Juicy & Wild Muscar-Elle
(has 6 batches)

Fully hazy pale lemon to ochre beer, well-carbonated to huge, quite dense snow-white head. Indeed, musk! Spicy, elderflower, bit horseblanket, putteke Very nice, mild sourish flavour, sourish pineapple, sour grapes, again a bit herbal-spicy, green fruit. Finish with lemon and elderflower. Super-refreshing, lipsmacking acidity but nowhere overly sour, light acidthinning. Exciting flavour and carbonation. Fiercely good.

The fourth bottled product from Lambiek Fabriek, released a mere two weeks after their kriek (Jart-Elle) in full Corona pandemic - a spark of hope in dreary times. Made with Muscaris grapes (grown in Belgian Limburg), a type of muscat grape developed in southern Germany in 1987. For now only available from 75 cl bottles with cork and crown cap (like the kriek), but apparently there are intentions to bottle it in 37.5 cl bottles in the future as well. Opens with quite some pressure, but no gushing. Firm, frothy, initially very thick, egg-white, bit irregular head, lacing in thick plastery patches and remaining very stable over a misty straw-yellow beer with pale ochre-golden tinge; disparate, yet numerous and lively sparkles rush through the mist from the bottom upwards. Aroma of juicy white grapes, Muscadet wine with perhaps a whiff of dry Riesling somehow too, green apples, yellow plums, lemon butter, dry clay, pronounced minerals, white Lambrusco, freshly cut grass, vague background notes of sulphur, elderblossoms, sweetclover, dandelion flowers, sweat, manure, chalk. Very crisp onset, very spritzy with enthusiastic carbonation, quite champagne-like and very minerally, bubbling through grape juiciness and lambic fruitiness of unripe plum, green apple, old lemon and whitecurrant; the grapes add both fructose sweetishness and the firm sour aspect this particular variety is known for, with sourness very obviously being the dominant factor. Supple, lean, bready body, completely soaked in lemony lambic tartness and sour white grape juiciness, with slightly earthy, minerally and (somewhat too obvious) sulfuric notes retronasally, combined with a whiff of Brettanomyces funk (stale urine) and eventually dried by grape skin and wooden barrel tannins, with strong minerality as well as continuous grape juiciness gracing the finish. Long, dry, quenching, spritzy tail - an 'apéritif' beer par excellence, perhaps lacking in the huge complexity boasted by bottled grape lambics of the genre's pioneer Cantillon (think Vigneronne and the countless grape lambics that have been added to their range in recent years), but easily drinkable, feeling very 'genuine' and highly promising - time will tell how this one will age, but the acids it contains, should ensure improvement by cellaring. Very good for a first attempt, just needs a bit more finetuning but I will follow the further development of this grape lambic with great interest.