1/V/22 - 75cl bottle, shared @ Toer de Geuze, Lambiek Fabriek, BB: +5Y, bottled: I/2021 (2022-458)

SLOW GUSHER
Little cloudy bright red beer, small aery irregular off-white head, stable, non adhesive. Aroma: lovely, funky, very floral, berries, very nice! MF: lively carbon, medium body. Taste: fruity, berries, very bitter, lovely, gentle acidity, very nice. Aftertaste: a bit woody, funky, some tannins, nice blackberry notes. Nice one, but I prefer the regular one.

The organic version of Lambiek Fabriek’s blackcurrant lambic (so exclusively made with organically grown blackcurrants, grains and hops), also sold through, among others, the Bioplanet supermarket chain specializing in organic products. Very moussy, thick and membrane-lacing, frothy, beautifully pale pink head on a deep fuchsia-coloured beer, clear with deep ruby red glow initially, misty purplish red with sediment. Aroma of indeed ‘real’ sour blackcurrants the way I remember them from childhood, lemon, sour tomatoes, wood sorrel, light armpit-sweaty funkiness when warming up, minerals, raw rhubarb, white yoghurt, some green weeds and a vague sulfuric accent faraway in the background. Very crisp onset, rich in blackcurrant juiciness with a soft sweet core, acidic edge enhanced by the lambic’s own lemony-lactic sourness, and also that typical cassis spicy touch; outspoken minerality, almost magnesium-like, piercing through it all, accentuated by very lively, cava-like carbonation. Slender wheaty core buried under this cassis juice, dried by a complex of lambic acids but remaining primarily lactic and on the ‘malse’ side, staying focused on the blackcurrant till the last drop – after a Bretty funky touch (quite subtle but a bit more outspoken when warming up), astringent tannic effects from wood, berry skins and berry seeds and a deep earthy hop bitterish touch have passed, that blackcurrant pureness and herbality linger about. Dry, sour, juicy, very clearly blackcurrant: a lovely fruit lambic again, seemingly more ‘pure’ and radiant than the ordinary Black-Belle, though I would have to perform a side by side tasting for that.