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Lambic Digest #0639
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Date: Sat, 1 Jul 1995 00:30:14 -0600
From: lambic-request at lance.colostate.edu (subscription requests only - do not post here)
To: lambic at lance.colostate.edu
Reply-To: lambic at lance.colostate.edu (postings only - do not send subscription requests here)
Subject: Lambic Digest #639 (July 01, 1995)
Lambic Digest #639 Sat 01 July 1995
Forum on Lambic Beers (and other Belgian beer styles)
Mike Sharp, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Tradition/Judging/The Real Thing (Evan Kraus)
DeTrochweiser (Russell Mast)
RE (Tim_Fields_at_Relay__Tech__Vienna)
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Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 07:53:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: ejk at bselab.bls.com (Evan Kraus)
Subject: Tradition/Judging/The Real Thing
THANK GOD I AM NOT A JUDGE !!!!!!!
Let beauty be in the eye of the beholder.
What my pallete likes yours may not .
One year of a blender/brewer may be drastically different.
To sweeten or not to sweeten ?
To pronounce it guze or ghuze ghuse or whatever.
If you want to learn about the different products you gotta go !!!
Travel the lambic route.
Try em all.
And if you wanna find out how its pronounced go to the MorteSubite
and you will find an older Flemish gentelmen who bellows out the
words hundreds of times a day.
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Date: Fri, 30 Jun 1995 09:31:20 -0500
From: Russell Mast <rmast at fnbc.com>
Subject: DeTrochweiser
Wow. To think it all started with one little question. I'd like to recap
and make some very short points.
First, my original question was about the technical aspects of homebrewing a
sweeter lambic. This seems to have been answered pretty well, but I'm always
open to more ideas.
A lot of the confusion abounding right now seems to stem from the fact that
there are, apparently, no commercial examples of sweet lambic that aren't
also downright nasty. Clearly, I don't want to brew something nasty.
A lot of people bring up ideas about how the sweeter stuff is a sell-out to
market forces, and as homebrewers (and beer judges) we shouldn't sell-out.
Again, my original question stems mostly from a desire to make a lambic that
I can feed my SO and maybe a few relatives. They aren't bud light drinkers,
but I think they'd be a bit confused by a Boon Gueze.
As for the (IMO) seperate issue of judging, I think the lambic category
should stand. I don't think many people are interested in brewing a DeTroch
clone (though someone on hombrew-digest recently mentioned doing just that)
and it would be a great loss to let the category change greatly. It's
particularly risky considering the fact that many judges simply don't know
what lambic is "supposed" to taste like. I think creating a faux-lambic
category would be silly, but if it'll save the real stuff, then it's worth it.
(Did I say "very" short?)
I really like the sugar in coffee analogy. It just occured to me, also, that
a friend of mine who loves Lindemann's Kriek also loves the pre-sweetend
cold coffee product called "Cappio." Again, I like both, but never buy them
for myself. I guess my question would be like posting "How can I make Cappio
at home?" to the coffee-lover's digest.
I think if you (or I) can brew a lambic that is complex and delicious, and
also sweet, that's a good thing to do. If you enter it into a competetion
with a competent judge, well, maybe you'll lose points for sweetness and
maybe pick some up for he other flavors.
I also think that the issue of what is and is not traditional should be
completely seperate from issues of judging and categories. I don't care
what people drank 150 years ago or even 20 years ago, necessarily. I care
about how something tastes. I think that there is a specific style of lambic,
which most of us aspire to brew and delight in drinking, and I think this
should be the category for competetions.
As for Mount Vernon, I saw it a long time ago when the interior was Black and
White, and I thought it looked nice. For historical purposes, perhaps it
should be redone in original colors, but I'll be damned if I'm going to do
that to _my_ house.
I'm not sure what the current consensus, if any, is about the relationship
between tradition and judged styles, but I think a greater emphasis should be
placed on what informed people would drink if they could, and less emphasis
on what people used to drink and when they used to drink it. As for the
Gingered Bohemian Pils which Al wrote me about, I don't think the category
should change, maybe a new one should be added or whatnot. However, I also
think that if we discover some old text proving that people drank exactly
that beverage about 100 years ago (bear with me here, I know that's unlikely,
but if...), we should not change the style guidelines to match, as a bow to
'tradition'.
Did I say "very short"?
-R
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 30 Jun 95 11:46:47 EST
From: Tim_Fields_at_Relay__Tech__Vienna at relay.com
Subject: RE
In LD 638, Jim stated:
>No, I understand it is all about making money. To quote Jim
>Koch "F^ck the customer"
Am I misreading your tone, or are you saying that making money is a bad
thing? If they are selling it, they are trying to make money on it.
Doesn't matter if "they" are your above-referenced person, or if "they" are
Trappist Monks, or if "they" are ancient and wizened lambic producers. No
flame intended here at all, but I do think that all commercial
brewers/blenders/whatever share a common goal - profit. Achieving one
means, among other things, that they can continue to make whatever it is
they are making. It also means that they have found a market that
appreciates their efforts enough to pay for them.
Luckily, there are lots of markets (aka tastes) and lots of producers
targeting them :-) That gives us all a choice.
Tim Fields, Relay Technology, Inc., Vienna, VA, USA
Timf at relay.com
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End of Lambic Digest
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