Leo Imai seems to have abandoned top-fermented beers altogether and has completely centered his OWA brand around lambics with Japanese ingredients lately, with this one again brand new, making use of Japanese peaches. The ‘paper flowers’ around the neck have apparently become translucent and of a more delicate fabric too, it seems… Loose and bubbly, thin, egg-white, open head quickly dissolving completely over a cloudy yellow-blonde beer with ‘dirty’ straw-like hue. Aroma of indeed white and / or unripe peach but not as overwhelmingly so as in e.g. the peach lambics created by 3 Fonteinen last year, next to gherkin (even pickled), sour grapes, sweaty feet (weirdly and quite strongly), bread crumbs, freshly cut thistles and other garden weeds, wet wood, soggy peach kernels, grass silage, linseed, vague hint of balsamic vinegar. Sour onset, quite puckering at first even, with impressions of raw rhubarb, lemon and green gooseberry but indeed also a faint hint of peach softness buried underneath; softish carb, tart middle, wheaty-bready base under unripe stonefruit, sour grape and eventually green bell pepper and raw gherkin impressions, while an unripe peach astringency increases; earthy, funky, tart finish, dryingly sour and tannic from wood, peach skin and peach kernels, while that balsamico-like whiff lingers a bit, faraway in the background. Interesting lambic for sure, very earthy, ‘green’ and acidic, complex and fruity – but painfully lacking in the aromatic sweet ‘peachiness’ it could have had if, I reckon, higher fruit concentrations and / or other varieties had been used. OWA has produced a long list of new lambics lately – perhaps it would be better now to halt this wild experimentation, and work on finetuning the existing ones to a higher level…

14/III/20 - 37.5cl bottle, 2019 vintage @ lockdown tasting (home), BB: XII/2024 (2020-263) Thanks to Alengrin for sharing the bottle!

Pretty cloudy blond yellow beer, practically no head. Aroma: bit funky, sweaty feet, plastic, chemical, bit grassy, some muzina (Japanese mustard greens) not very pleasant, or fruity for that matter… MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: very acidic start, lemon juice, lots of peaches, dry, bit peppery, green bell peppers. Aftertaste: more green bell peppers, gooseberries, sharp acidity, spicy, vegetal, more mizuna, chlorine, bit soapy, better than the aroma for sure! But not the best iteration of this Japanese ingredients lambic series…