Oude Quetsche à l'Ancienne
(has 10 batches)

Bottle courtesy of rlgk. Pours very hazy reddish deep golden with a small white head that quickly dissipates without leaving much trace on the glass. Smell is sour and fruity with crackers, plums, lemon juice, grapefruit juice, hay, barnyard, dark grapes, leather, horse blanket, dry soil and hints of lemon zest and grapefruit rinds. Taste is sour and fruity with lots of plums, crackers, lemon juice, grapefruit juice, hay, dry soil, barnyard, leather, grapefruit rinds, leather, horseblanket, lemon zest and moist wood. Mouthfeel is dry, tart and medium bodied. Finish is sour and tart with crackers, plums, lemon juice, white grapes, moist wood, grapefruit rinds, grapefruit juice, grapes, dry soil and barnyard. Very fruity and extremely tasty...

Bottled@Tuulensuu, Tampere. Reddish amber colour with a small off-white head. Aroma is fruity, mild plum, some slight alcohol sweetness and quite tart wooden notes. Flavour is fruity, wooden, some plum, a bit sugary feel to it as well. Pleasant dry mouthfeel.

Poured a cloudy orange, red color, with some light white notes. Aroma was funky notes, some tart, sweet characteristics. Flavor was tart, sweet notes, this was nice and funky. Very nice.

Bottle @ Nuitnigenough. Small head with short duration. Color is red. Aroma and taste are plums, sour yeast, straw, barnyard, leather and a little hops. Nice sour finish.

Pours an red-orangish brown color. Probably a bit too red for a wood stain, but it would be a bright cherry pine, kinda garish, really. No real head. We’re in lambic country, so normal rules do not apply, not that I’m much of a believe in appearance ratings. The aroma is plum jam on top of mild vinegar and gueuze funk, but the fruit is dominant. The plum smell is on the apricot end of the plum world. It definitely smells like plums, but there’s a fair bit of variation within plums. This beer smells more like what is sold as fresh French prunes, around here, rather than the juicier, sweet-tart Santa Rosa plum that I more closely associate with the fruit, though I have no idea what Tilquin actually used, of course. The funk is mildly cheesy with some nice horse blanket tendencies bouncing around (it’s been too long since I used "horse blanket" in a review). The taste is light to medium tart with more of that fruit flavor. It’s still relatively sweet and a tad lacking in flavor for what I expect from a plum sour, but I don’t mean that as a knock. It’s just a tad different than expected. The fruit flavor is refined and melds nicely with the tartness. There’s a big lemony note. The vinegar tartness is actually pretty restrained, and there’s none of that back-of-the-throat burn that many American sours suffer from. Tilquin does a magnificent job balancing the flavors, showing off that quality lambic brewer touch. Carbonation is normal. Mouthfeel is a tad slick with fruitiness. Moderate pucker. I quite enjoyed this beer. It’s not a dramatic beer, but it has a lovely fruit flavor and oozes lambic complexity and refinement.