3/VIII/24 - 75cl bottle @ home, BB: III/2034, Lt: 2024/0020 (2024-681) Thanks to Benzai (or 77ships?) for sharing the bottle!

SLOW GUSHER ALERT!
Cloudy orange blond beer, small creamy irregular off-white head, unstable, non adhesive. Aroma: very herbal, a bit spicy, floral touch, woody impressions, earthy touch. MF: soft carbon, medium body. Taste: pretty bitter up front, soft acidity, some bitter lemon, herbal, earthy, some tannins. Aftertaste: fruity touch, pretty bitter, very woody, tannins, herbal bitterness, more like a bitter barrel aged saison than a lambic blend. Decent beer but not great for a lambic.

Bottle shared at tasting. Murky orangy color, small white to off-white head. Aroma and flavor are fruity, tart-ish, fruitpeel sourish-bitter, oak tannins. Well balanced, but never a geuze.

Small white head over Champenoise pearling orange-golden beer. Lemon, farmyard odours, orangerind, saddlesoap. Smelling authentic! Bit... American Brettbeer-like flavourwise. Shoepolish, even a bit phenolic. Bananapeel, saddlesoap and a touch harsh acidity. Certain oilyness, wheatslickness in the MF despite the huge carbonation and acidburn. Well, Ronald... It's already Maurice, but not yet Heyvaert. The nose is spot on, the flavour is just too American wild for me.

Dochter van de Korenaar, that venerable brewery literally and metaphorically sitting on the border between Belgium and Holland, coming up with a 'geuze' blended from lambics they actually brewed themselves in their backyard: this is not something I saw coming, but reading the story of it being a tribute to Heyvaert (a lambic brewery that closed down in 1980) because its head brewer was apparently the first mentor of the Dochter's brewer, it begins to make a bit more sense, I guess... In any case, for a lambichead like me this is definitely one I just had to taste. Classy packaging - as expected from this brewery: 75 cl bottle with neckfoil and golden letters on the label, but no cork under the crown cap. Slow gusher so be prepared. Off-white, thinnish, tiny-bubbled, regular, open ring of foam, slowly and eventually completely dissolving over a hazy apricot blonde robe with ochre-ish tinge, turning more orangey further on. Aroma of dry hay, green plum, dandelion, unripe elderberries, lots of old wood (oak furniture), sourdough, raw 'witloof', young mugwort leaves, old dry apricot kernels, lightly toasted sunflower seeds, old bread crust, dry sherry, freshly cut garden weeds, dusty attic, flour. Crisp onset, tart but not sharply lemony, more unripe stonefruit-like with side notes of unripe pear and green apple, dry from the start with moderate carbonation (too much on the soft side in my personal opinion) and smooth, bit vinous mouthfeel; 'deep' and very dry, 'rustic' lactic acidity running through the whole, lacking a bit in fruitiness perhaps but serving its purpose well to create a generally bone dry feeling, with a bread-crusty and raw wheat-ish backbone. Pronounced tannic woodiness in the end, even a bit 'dusty', enhances this dryness even further, while a touch of supple fruitiness persists - though a bit too gently so. Meanwhile a severe bitterness develops, with wormwoody, dandelion- and almost raw witloof-like character; clearly the brewer has been very generous with the hops, a bit too much so in fact for a lambic. The bitterness persists in the finish in a somewhat herbal way, along with woody tannins and lactic tartness; the whole feels 'mals' but at the same time extremely dry, the dryness of course amplified by that hop bitterness. Traces of pleasant juiciness do linger in the end, though, and as a whole this 'pseudo-geuze' (in the absence of two-year old lambic at least according to the legislator) feels quite easily drinkable if you are into dry beer types; it does lack a layer or two of funky and 'barnyardy' complexity for the intended style and could do with more effervescence and a tad more joyful (tart) fruitiness, but for a first attempt by a brewery known for great ales but not at all for lambic, this is surprising, characterful and very tasty. Even I am too young to have tasted Heyvaert's products - though I am familiar with the name - so I will leave it up to others to assess if this is a worthy tribute or not, but it is any case a remarkably hop-bitter, bone dry yet accomplished and quite versatile lambic, 'different' primarily due to that bitter effect. I like it, in all - quite a lot even, so for me DvdK is free to follow this path and produce more lambics, even if they are geographically outside of the traditional lambic region...

Bottle. Color: Hazy orange, thin white head. Aroma: Subtle funky, tart fruit. Taste: A lot of bitterness for a Lambic. Overripe citrus fruit, zesty, hints of gooseberry, some oak wood and hints of wild yeast funk. Finish again is very bitter, almost medicinal bitterness. Dry-ish. Light tart, moderate sweet and over moderate to medium bitterness. Didn't expect this, but it's definitely a dDvdK style beer: Not your usual stuff... Great story, nice beer. No wow factor this time, unfortunately. Will cellar my second bottle for a long time and see how it will develop.