Eylenbosch Gueuze Festival

Formerly brewed at Mort Subite (Alken-Maes / Scottish & Newcastle)
Style: Lambic - Gueuze
Kobbegem, Belgium

Mind you, my sample is of indeterminate age. A little bird tells me this still hails from Eylenbosch itself, not from the Keersmaecker factory. Warning 2: even in those days, 'Festival' was a filtered gueuze, not a bottle-conditioned one. It used to be more or less the best of the fake ones. Clear orange-amber. Fluffy dirty-white head, fast gone. Horseblanket, woody, cypress, citrussy, unripe berries as gooseberry or currants in the nose. Very tart taste - mouthpuckering so. Not a trace of oxidation (in a pH of maybe 2.5,...). Fresh lemony, woody-acid flavours. A little bit of licorice retronasal. Very refreshing, but not for the faint-hearted. Mouthfeel is were it fails. It's got the obligatory acidburn - and how - but an unfiltered gueuze would be flunkier, livelier, more interesting. Still quite good. As said, the best of 'the rest'.