It is very little known that brewery De Troch at Wambeek has always made - and still does - a traditional gueuze. In specialised beerpubs you can find the old one with the yellow label and lettering. In other pubs you might find the current with various lables, often for the pub itself (the, already defunct Schaere gueuze springs to mind), but you ought to be able to find it easily enough. For this tasting, I had only an old example. The saccharine (?) tells it all. One warning: if it bears the dreaded inscription "Chapeau" it is not what you are looking for. Colour: dull orange, little yellow head immediately gone. Very much 'horseblanket' in the nose, lemony, vinous as in old over-the-top Burgundy. Taste: very lemon-sour immediately, then flavour as in the smell of unsmoked cigarleaf, and the taste gets immediately milder (this is probably saccharine). Leather aroma. Acidburn, dry, woody. Interminable tumbling of acids, smokey and sweet-that-is-not-sugar notes. Very pleasing. Well worth looking for.

Amber, hazy, full of flunky bits; no head. Woody nose, wood-varnish or thinner. Taste is pure acetic acid and some citric acid. Flavour of completely extracted wood and saddlesoap. Mouthfeel: WHOAH: puckering at the limit of the acceptable. Well yes, Godisgood must be a good blender to make something from this... was: 7/3/6/3/13 - 3.2 New rating 1yr old 2007: 1mm transparant head over yellow lambic with a verdigris shine. Nose: Citrussy, brett (definitely) horseblanket, washing powder, lemonbalm. Taste: Lemony, very tart, bit of human sweat (sorry, really not bad), instead of horses’ one. Lemon flavour is all-overpowering. Palate: Terribly dry, dry-out effect, fantastic; puckeringly dry. Overall: De Troch is getting better & better (again). Good show!