RBESG08 grand tasting Aww, my first 3 Fonteinen gueuze. Poured a murky yellow body with a big white head. Lovely strong funky nose. Strong appley sour taste, very icely balanced, funky, corky, just lovely. A great beer!

RBESG2008: 75 cL bottle. Pours hazy orange with a slowy collapsing white head. Aroma is dry wooden and orange fruity. Flavour is smooth orange fruity and nicely acidic with a light yeasty touch towards the finish. Nice wooden base to a delicate orange citric flavour into the finish. Nice lingering dry and light sulphorish into the far finish. Very smooth and balanced.

Bottle shared with very good friends (drank in 2008): Poured a light orangey color gueuze with a huge pure white bubbly head with good retention and minimal lacing. Aroma of funky barnyard notes mix with some well balance tart/sour notes. Light touch of oak is noticeable as well. Taste is a wonderful mix between some funky barnyard –like notes with some medium sour notes with light oak. Easily drinkable with almost no acidity and some great carbonation. Very well balance overall and it is aged gracefully but I can’t help tot hint that it is slightly less gracious then the 1999 vintage drank a year or two ago.

Bottled. Deep goldeny orange colour with mediumsized white head. Aroma is sourness, wood and slight hints of leather. Flavour is earthy, wooden, slightly fruity bitterness and overall really sour. A really pleasant Gueuze.

Bottle shared at O’Briens on 3/23/07. I also bought one to go, but left it at O’Briens. There goes $45. Yay for being an idiot….
Nice to see this available at a beer bar in the States. At least now I can hold on to the bottle I do have in my cellar. Though I’m not so sure how long I plan on holding it, after having tried this bottle. This particular bottle had a distinct metallic flavor, not sharp and poignant, but rather sweeping in towards the end and blanketing the palate with soft metal notes. Hmm, that makes little sense, but at the time, Chris and I were better able to describe it. Suffice to say, the metallic notes definitely cut in to the experience in a negative way.
Not that I plan on scoring this beer based on this bottle. No, that would be silly. A bottle the next day and pretty much every review on this site mentions nothing of metal. Obviously just an off or mishandled bottle.
The aroma was rather impressive, nonetheless, and I didnt note the metal there. Very fruity, with tons of soft brett suggestions, none of the stronger, sharper lactic or pedio (or less of it, anyways) of the Cantillon, De Cam and newer 3F beers. And that’s fine, it’s still got a lovely funkiness to it, very musty, rustic and lightly sweaty, with a vibrancy that defies its age. Nice strength of aroma as well, with what lactobacillus notes there are, adding a little snap to it.
So back to the flavor, it’s obvious this is made from a very similar stock as the 1999 vintage. Fruity, very malt apparent (not sweetness, of course, but with a soft, well-malted texture) and highly bretty. Again, I prefer the stronger, more aggressive nature of the newer 3F gueuzes and Cantillon, as this one remains rather light and more "Belgian brett golden ale influenced" if you will.
Great stuff, but I’d be hard pressed to believe that even a bottle in great condition would be radically different from the 1999-2001 3F gueuzes. Appearance/mouthfeel/texture/carbonation are all perfectly to-style. No alcohol noted, of course.

Bottle. Pours a hazy golden colour with a big white head. Sweet barnyard aroma and lovely hints of citrus. Malty tart flavor with lots of citrus. Very nice balanced mouthfeel. Long malty sour finish. This is a lovely gueuze.