Keg at Oliver Twist, Stockholm. Hazy golden, small head. Rich aroma of cobwebs, hay, lemon and grass. Dry and acidic with medium body and spritzy, firm mouthfeel. Grass, barnyard and citric acid. Perhaps more bitter than regular Cantillon. Excellent, the hops doesn't manage to kill it...

Tap. Moeder Lambic Original, Brussels. Hazed, pale gold. Thin, loose foam of white. Nose has the distinctive Cantillon fust, with notes of gooseberry and real lemonade. Privet leaf and cut grass hop. Some earthy stone fruit. Taste is tangy, lemon juice sour, with a privet leaf bitterness. Bright and clean on the palate. Crisp carbonation. Light acidity. Sour lemon and gooseberry to finish.

Green, herbal hops, herbal bitterness, fresh and sharp Cantillon funk (easily recognizable), farmhouse funk. Pretty goddamn tasty. 4.1

Cantillon, not shying away from its own hype, now fuels the hype by applying the globally popular IPA idea to its lambic: this is apparently a lambic dry-hopped with Hallertau, Mosaic, Cascade, Simcoe and Sorachi, so in a sense an update of the old Cuvée Saint-Gilloise, which was already dry-hopped before the IPA craze hit Belgium - albeit with noble hops rather than the fancy New World hops applied to most IPAs, and to this BLIPA. Tasting glass at BXL Beerfest, glad this event gave me a chance to catch up with this one. Snow white, very densely creamy and stable, hops-enhanced, lacing head over a cloudy straw blonde beer with peachy hue. Aroma combines lambic funk with new IPA dankness, leading to vivid impressions of stale sweat, moldy grapefruit, damp haystack, stale old lime juice, soaking wet wood, old sherry, plum peel, kimchi. Crisp sour onset, lemon flesh and unripe plum galore, grape peel wryness but in a quenching way, spritzy carbonation with minerally side notes; wheaty base dried by the overall lambic tartness, both lemony and lactic, bone dry finish in which the tannins from the wood are accentuated by the bitterness of the hops, both blending wonderfully and surprisingly well with each other, with citrusy, stonefruity and lime-like flavours as well as a deeper lambic earthiness. Not sure if this can be the starting point of a new type of 'BLIPA' lambic (rather than lambic IPA really), but in any case this experiment works much better than I was expecting: a very complex, densely flavoured, bone dry and fascinating lambic it is, bright and uncompromising, quite delicious even if I can understand that a concept like this is bound to divide opinions. I, for one, would happily revisit this if I come across it again.