Cantillon Soleil de Minuit

Formerly brewed at Cantillon
Style: Lambic - Fruit
Brussels, Belgium

I love this. Hazy deep orange coloured. Probably the best aroma ever in a beer. It is really hard to remove your nose from the glass. Huge aroma of fresh cloudberries. Even though the beer is now seven years old the aroma has not changed much becoming less fruity as in most fruit lambics. Very acidic and complex flavour with lots of citrus and cloudberries present.

375ml bottle at the <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/Place/sweden/s target=blank>Akkurat in Stockholm, Sweden. Vintage 1999. Golden orange in colour, dissipating white head, no lacing. The cloudberries in the aroma are spectacular and they provide the sweetness, sour and tart, some wood, light orange zest, acidic. Easy one of the best aromas I have come across. I didn’t think that it could get any better then the aroma until I tasted it. Wow. The cloudberry sweetness balanced with the usual Cantillon funk make this one fun lambic. Apples, cheese, must, acidic. Lightly sour mouthfeel, medium body, medium/high carbonation. Finishes sweeter then most Cantillon lambic, it seems to last forever. Astonishing is the only word I can think of.

This is a breakthrough in brewery (almost..). Combining swedish cloudberries with Belgian beerbrewing is genious! This lambic was produced by the swedish pub Akkurat (norwegian for ’correct’), Jamtlands Brewery in Sweden (correct me if I’m wrong) and Brasserie Cantillon in Belgium. What I’ve heard (I’m a regular at Akkurat in Stockholm) is that some swedish guys sent 300 kilos of cloudberries down to Cantillon and got back around 3000 bottles. They sell this rare lambic at Akkurat for 105 SEK (around $10 USD) and it’s damn worth the money! I have had atleast 10 bottles of this sour, yellowish lambic the last 3-4 months and this is one of the reasons I go to Stockholm regularly (I work now in Oslo, Norway).

Beautiful dark golden, little unclear body with a small beautiful white head that lasts; Super, super deep exceptionally complex, very intense nose. Very interesting balance between sweet and sour. The Hjotron stands out exceptionally clear, with some sweetness (I only know the smell of Hjotron from Hjotron jam, though), behind it there are lots of grapefruit, wood, vanilla etc. IT IS JUST FANTASTIC!; The body is very, very sour and dry and fits the nose perfectly; It moved into a just as sour and dry finish, again with lots of Hjotron in extreme lengths. Very, very well balanced beer, even when this sour and this dry. AMAZING!!!

Bottled: Orange colour. Unclear. White thin head. Is very fruitdense in the aroma. Must be the cloudberry. Has a subtle sourness in the background. The flavour is bloody fantastic. The fruitsweetness and the sourness is perfectly mingled in this one. Could go on and drink this forever. Is light acidic and cleansing in the end. I had both the ordinary and the special Soleil. My rating on 4,6 is a avg. of the 2. 4,5 for the ordinary and 4,7 for the special.

This is a wonderful lambic - with a wispy, clean fruit aroma and a really sour initial flavor(cloudberries?), Soleil de Minuit finishes quite differently from where it begins - it leaves one with a certain sweetness. Complex and lovely.

Akkurat bottle A man tries not to be influenced by those things, but the staff needing half an hour to fetch the beer you were looking forward to, the INAO Cantillon glass it comes into, th classy basket that is used for service, the unlabeled bottle, the still noisy pop upon opening... they make a lasting impression and sets the mood for what one may call a beer experience. Following, the opaque golden to pale orange pour wears a lasting, finely laced 1cm cover despite its 8 years. Fantastic fresh nose then keeps you on your cloud.Delicate and refined hay flavor (a trait that this particular rater particularly adores), complemented by various fruits, the usual lactic qualities, yogurt-like and a very frank, by Cantillon’s standards, citrus attack, lemony and orangey all at once. The barnyard soft farminess that forms the landscape is not without a certain crispness despite a minimal corkiness that hints at cellar conditions. Very smooth champaign like carbonation, comfortable... Well, this one meet the equilibrium between dryness, tartness, freshness.. between lactic and citric acidity. All the while, generous grapeyness borders cranberries. Lots of words, but it’s not the most complex beer, it remains focused and on elegance at that. Vinous. An utmost classic, classy and seemingly untouched by the years. A favorite from Cantillon I would say. I’m anxious to try Per’s cloudberry jelly now:)

RBSG2003. The single most sweet and tart simultaneity I have ever experience, bar none. Delicious. Salt and leather are there among the cloudberry (?) sweetness (I have to get me some of those!). Thanks Josh!