750 ml bottle at Zythos. Pours a mahogany color with light head. Soft aromas of plum, oak, and sharp toasted malts. Flavors of plum skins, balsamic vinegar, sweet cherries, and sharp malts. I find this lighter than the Cuvée Jacobins. More approachable but softer.

Bouteille 75cl partagée avec Vincent - merci Tim pour ce cadeau extra de mariage. BB 06/12/2026.
Cela faisait des années que je ne m'étais plus essayé à des cuvées Jacobins - souvent associées avec le côté plus adouci des bières de type pour le grand public. Cette version dévie de cette lignée pour offrir un lambic qui navigue entre les eaux de vieille brune et de lambic.
La couleur est ambre oscillant sur le cuivre avec un col blanc-cassé pétillant et moyennement tenace.
Arôme donne de suite le ton - ici des effluves marqués par un bouquet acidulé/vinaigre avec un léger rappelant presque un côté acétique qui se traduit en bouche par cette acidité fort marquée. Je note un retrait fin de malt, un peu caramélisé/dark candi mais repris par un fruité acidulé sur le cassis, groseille verte/rouge.
Palais m'est de suite apparu comme fortement axé sur une base acidulé dont pas mal de rappel de vinaigre - le tout est très sec avec un retour boisé de foudre qui vient donner un caractère finement épicé/sec boisé. A cela s'ajoute une base fruitée entre baies rouges et noires - ici, côté groseille rouge et cassis. L'acidité marquée me donne plus une sensation de revoir une rouge des Flandres. Cela passe en accord avec une base de grains/malté un peu plus sur le côté biscuité/caramel associé à un apport plus rustique de vieille cave/cellier, grenier de ferme humide.

Bottle. Color: Deep amber to light copper, yellowish off-white head. Aroma: Tart, red fruit, oak. Bit vinuous and Sherry-like. Taste: Sweet and tart at the same time. Fruity mix of grape, sour berries, lemon and red fruit (strawberry, rasberry) notes, balsamico vinegar, oak wood. Medium tart, moderate sweet. Medium body, below average carbonation. Nice and quite complex one.

Vander Ghinste (Bockor) has long been a quiet, low profile brewery with a thoroughly old school range of beers – as if time had stood still there. In the past years, however, they must have felt the winds of change in the global beer world, coming up with new beers regularly – and, recently, pretty interesting ones as well, cleverly making use of their ‘foeders’ harbouring their own microbial cultures, originally (seventies and early eighties) coming from a now long defunct ‘real’ lambic producer called Heyvaert. This ‘Foeder 17’, logically placed in the old Jacobins brand which encompasses all of Bockor’s spontaneous fermentation beers but also strongly sweetened fruit beers, is such a spontaneously barrel-fermented ‘foudre’ beer aged for no less than six years (!) in one specific barrel, the seventeenth one, hence the ‘XVII’. Only 8000 bottles were made and I was already looking for one until I stumbled upon Joeri, one of the bartenders at Dok Brewing Company, who was kind enough to offer me a sample from a bottle he got. Cheers Joeri! Moussy, medium sized, off-white, breaking and slowly dissolving head on a near-clear, deep and very pure amber beer with coppery-brownish tinge. Aroma of yellow plum, redcurrant, red wine vinegar, sour apple peel, accents of raw red cabbage or even beetroot, clear vanilla-scenting oak wood throughout, very dry sherry, old dusty attic, something sweaty (sweating abbey cheese). Tart onset, very fruity-estery with notes of sour apple, redcurrant and unripe plum, moderate carbonation from the bottle conditioning; supple bready and thinly (pea)nutty core under drying yoghurty tartness and a more vinegary accent deeper down. Woody tannins and oaky ‘vanilla’ in the end, along lactic sourness and lingering sour fruit colours (redcurrant and sour grape), adding dryness to an otherwise supple beer which maintains a high degree of drinkability. Quite accessible yet complex enough, a beautiful and ambitious Vander Ghinste offering indeed, which would fit very well in any beer cellar; I can, however, see consumers get confused about this one as it is not really lambic in the same way as we are used to from the Senne Valley – in fact the flavour profile (and looks) of this beer are much closer to ‘oud bruin’ than to lambic. Consider this a modern ‘freewheeling’ sour ale (perhaps unexpectedly) emerging from an old local brewery and you will surely enjoy this one if you are into sour beers.