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Lambic Digest #0638
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Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 00:30:34 -0600
From: lambic-request at lance.colostate.edu (subscription requests only - do not post here)
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Subject: Lambic Digest #638 (June 30, 1995)
Lambic Digest #638 Fri 30 June 1995
Forum on Lambic Beers (and other Belgian beer styles)
Mike Sharp, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
bits and bobs (Rob Thomas)
What's traditional? ("Phillip Seitz")
Been to the Mount (Paul Edwards)
Judging lambic (Aaron Birenboim)
The Celis Terror & Sweetened Krieks (Russell Mast)
As Dan Akroyd used to tell jane curtin (Jim Liddil)
Tradition (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
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Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 12:30:15 +0100
From: thomasr at org.chem.ethz.ch (Rob Thomas)
Subject: bits and bobs
Hello all,
I thought I'd chime in on a few points in LD#637. Todd (tmgierma at acpub.duke.edu)
talked about bastards and monsters (and potatoes):
>Okay, but what about pronunciation? God forbid that some waitress is in
>the back room of the local watering hole snickering with her colleagues
>over the fact that you cannot pronounce these things correctly. Well, I
>guess you could always spell them, if it came to that.
Rather than snickering in the back room, I would anticipate a look of distain
>Interestingly, a Dutch speaker recently instructed me that "geuze" is
>pronounced more like "kozuh" (at least to my ears). I wonder how they say
>"gueuze"?
OK, here I'm going to try and put into print the sound _I_ hear when the
waiters say it (the Vlaams ones in Brussels anyway)
(g)hers-e or (g)hers for gueuze, with a soft g almost like a sigh, and hers
pronounced with a non existent r
and
lombik (note the _o_)
>Notice how Al reveals his pro-Tory favour with his spelling of "flavour" -
>very original, indeed.
I'm no Tory and I spell it with a u!
>Not all monsters are the product of greed or wayward idealism. They can
>also be the product of pragmatism as Mike Sharp has indicated in the
>_published_ portions of his travelogue (hint, hint).
Yea! Anyone would think Mike had a real job, the time he's taking getting
his reports typed 8)
>In any event, you shouldn't take out your frustrations on the poor
>homebrewer who aspires to attempt something challenging and please his
>friends (and spouse) at the same time. Yes, you should consider giving his
>filtered and sweetened p-lambic a score of 40. Perhaps, for no greater
>reason than technical achievement alone. I mean, who has come across a
>p-lambic that was clearly filtered and sweetened anyway? Such a beast
>should be taken as a sign that its creator not only understands the breadth
>and intricacies of the style, but also the technical aspects required to
>produce it.
perhaps these brewers should get a price for technical achievement, but
surely not for the best gueuze, just because they tinkered with it?
>Moreover, it has been noted that where the
>brewer doesn't tinker, the consumer frequently does: aren't sugar cubes
>and muddlers (?) brought out at Drie Fonteinen and other lambic cafes?
Ah, but surely that's the crux of the whole thing? The consumer gets to
choose on an _individual_ basis how best to destroy a beautiful beer.
>I think that it is really hard to know what is the tradional profile of a
>lambic. What we really need to know is what do the old-timers prefer in a
>lambic? We need somebody to go over there and survey those grizzled old
>dudes sitting around in the cafes smoking filterless cigarettes and eating
>radish and cream cheese sandwiches as to their preferences.
I think I may be your candidate. My wife and I (with long-suffering and
understanding son) are going on a cycling holiday to Payottenland in
August. The bicycles are just so we can get betwwen pubs and breweries
without being banned from driving! ;*)
I see what I can do.
>they may be as elusive as an Eyelenbosch kriek.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Surely not? Over here (Europe) at least chain-smoking grizzled old dudes
haven't been bought up and forced to be 18year old cross country runners ;)
>I think that there is room for these different shades of a very interesting
>style. It's up to homebrewers and judges to avail themselves of the
>different nuances of the style. And that means being able to put aside
>momentarily personal 'likes' and 'dislikes' in order to appreciate
>technical achievement.
I agree in principal, but without rigourous (notice the two u's) guidelines
it becomes next to impossible to dispassionately judge one plambic better
than another.
