Bottle - pours gold white head - nose/taste of oak, capers, mint, herbal toothpaste, lemon tartness, cinnamon. Medium body. Oddest of the unique lambics.

Bottle - Memorial Day - Pours honey gold white head - nose/taste of strawberry, oak, honey, lemon tartness, florals. medium body

Bottle - pours orange with no head - nose/taste of grape skin, soured oak, lemon tartness and sweet tangerine peel -medium bodied

Bottle - pours orange white head - nose/taste of sweet apple, cheesecloth, oak, lemon, light brown sugar - medium bodied

Bottle - pours clearish gold white head - nose/taste of spicy oak, capers, lemon, perfumy dried hops, crabgrass, green apple skin, old potpourri flowers. Light funk/mineral tartness. Lighter medium bodied

Another one in the latest series of OWA lambics showcasing Japanese ingredients, this one with Japanese pepper, which is not really pepper but the dried and crushed fruit of Zanthoxylum piperitum, a Japanese shrub related to the - in the west - more familiar Chinese Szechuan pepper. From a 37.5 cl bottle with cork (which came out in two parts, but anyway). Medium thick, lightly lacing, eggshell-white head, thin layer of foam in the middle but otherwise open, on a lightly hazy 'old gold' coloured beer with ochre-ish edges and steady, equally distributed sparkling, equally misty apricot-gold with sediment. Utterly weird aroma: capers from a jar, blossoming roses, pine-scented air freshener and even perfumed hand soap, dried green chili peppers, raw gherkins and unripe pumpkin, old green apples, old polyester doormats, raw hogweed juice, valerian flowers, touch of sweet calamus, dusty bales of straw. Very brisk onset, lime- and unripe starfruit-like sourness, crisp and spritzy, accentuated by the 'physical' spritziness of the carbonation, quite cava-like, green apples and a hint of unripe stonefruit with even the subtlest hint at inherent sweetishness - with a thin sprinkling of something very 'green', almost 'mossy', and spicy on top, no doubt the Japanese pepper, yet largely without any peppery heat as one would expect. A bread crust-like 'bed' of malts and raw wheat, dried by the tartness, leads to a dry, 'dusty' yet sparkling and refreshing finish, with lingering lemony sourness (and even actual lemon flavour - an effect of the Japanese pepper again, I can only guess), a late and 'deep' hay-ish, earthy hop bitter note, straw bale-like lambic funkiness and a notable, fresh and juicy, yet tart 'sour green apple' aspect which lingers long after swallowing. A very perfumey quality (the roses from the aroma) remains behind retronasally, almost certainly the result of this one's special ingredient. Many of these OWA experiments turn out rather weird, certainly when these traditional Japanese ingredients interact with the grassy, dusty, 'old books'- and haystack-like features of De Troch's lambic, but this is definitely the weirdest one so far - though I still have to taste that Shiso version... A bizarre little lambic that will certainly not be to anyone's liking, takes a while to get used to, especially that strong caper-like aspect in the nose combined with a flowery perfumeyness - but then I can only begin to imagine what the culinary possibilities of a beer like this could be, and not just in that fascinating world of Japanese cuisine. Difficult to rate, certainly unique and interesting, like those smoked tea experiments Oud Beersel did last year, but of course totally different - something you'll just need to try for yourself...