Fruit Lambic

ABV 5-7% · IBU 0-10 · SRM 3-7 · Serve 45-50F · Glass Tulip · Fruit 200 g per litre

Identify

Red, pink or gold depending on the fruit, and the colour fades as the bottle ages. A thick rocky head that lasts, tinted by the fruit. A traditional one is bright rather than syrupy, and you can see through it. Sharply sour first, then fruit that tastes cooked or fermented rather than fresh. Cherry versions carry a note of stones and almond. Bone dry at the end, with the funk of the base lambic sitting underneath. Your mouth is left clean and puckered.

Place

The Zenne valley south west of Brussels, and Brussels itself. Fruit was traditionally added by the blender or the cafe owner rather than the brewer, as a way of offering more than one beer.

Cause

The brewer takes a lambic that has already spent months or years in a barrel. Whole fruit goes in, stones and all, at something like 200 g for every litre of beer. Age the base lambic first. Six months at the very least, and often one to three years in oak. Add whole fruit, not juice or syrup.

Confused with

A sweetened commercial fruit lambic, which is the same category and a completely different drink. A fruited kettle sour, which gets its fruit as puree after fermentation. Flanders Red, which tastes of cherry with no cherries in it.

Numbers

The field mark that settles it is fruit flavour with no fruit sweetness. You get a clear mouthful of cherry or raspberry, and then nothing sweet arrives behind it. Very few drinks do that. The second mark is a sensation. Your mouth feels scrubbed and dry within a second of swallowing, and you want another sip immediately.

Will you like it, Order and Try

Dry cider, or a very dry sparkling wine. That is the closest thing most people have tried. Sour cherries in cooking, cherry stones, marzipan or amaretto. The stone note is right there. Lemon juice on food, or drinks you would call sharp rather than sweet. Beers with funk in them, meaning hay, farmyard and leather.

Pair, Judge, Myth and Remember

Very bitter food and heavily hopped anything. Sourness and bitterness fight each other and both lose. Delicate white fish also disappears under it, and so does a plain green salad. A good traditional one balances three things: the fruit, the acidity, and the funk of the base lambic.