Also, while on my (hobby-) horse why are the styles called lambic? After
all, neither gueuze, kriek or framboos as bought by (at a guess) 99% of
people are lambic. They are lambic-based. If you ask for a lambic in
Brussels you'll get draught. This is a very different beast to gueuze. In
fact the term gueuze-lambic origionally meant the product of blending but
BEFORE bottling.
Finally, a few snippets of late breaking news (ie the stuff I just remembered):
1) The CAMRA book on Holland and Belgium mentiones that elderberries are
sometimes used to add colour to krieks.
2) Jean-Pierre Van Roy mentioned ONLY the following as what he classed as
traditional gueuze producers:
Oud Beersel (Vandervelden)
de drie Fontainen
Hanssens
Cantillon
The age of some of these producers suggests that our arguments about what a
traditional gueuze should taste like may be academic before too long.
Rather like arguing about the proper taste of ale in the middle ages. :(
Cheers
Rob.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 95 09:00:51 -0400
From: "Phillip Seitz" <p00644 at psilink.com>
Subject: What's traditional?
I don't know how many people here have history or folklife backgrounds,
but I'd like to pick a small bone (Boon?) about this
obsession with "traditional".
It's certainly true that there's a difference between industrial
products and those that are hand made, but it's a serious mistake to
assume that the way things were done in earlier days was unchanging.
This was never true, and even in the deepest darkest medieval periods
technology, economics and opinion kept things in a constant state of evolution.
Everybody who makes anything is constantly looking for ways to improve
it. Some of the resulting improvements are dogs, of course, but not
always. Moreover, it's a mistake to assume that any technical or
artistic process remains isolated from other things that are going on.
If everyone drank gueuze in the Bruegel paintings, what happened to
their tastes once wine became available?
We really have very little evidence about what lambics were like even
fifty years ago, much less 150, so I think it's best not to nail a
particular model to the wall as the standard just because it may have
been the way it's always been done. Why not just make it the standard
because it's what you like and believe in?
I'll offer just one example of the fallacies that human memory (and bad
history) can lead us to. Many of you (at least those raised in the
East) have seen zillions of colonial era houses painted white with
black shutters. Certainly when I was growing up it was thought that
this was the traditional way. Now we know know that nothing could have
been farther from the truth. White was a very expensive paint to buy
in the colonies, and people really liked amazingly bright colors (this
has been revealed by analysis of paint chips).
The interiors are the same. George Washington's home, Mount Vernon,
used to be shown in black and white. Now if you go INSIDE you'll need sunglasses!
See what I mean? We all care about tradition and the care that goes
with hand crafting, but we really can't say what the tradition was yet.
Moreover, the tradition undoubtedly changed over time, so it even
depends on what time you want to look at. It makes things more
complicated, but also a lot more interesting.
There'll be a pop quiz next week.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 09:21:43 -0500 (EST)
From: pedwards at iquest.net (Paul Edwards)
Subject: Been to the Mount
Todd wrote:
>I think that it is really hard to know what is the tradional profile of a
>lambic. What we really need to know is what do the old-timers prefer in a
>lambic? We need somebody to go over there and survey those grizzled old
>dudes sitting around in the cafes smoking filterless cigarettes and eating
>radish and cream cheese sandwiches as to their preferences. Of course,
>they may be as elusive as an Eyelenbosch kriek.
I just got back from three weeks in Belgium doing some of this, but I
didn't quite get finished with my research. I'm accepting grants and
private donations.
I attended Mike Sharp's Lamic tasting at the AHA conference in Milwaukee a few
years back, and sat at the table with Martin Lodahl. That got me hooked. But
unless you've been "over there", you just don't know...
Seriously, Having been there, having drunk the beer, having talked to some
brewers, blenders, and consumers (including J-P van Rooy, Jean Hanssens and,
briefly (in the WC), one of the De Belder brothers from Drie Fonteinen), I now
know what Mike, Phil, et al, have been talking and ranting and raving about.
We drank Cantillon Gueuze side by side with Hanssens, and found the Hanssens
smoother, slightly less acetic, yet somehow more complex with more of the
horsey, barnyard character. We also did side by side comparisons of their
krieks, and found the Hanssen's Kriek far superior. Cherry flavor was more
intense, and again it was more complex.
