, Belgium

A Mes rate: 75cl bottle from Battersea Beer Festival! Quite impressed they had this to be honest. Typical lambic nose but with a little more funk than you would usually expect from Cantillon. I mean seriously funky. It’s almost James Brown. Wonderful hazy golden appearance. Taste is just what you would expect from Cantillon but where is the apricot? Ah there it is. Not even a hint of it until the finish then it hits you just hard enough to leave a glorious creamy and tropical aftertaste. A most unusual experience for a lambic. Yes all the characteristics you would expect are there but cream? And obvious sweetness? Very very heavy sediment for my final pour. Sim wouldn’t drink it. I gave it a good home. Great stuff and a little deviation from the norm.

Hazy golden lambic with a thin white head. Pleasant apricot aroma with horseblanket and cheesey notes. Good fresh apricot pulp in mouth, with some sour cherry notes, and lactic points. Excellent ! Sampled at Quintessence Cantillon 2005.

Sampled at Oakes’ ’05 Xmas Party
Cloudy banana color with puffy cloudy head. Nose is moist, yeasty, soiled hay, a bit tart and vinous. The flavor is tart, as expected, but a bit too much; too vinous. I like a good balance of sour vinegar taste and funk in a Lambic and it isn’t here. Still an awesome quaffing beer but I start to sweat after drinking too much of this. And trying to down a whole swallow is going to need a moment to recoup.

Golden, almost yellow, with the characteristic fine white small-bubbles foam. It reduced to a film, though. Apricot aromas lening in with refreshing lemon. Initially very acidic, lots of lemon, mellowing towards the finish with the apricots taking more centre-stage together with hints of almond. Medium-bodied, medium carbonation, dry finish. An amazingly complex beer.

750ml. bottle, enjoyed at the Spuyten Duyvil. Hazy yellow/orange color with a small white head. Funky, musty aroma of tart apricots and hints of bleu cheese. Huge citric acid sourness to this beer. I love tart and this is one of the most tart beers I’ve ever tried. The apricot flavor was much more subdued than the aroma, just a hint of the fruit. Excellent, as always from Cantillon.

75cl bottle at GBBF, August 2005. I could have sworn I’d rated this before, so didn’t make very extensive notes. Seems I hadn’t rated it. Fruity, but I’m not sure I would have spotted it as apricot had I not known, Typical Cantillon stuff. Funky aroma, very sour and tart, but clean and refreshing. Very gueuze like for a fruit lambic. Nice.

0.75 L bottle, bbe Dec 09. Shiny, fluorescent, light honey colour, very turbid, minimal head with some lace sticking to the edge of the glass. Rotten, ’eggish’, sour aroma with good floral notes but also some rubber. Sour and dry taste with clearly and wonderfully present apricot. A bit more fruit than lambic in a good combination of the two. Solid body, light carbonation, very dry mouthfeel.

Apricot colored liquid below a small, slowing forming head. Initially bright and vibrant fruit aroma of apricot and peach, which becomes less apparent as the bottle nears final consumption. Other aromatic Cantillon lambic qualities are also present, but in a subtle way. Unbelievably harsh citric acid flavor, with very little character besides an extreme amount of sourness. This is an unbelievably intense lambic, probably the most sour lambic ever. It’s so strange, because I adore the three year old Grand Cru, but that beer has so much more depth and character, besides the sourness. This is just cutting, with very little fruit character.