Goooooooooooose...or Gueuze

Alright! Beer #2 is (I hope) going to be brilliant! Tonight I'm going with a Lambic style beer called Gueuze; this particular Lambic being brewed by Cantillon, of the Brussels region of Belgium. I was first introduced to Lambic beer my a friend of mine roughly 9 months ago, and that is what really ignited my now burning interest in exploring beer. These beers are unlike any other style you will ever taste, and are instantly recognizable (in flavour). Now traditionally they are flavoured with orchard fruit or berries but Gueuze is straight up, no flavor added. I hear it's almost a lemon-lime flavour and typically sour tasting and i think in any other type of beer a sour taste would be repulsive but...in my books the lip smacking tang of a nice sour Lambic is a welcome drought.
the other types of Lambic you may see are Peach, Framboise(raspberry), Kreik(sour cherry), Pomme(apple), and my favourite Cassis(black currant).
on to the Gueuze!

 Another fun fact about Lambics: they are Spontaneously fermented with wild hops! Doesn't that sound mysterious and romantic to you?! well! let's taste it already.




What does the bottle tell me?: well...frankly, a whole lot of Belgian French, and though I speak french I'd rather just enjoy the beer.

It looks like a: white ale poured into a frosted glass mug. if Wit beers are cloudy and unfiltered...this is like a foggy amber snowstorm.

What my nose is sayin'?: It's smelling much like a white wine, it has almost a smell like a fermented grape. I don't know how else to describe it. It hasn't got that earthy kind of funk other fruit Lambics I've had. After letting Nicole have a sniff she agreed that it smelled much like a white wine, but with a sweetness to it as well.

As for my first taste of a Gueuze? GLORIOUS! I'm getting sour flavours, citrus and lots of lemon. I love the smell and taste of these so much i can't really stick to this format I'm trying out. Sip-smell, sniff-taste. Obviously I'm pretty excited and well...Lambics get my motor running. It is nice and tart all the way down, with a really slight bitterness to finish it off. Very nice indeed.
Well, I'm going to take the rest of my yummy glass'o'gueuze into the living room and calm down a bit while I savor the flavor. I expect I will thee the same way about it once I stare through the bottom of the glass so I won't bother with that.

So! If you'd like to find out more about Lambic beer, or any beer for that matter a great book to check out is:
"Tasting Beer; An insider's Guide to The World's Greatest Drink" by Randy Mosher. I picked up this dandy at a Chapters, while searching for some literature on the subject. There is a small but informative column about it inside the "Beers of Belgium" section. Other than that I'm sure there's info a'plenty on the Internet, as well as other books on the subject. If you give one of these little gems a try like I recommend, please drop a comment in my box and let me know how it went!
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for my next beer (it will also be a Lambic....but what kind?!)

- Beer's Parched Paige