We drank a 20 year old Gueuze at the Musee des Bieres Belges, from Wets
(at least that's what the cork said. It was one of those unlabelled but
whitewash marked bottles). Orgasmically wonderful. Subtley sour, a
complexity the likes of which I've never tasted in a beer, and can't begin
to describe. Madame Abeels (the proprietiress of the Musee) seemed to feel
that Cantillon didn't age their products long enough either in the casks
or in the bottle.
The gueuze and kriek at Drie Fonteinen were both very good. The gueuze
fell somewhere between Hanssens and Cantillon in our notes. The Kriek
had an *intense* cherry flavor, but seemed a bit sweeter and less complex
than Hanssen's, but it was on tap, not aged in a bottle.
We also tried Mort Subite & Belle Vue (kriek and framboise). All
seemed very popular with the masses, but I found them awful - overly sweet
and one dimensional. If the people who we saw drinking them were American
instead of Belgian, they'd be Bud Lite and Zima drinkers.
The true afficianadoes seemed to like their gueuze sour, horsey, with an
edge, but smooth, not harsh.
We didn't drink any Boon while we were there, since it seems readily
available here. His Gueuze stacks up pretty well, IMHO. And his Kriek,
Framboise and Marriage Parfait ('86, or is it '87 I've stashed away?) are
very tasty, they're a cut below Hanssens & Cantillon.
Lindemans and De Troch aren't even in the same league with the real stuff.
BTW, Jean Hanssens told me that he's a third generation blender, but that
his son is not following in his footsteps. Too bad. I offered to have
M. Hannsens adopt me and spend the next twenty years teaching me the
"ropes". Keep your fingers crossed for me.
<snip>
>Moreover, it has been noted that where the brewer doesn't tinker, the
>consumer frequently does: aren't sugar cubes and muddlers (?) brought
>out at Drie Fonteinen and other lambic cafes?
Some people like sugar in their coffee, too. Some don't. Letting the
consumer tinker is OK w/ me. BTW, I didn't see *any* sugar cubes &
muddlers on any of the tables of Gueuze drinkers the day we ate lunch at
Drie Fonteinen, nor were we offered any by the waitress.
I understand the market forces that may cause a brewer to diddle around
with his product to appeal to a wider audience, but I appreciate more
the work of the true artisan.
A footnote:
To Mike, Phil, et al, Thanks for all the info you've posted about Belgium in
general and Lambics in particular. It made our trip that much easier and
more enjoyable. Count me and my wife now amongst the true lambic zealots.
-- Paul
"been there, done it, drank it, bought the t-shirt, and got the scars
to prove it"
- --
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 08:13:48 -0700
From: mole at netcom.com (Aaron Birenboim)
Subject: Judging lambic
I like want Todd said about sweetened lambic. Unfortunately, I do not
think that it is reasonable to have an exeremely narrow style definition
for lambic. It may need to be broad... like that for fruit beers.
A good judge should be able to put personal preferences aside.
My view is that a traditional lambic's sign of greatness is complexity
under a foreground of intense, dry sourness. The sign of a great
sweetened lambic would be balance of sweet/sour with undertones of
complexity. Hence, chateau, belle-vue, and lindemand would receive
low scores for being over sweet. Timmermans might be less low.
Handsens and Boon might be about right on for balance.
The judge would need to wear a different hat for DeNeve, Cantillion,
Mike Sharp's stuff, Jim Liddil's stuff, My stuff...
(This may be the only time my p-lambic is mentioned in the same sentence
as Mike's, Jim's, DeNeve and Cantillion... ;-)
aaron
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 10:46:40 -0500
From: Russell Mast <rmast at fnbc.com>
Subject: The Celis Terror & Sweetened Krieks
Al, is Celis still going to be available in Chicago during this transition
phase?
Phil says:
> However, the quality of the Celis White in the Houston area has
> degraded significantly over the last 2 months.
Say it ain't so. Indeed, I hope this is a temporary change. I had some 2
weeks ago in Chicago that was the same old lovely stuff.
Jim asks:
> The Celis pullout will be used to advantage by Wit, Hoegaarden, et al.
