We've all been there. You're halfway down your maple & pecan glazed blueberry donut smoothie sour and start to wonder if there might be another side to sour beer. One with a little less pastry, a little less lactose, and a little more depth.
Welcome to the wonderful rabbit hole of lambic and wild beer.
Centuries before brewers were stuffing kettles with fruit purée and dessert-inspired adjuncts, lambic producers in Belgium were creating complex, tart beers through spontaneous fermentation, allowing wild yeasts and bacteria to ferment the beer naturally.
These beers can be bright, funky, fruity, earthy and deeply refreshing, often with remarkable complexity despite their modest strength.
Lambic and wild beer can seem a bit intimidating at first, but once you get your head around the basics, they're some of the most rewarding beers out there.
As a starting point, we tend to recommend either Geuze Boon if you're used to modern sour beers, or Orval if you're coming from pale ale and IPA.
They're two of the best bang-for-buck introductions to the world of wild beer. Both showcase the flavours and techniques that make these beers so fascinating, without requiring you to remortgage the house for a bottle of Cantillon Drogone.
Fair warning though: once you're hooked, it can quickly become an expensive interest.
So what actually makes a lambic a lambic?
The brewers make the wort, pump it into a shallow vessel called a Koelschip (cool-ship), and then leave nature to do the rest. Rather than pitching a lab-grown yeast strain, lambic producers rely on wild yeasts and bacteria floating around the brewery to kick off fermentation.
It sounds kinda wild, right? (get it?), and to be honest it is. After centuries of practice, breweries in Belgium have turned this controlled chaos into one of the most distinctive and respected beer styles on the planet.
If any of this sounds familiar, you've probably already heard or read about fine, natural and minimal intervention wines and how they're made. In the wine world, when we talk about 'terroir', this is one of the main factors in wines becoming fantastic, or faulty!
The same applies for beer. Spontaneously fermented beers from Pajottenland won't taste the same as spontaneously fermented beers from Maine's Allagash, and this is where it becomes a spiralling interest for tasting and discovery.
Why are we talking about lambic when the label says Geuze?
Because gueuze is essentially the Champagne of lambic.
A selection of young and old lambics are chosen by the blenders, mixed together, bottled, and allowed to undergo a secondary fermentation. The result is a beer that's brighter, fizzier and often more approachable than straight lambic, while still delivering all those wonderful funky, tart and complex flavours that make the style so addictive.
People's journey into lambic normally starts with gueuze, whether they realise it or not.
Most commonly the blend will consist of 1, 2 and 3 year aged beers, but oude gueuze can be a blend of any number of ages and casks.
Gueuze earned the nickname "the Champagne of Belgium" not just from the blending. The secondary fermentation creates a lively, fine carbonation that gives the beer an elegance you don't really find elsewhere in the beer world.
Both lambic and gueuze are beers that reward patience. Drink a bottle young and you'll find bright citrus, fresh acidity and plenty of fizz. Leave it in the cellar for a few years and those flavours can develop into honey, dried fruit, leather and all sorts of fantastically strange complexities. Most bottles are given a 'best before' of 20 years past the bottling date.
Brett-Fermented & Modern Wild Ales
Once you've fallen down the lambic rabbit hole, you'll probably notice beers labelled wild ale, mixed fermentation, or Brett-fermented from breweries closer to home. These beers are based on traditional Belgian brewing, but they're not the same thing as lambic.
The key player here is Brettanomyces, which you'll hear shortened to Brett. It's a wild yeast that can produce flavours ranging from tropical fruit and citrus to earthy, leathery and gently funky notes (even intense red fruit character when aged for extended periods with roasted malts used in dark beers).
In traditional lambic, Brett arrives naturally as part of spontaneous fermentation. In modern wild ales, brewers often add it deliberately to shape the beer's character.
So how do these differ from lambic?
The biggest difference is control. Lambic relies on spontaneous fermentation in a specific region of Belgium, with native microflora driving the process. Modern wild ales are usually brewed with selected cultures and techniques that can be replicated anywhere in the world.
That doesn't make them less interesting. In fact, many breweries have developed distinctive house cultures and barrel programs that produce beers every bit as complex and expressive as traditional lambic. The flavour spectrum is enormous, ranging from bright and fruit-forward to deeply funky and cellar-like.
Also, like Kolsch or Champagne, lambic is protected as a TSG (Traditional Speciality Guaranteed), so wild beers outside of the Pajottenland area mustn't call themselves lambic.
The Gateway Beers
We all need entry and introduction to styles that don't cost an arm and a leg which is why, as mentioned at the top, we always recommend Boon and Orval. Fantastic beers at a great price point that you can try without jumping head-first into a £30 bottle that you might hate.
Having said that, once the door is open collecting and sharing lambic and wild beers with friends is always a great experience, not just because you're splitting the bill, but because these are beers with complexity that begs to be discussed.
So maybe next time you're off to a wine and cheese night, you can now bring along a new perfect pairing and wow everyone with the vast knowledge that has been bestowed upon you by The Beerhive blog ramblings.
As always, any questions or if you want to chat about the style just shoot us an email or visit the shop.