8

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

Bouteille 75cl lors de la Cantillon Quintessence 2025. Wonderful share by the team, and big thanks to France Haliotis for sharing his bottle, who provided the algae for the Zwanze, but also as food pairing during the Iroise tasting during this year’s Quintessence with the lone bottle of Zwanze 2024 that he had kept under water in France. Thanks also to Bart.
Couleur pale sur des nuances d’orangé. Agréable ajout herbacé venant des algues, cela confère à la base des lambics une note iodée balancée avec des touches sur le fleuri. Rondeur de bouche avec une salinité qui accompagne tout cela sans jamais devenir surfaite.

6.6

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

Draft @ La Capsule, Arras. Hazy golden colour, white foam. Funky nose with salty notes, seaweed, some fruitiness, citrussy and lemony. Strange.

6.9

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

6.5

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

Gylden klar skum igen Tang salt gær eddike humle mørk banan Sur meget bitter lidt Blød vandede

7.9

Appearance - 9 | Aroma - 8.5 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8

Dull amber brown color. Massive salty, briny nose with just a hint of citrus and iodine . The algae has intense depth which I appreciate. This should be super polarizing. Salty, a touch of oak, iodine and seaweed. A very intense beer. I am grooving on it

8.1

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 9.5

Tap at Chinaski Lavapiés, Madrid, 3rd June 24. Pours clear and golden, aroma is tart, salty, musty. Taste is salty, tart, refreshing, complex and interesting. I actually really like it.

8.5

Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 9

On tap at Zwanze, Moeder Lambic. Cloudy golden with white head. Fruity and refreshing with a nice sea twist. Some stone fruit, somewhat mineral, medium sourness. Liked it.

8

Botella @Cantillon Brewery. 06/04/2024. Color amarillo corona de espuma blanca aromas y sabores salados, ácida.

7.6

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

Cantillon goes maritime with this year’s Zwanze, a blend of one- and two-year-old lambics flavoured with sea lettuce, a very common species of green algae along Europe’s sea shores – and one that has locally been used as a source of food by people for a long time as well. From tap at Brugs Beertje, happy Zwanze! Very thin and open, off-white ring of bubbles, quickly dissolving over a hazy peach-golden blonde robe. Unexpectedly bizarre and indeed maritime, briny aroma: the water from a jar of pickled gherkins, a whiff of ‘pekelharing’, ‘moules parquées’ (or raw oysters as some pointed out), kombucha, preserved lemons, green gooseberries, grey tea, wakame, fresh dill, pickled peaches, wet wood. Quite mildly tart onset, gooseberry and lime with a dash of sweeter apricot but also pickled lemons and then that very obvious seaweed-induced salinity, like in a Gose of sorts but in a much more estery context; near to flat carb, rounded sourdoughy core under relatively mild tartness – I was expecting a bit more lemony ‘twang’ – and persistent salinity and seaweed umami, the second stronger than the first. Complex estery fruitiness keeps adding balance, but it sure takes a while to get used to that seaweed factor, which remains very pronounced throughout. One that sharply divides opinions, depending on how much you like seaweed I guess – I heard other tasters describing this utterly weird concoction as literally ‘undrinkable’, but I am inclined to join the other side and see it as a welcome distraction from the endless rows of fruit lambics we see these days (some of those being absolute masterpieces of course) by adding an ingredient very uncommon in beer (even if it has been used before in ales, think of William Brothers’ Kelpie back in the day); the result may be very challenging, but not necessarily unpleasant and I think I could get used to this, especially when accompanied by a plate of ‘moules-frites’ somewhere in Brussels. Belgian surrealism to a degree, but in a good way, at least to me.