> Do you think people will go right back to Celis when it returns? Hard
> to say.
I think they will, unless the quality of Celis goes down or the quality (and
consistency) of WIT! goes up. As for the competetion between Celis and
imported (eg Hoegaarden) Wits, the price difference (at least where I shop)
should keep imports from making a permanent dent in Celis' business.
> From: tmgierma at acpub.duke.edu (Todd Gierman)
> Subject: bastard lambics and lambic bastards
Love the subject line.
> Okay, but what about pronunciation?
> Interestingly, a Dutch speaker recently instructed me that "geuze" is
> pronounced more like "kozuh" (at least to my ears). I wonder how they say
> "gueuze"?
A friend of mine who visited Brussells recently came back saying "HHyooz".
The "HH" is my attempt to make a 'hard' H. Sort of like the yiddish
pronunciation of "Ch", but with less saliva.
Dr. Frankenstein says :
> In any event, you shouldn't take out your frustrations on the poor
> homebrewer who aspires to attempt something challenging and please his
> friends (and spouse) at the same time.
We're not really married, but that's okay. (Don't tell the people at her
Univ. fieldhouse, we're going to try to get a "family" membership tomorrow.)
> Moreover, it has been noted that where the
> brewer doesn't tinker, the consumer frequently does: aren't sugar cubes
> and muddlers (?) brought out at Drie Fonteinen and other lambic cafes?
Indeed they are. The beers are usually 'sweetened to taste' and I suspect a
lot of traditional lambic drinkers might be surprised that most of us drink
the stuff straight here. (Still, I like the option of sweetening it to _my_
taste instead of buying it pre-sweetened in the bottle.)
-R
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 9:46:28 -0700 (MST)
From: Jim Liddil <JLIDDIL at AZCC.Arizona.EDU>
Subject: As Dan Akroyd used to tell jane curtin
Todd wrote:
As Dan used to tell Jane: Todd you ignorant slut :-)
%
% The traditionalists have broken out the torches and pitch forks and are
% heading up to the castle to confront the monster.
Well someone has to do it. Complacency is an evil invading much of beer
production today. Red Wolf lambic next? Dry ice light cold filtered gueuze.
Some brands get pretty close.
% Okay, here's my point: like most monsters, the "non-traditional" lambics
% are merely misunderstood, and can be downright likable, if given the
% chance. They are clearly a product of modern technology inspired by mass
% market appeal and are designed to breathe new life into a market share that
% has steadily declined over the decades.
Misunderstood? No, I understand it is all about making money. To quote Jim
Koch "F^ck the customer"
%
% Not all monsters are the product of greed or wayward idealism. They can
% also be the product of pragmatism as Mike Sharp has indicated in the
% _published_ portions of his travelogue (hint, hint).
Pragmatism is important to the Belgians. Unlike us American Moralists they do
take a more pragmatic approach to the world and so does Mike Sharp. As he has
said he gets paid more to do code than to write posts for the LD.
To stay in business,
% even traditional brewers keep one eye on the bottom line. They have come
% to realize that even if you can't legally control the front end of the
% process (i.e. spontaneous fermentation), you certainly can control the back
% end. Blending, filtering, and sweetening are all methods used to varying
% degrees to produce a stable, consistent, balanced and marketable product.
% What is important is that people want to drink your product, otherwise
% there is little point in making it. Now it can be argued that eventhough
% market forces influence the evolution (or devolution as some would have it)
% of the style, the evolution of the style also influences the evolution of
% the market (kind of an ontological, endless feedback loop), i.e. bland
% palates inspire insipid products and insipid products inspire blander
% palates, and so on.
Exactly. The majority of lamibc on the market is sweetened and bland and the
current group on the market do nothing to change that. But I am not only in it
for the money. We has homebrewers aren't making lambic to appeal to some mass
market coke orient group. I certainly hope people aren't getting into lambic
brewing so they can make Lindeman or Detroch type products. I have an
idealistic view and don't think we should be watering donw and adding fruit
juice to beer we nurture for lengthy periods. Then it is not beer but a beer
cooler or something.
