4.9

Appearance - 5 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 4

The second preserved ginger-flavoured one in this series of Japan-themed lambics, supposedly with shoga, which differs from gari in being cut differently (in julienne) and being pickled in red plum vinegar instead of amazu (sugared rice vinegar); this creates a more tangy, more acidic version of the perhaps more familiar gari. All that aside, I noticed that the ingredients list still mentions gari instead of shoga - I suppose this is a simple mistake. Egg-white, membranously lacing, medium sized, tiny-bubbled and creamy but irregular, breaking head, eventually dissolving (yet still shred-lacing) over a cloudy peach blonde robe with deep ochre-tinge, turning murky and a tad 'dirty' in the end (but still peachy). Very challenging aroma of indeed sushi ginger and very dominantly so - comparable with the gari dominance in the gari version of a few years ago but without the sugary aspect, soap from this ginger - actually smelling like industrial brown soap or even floor polish (strongly even!), pickled beetroot, sour unripe peach, stale urine (Brett?), varnish, bee wax, red wine vinegar, lemon rind, horseradish, spoiled mustard, cucumber, wild apples, wet wood. Very tart onset, the lambic acids, a tad lemony and gooseberry-like, overshadowed by the tangy acidity of the vinegar-soaked ginger strips, with a vinegary 'sting' piercing through it all; medium carb, vinous mouthfeel hampered by the vinegar aspect and by the ginger itself, which imposes its soapiness, 'piquant' spiciness and tanginess very crudely over the lambic, to that extent that I can hardly even taste De Troch's benchmark 'bitter plant seed' effects anymore. Some woody and funky elements at the back (urine returning - but this could be the shoga), strong effects of pickled fruit (lemon or peach) with that vinegar 'burn' still persisting. A trace of peachy sweetness lingers along with that harsh sourness and overly dominant 'gingeriness', while at the same time, in complete contrast - and conflict - with everything else, a bitter element appears, possibly a combination of the old hops and much more 'active' bitterness from the ginger. Ends crude, 'dirty', wry, horribly overspiced, soapy and vinegary. I think those words speak for themselves: if the gari version, extreme and overpowering as it was, still had some merits, then this one in my view is a failure; the exaggerated ginger flavour as such is comparable between both, but I think the sugared aspect of gari has a somewhat mitigating effect, whereas the harsh vinegary aspect of shoga only adds another layer of sourness and wryness which lambic (and certainly De Troch's) does not need. In any case we can rest assured that actual shoga went in here and not gari, in spite of the ingredients listed.... In all, an ill-fated combination this time, shoga and lambic clearly do not work together at all - I could not even finish this one and I can take a beating. Still, I must respect Mr. Imai's determination, courage and inventivity to keep coming up with these 'Japanese' lambics - some are actually more than decent, a few even tend to border on excellency, but this one does not work for me at all. Well, I guess that is part of OWA's game, is it not...