Girardin Gueuze Black Label

Brewed by Brouwerij Girardin
Style: Lambic - Gueuze
Sint Ulriks-Kapelle, Belgium

Dark orange, light amber, big ol’ off-white rocky head. Grapefruit and woody aroma, hints of tartness. The flavour is tart and sour, lemon grass is hidden in some more woody and grapefruit like flavours. It’s a complex beer that is too good for description.

Pours a nice orangish amber color, with a nice creamy white head. The nose is very citrusy and sour smelling, with a hint of sweet, like cranberry juice. The flavor is amazing. It has a nice grapefruit like citric acidity, with a nice dryness to off-set the sour. There is a very minimal sweetness present, but is quickely taken over by the vegital type sourness. The finish is not quite what I had hoped for compared to the rest of the experience, but a wonderful gueze.

The beer is clear copper gold, moderately effervescent, and topped by a good two inches of bubbly head. Decent head retention and good lacing. Sour aroma – citrus and herbal. The flavor is a tart citrus, mainly sour grapefruit juice and lemon rind. A little cheesy funk is thrown in as well. Lighter body, with memorable acidic carbonation, and a dry finish.

orange/copper with a large fizzy cream colored head. fruity aroma of apple, lemon, pear, and pepper. flavor is sour, musty, funky, and a hint of lemon. highly carbonated with a sharp sour mouthfeel. hints of wood barrel.

Here’s a beer that, by all appearances, is from an antediluvian era. That may be extreme, but it’s a beer with vintage qualities, from wrapping to palate. It also possesses the unique quality of being one of my first geuzes, and one I’ve been waiting sometime for. I lost it somewhere in the move from home to college (and again in the reverse), and in the midst of a scrambled search for my socks I found it. My imagination discovered that I actually knew nothing about geuzes, and was eager to fill in the details with random smatterings of misconceptions and outright lies, so that when it poured a clouded, monarch butterfly orange I was more taken aback than I normally would have been. The head was bubbly with pockets of the occasional arch-bubble, dominating his own group of tiny and soon to be assimilated minions. It reminded me of a well prepared and baked pizza crust with variable texture, but uniform in makeup and taste. It even shared the same shade of tan as pizza crust. A little patience and the head crumbles into a moat. A few more degrees of the large clock hand and it erodes further into an open ended valley in a process that would leave geologists swooning. From the many shifting tectonic and frivolously bubbly layers comes a well paced smell of apple, sparkling cider, Jamaican all spice, pumpkin, vanilla sugar and an encapsulating, piercing tartness. It’s like a thousand tiny rapier stabs, which if movies are any judge of reality, are not nearly as fatal but are a great deal more painful. A swish around the mouth reveals another face of the beer with more prevalent and dominating fruits. Apple and pear mix and mash to form a kind of delicious, low on sugar slurry to make a solid base for the other sharper fruits. “Cranberry” gives a name to the rest with more bitterness and acerbity than sugar and a nice shock to the taste buds previously coddled by the baby food apple-pear mix. The sourness makes a precise pinch at the roof of my mouth, but is suddenly stricken with lethargy and recedes. In its absence white wine vinegar appears with a nice smidgeon of black pepper. The aftertaste mellows things out with a mysterious, reclined and relaxed wheatiness. It’s slightly watery relative to the flavor impact, but this quality makes it refreshing and satisfying. I expected more complexity such as cheeses or grasses, but found none. This is how a sour beer should be made – with the drinker in mind. Nice complementary flavors and a quenching satisfaction paired with sourness make for a well rounded and supplicating drinking experience.

Pours a hazy golden brown with a small white head. The aroma is a nice sour scent with definite hints of grasses and herbs. The palate is nice, full, and smooth. Taste is a very smooth sour flavor with herbal qualities and a peppery taste. The pepper flavor took me back a little.

I poured this into a wine glass for lack of a better one to find a golden colored brew that made a lot of sound, forming a rich frothy head. Sour, musty wood, farmish aroma. I think my nose isn’t smart enough for it yet. Lemon and lime...outrageously sour-tart flavor with some sharp cheeses, finishing dusty and dry. I don’t get the complexity here that others have observed and I can’t quite pin it down...but it’s nice.

Aroma is very sour.Pours a cloudy copper with a light white head.Flavor is very bitter sour.Lots of carbonation with a very sour finish.