%
% In any event, you shouldn't take out your frustrations on the poor
% homebrewer who aspires to attempt something challenging and please his
% friends (and spouse) at the same time. Yes, you should consider giving his
% filtered and sweetened p-lambic a score of 40.
No I won't consider giving it a 40. No way no how. But if people want to go
out buy a 0.2 micron filter and some fuit juice and a counter pressure filler
then by all means go right ahead and make beer coolers but don't enter it as a
lambic ale.
Perhaps, for no greater
% reason than technical achievement alone. I mean, who has come across a
% p-lambic that was clearly filtered and sweetened anyway?
So what is this a challenge? :-)
Such a beast
% should be taken as a sign that its creator not only understands the breadth
% and intricacies of the style, but also the technical aspects required to
% produce it.
I'll leave that task to AB thank you very much.
Hey, with all the right cultures anybody can make salad
% dressing - just sit back and wait. Clearly, even Frank Boon fiddles with
% his products, whether it is through experimenting with blending regimens,
% partial filtering or whatever. Moreover, it has been noted that where the
% brewer doesn't tinker, the consumer frequently does: aren't sugar cubes
% and muddlers (?) brought out at Drie Fonteinen and other lambic cafes?
Adding sugar is a choice made by the consumer not the producer. Go right ahead
and do it at home. But I suspect those that add sugar at cafes are adding it
to beer that has character to start with.
% I think that there is room for these different shades of a very interesting
% style. It's up to homebrewers and judges to avail themselves of the
% different nuances of the style. And that means being able to put aside
% momentarily personal 'likes' and 'dislikes' in order to appreciate
% technical achievement.
Bud etc. are technical achievments. BFD. Beers like Lindemans Peche are
diluted with juice and water to only 3-4% alcohol is this a technical
achievment or what?
%
% Why even the bastard son of patriotic brewing can produce an agreeable
% monster, that is, if you approach it with an open mind.
Well no matter how hard Jim Dorsch may try to convince me otherwise he is still
a richard.
Jim
------------------------------
Date: 29 Jun 95 10:56:00 -0500
From: korz at iepubj.att.com (Algis R Korzonas +1 708 979 8583)
Subject: Tradition
After writing this, I realized that this is both a lambik issue and a judging
issue, so I'm going to give a little background information and cross-post
this to JudgeNet also.
There has been some discussion on the Lambic Digest regarding what should
be the commercial standard for lambiks, beers like Boon Gueuze or beers like
De Troch's Chapeau Framboise. Certainly history shows that the sweetened
lambiks are a recent phenomenon, but one growing in popularity.
Todd writes:
>I think that there is room for these different shades of a very interesting
>style. It's up to homebrewers and judges to avail themselves of the
>different nuances of the style. And that means being able to put aside
>momentarily personal 'likes' and 'dislikes' in order to appreciate
>technical achievement.
>
>Why even the bastard son of patriotic brewing can produce an agreeable
>monster, that is, if you approach it with an open mind.
Let me use the same analogy that I used in private email to Russ (I believe).
Suppose that someone made a Bohemian-style Pilsner with ginger in it. Suppose
it got very popular, so popular that it outsold Pilsner Urquel, Crystal
(incidentally, I have heard that this is actually Budweiser Budvar) and
all the other Bohemian Pilsners. Suppose now that more and more homebrewers,
having never tasted a PU or Crystal entered a gingered beer in the Classic
Bohemian Pilsner subcategory. Would you support changing the Classic Bohemian
Pilsner guidelines to include ginger as being acceptable? I would be against
that.
Does Chapeau Gueuze have anything in common with Boon Gueuze other than
name? Not much. Would you like to see the geuze guidelines change from
"Intensely and cleanly sour" to "May be sour or sweet" or "Sourness intense
to none" or even worse, "Sourness OK?"
There are those who feel that the guidelines should bend and stretch to
track the commercial styles. I am of the belief that we should include
ebbs and flows of the commercial styles, but let's not do it by abandoning
the documentation of classic styles' flavours and aromas. If we must
make room for taste changes in the beer market, let's then add appropriate
subcategories rather than water-down the classics. Legitimizing
bastardizations, as some would call it, is far less a crime (IMO) than
forgetting what the classics tasted like.
Al.
------------------------------
End of Lambic Digest
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