7.4

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5

Bottle at Craig's. Pours hazy yellow with no head. Aromas of perfume and light peas. Taste is lemon sour, light acetic. Sour finish.

7

bottle at home... hazy amber.. thin white lacing.. soft earthy funk fruit... horseblanket nose.... Light fruit nose... Light sharp fruit.. soft funk fruit.. lught acetic fruit5.. red bean paste

7.9

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5

Bottle thanks to Beersiveknown. Appearance - hazy yellow with a thin white head. Nose - kidney beans in brine. A bit of salt, umami and wood. Taste - lemon, mushy peas and woody sour. Palate - light to medium bodied, savoury middle and dry, sour finish. Overall - really interesting. Very savoury.

6.9

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5

Golden colour with quick fading head. Very pleasant sharp, slightly lemony taste. Tart, slightly vinegary in the finish. Pleasant but I don't really detect any beans.

8.1

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8.5 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8

It has been a while now but here it is: a new Japanese-themed OWA lambic, this time with adzuki beans, a particular Asian species of legume which reached Japan from China and Korea centuries ago and was adopted there as a popular ingredient in mainly sweets (such as a sweet red bean pasta called anko, applied in desserts), because of their natural nutty-sweet flavour. On paper at least, this seems more suitable to use in lambic than some of the ingredients highlighted in earlier OWA lambics... From a 37.5 cl 'gueuze' bottle with the familiar origami-like paper around the neck (pale pink this time); opens with a hiss, but no gushing. Medium thick, egg-white, tiny-bubbled, slowly and partially opening but otherwise very stable head lacing in a pattern of shreds over a hazy apricot blonde beer with pale ochre-orange tinge. Aroma of drying lemon peel, wet wood, grass silage, lightly toasted sunflower seeds, old bread crust, unripe mandarin, green plum, hints of old dry sherry, apple vinegar, dust, old cracked leather, sorrel and indeed something vaguely cashew-nutty from what I assume are the adzuki beans, but very volatile and all but completely gone after a while. Crisp, acidic onset, sharpish lemony sour and a bit puckering, but the sharpest edges of the sourness quickly retreat and make way for a softer, more 'deep' and noble lactic sourness, while impressions of crabapple, unripe stonefruit and green gooseberry pass by, adding a fair amount of 'green plant'-like astringency which lasts till deep into the finish; minerally side 'stings' but softly so, full body, nice bread-crusty and old dry cracker-like maltiness and graininess under a thick layer of astringent unripe fruit, lactic acid and dusty and tannic woodiness. Some Brettanomyces retronasally as well (dry old leather in this case), and a crisp, unripe citrus-like sourness lingering at the back - but apart from that astringent effect, becoming bitter-sour in the end (in a pleasant, quenching way, mind you), I cannot find anything of the sweet nuttiness associated with adzuki beans, only an additional 'vegetal' bitterness. Too subtle in its flavouring ingredient - yet, considering the sometimes utterly bizarre flavours in earlier OWA lambics, this may not be a bad thing. Granted, it does not entirely deliver what it promises for me, but it is a fine, characterful, dry and noble lambic regardless - perhaps even among the finest in this series so far, at least of the more recent ones, so have a decent score. Kampai!