After the geuze assembled by café De Bascule, Sako found another purpose for its home-brewed lambic: the tiny village of Kattem (with only a few hundred inhabitants) celebrating its thousandth birthday. For this occasion, Willem Van Herreweghe, one of Belgium's greatest geuze authorities, was involved and worked with Sako's Koen Christiaens to create this brand new geuze, using lambic that has aged for two years on bourbon barrels. The product itself was originally going to be named Geuze Bourbon apparently, but the name El Ambiguo was chosen because it refers to one of the (apocryphal) origin stories of the word 'geuze'. Opening the bottle (numbered 554) over the sink, I could not prevent my kitchen from getting soaked: this was a very violent gusher, practically exploding in my face and fiercely spouting out of the bottle. With a glass nearby, I was able to reduce the loss a bit, but be ware when opening one of these... Medium thick, off-white, dense, irregularly edged, dot-lacing, stable head on a hazy cognac-tinged orangey-amber robe, a tad darker perhaps than is typical for the style, possibly due to the bourbon barrel ageing; very thin strings of fizz everywhere. Aroma of lots of old oak wood (even that typical vanillin odour), dried peach, old bread crust, very dry sherry, old and dried out orange peel, wrinkled small apples, haystack, dusty bookshelves, hints of roasted peanuts, persimmon and mugwort leaves - with a volatile touch of manure coming in the very end but leaving again after a while. Dry, crisp onset, unripe nectarin, unripe orange and unripe apricot, tart and lactic but with a vague touch of 'hidden' sweetishness tucked underneath - as with De Bascule geuze indeed, but less prominently so and quickly superseded by a dry-bread-crusty graininess, strongly drying lactic sourness and estery lambic fruitiness filling the mouth. Traces of unripe stonefruit, edged with a bit of persimmon and a touch of tamarillo, linger about in the end, when earthy and funky Brett elements (wet leather, hay) as well as tannic wood effects set in; that odd sweetish element, subtle as it may be, also returns at this point, and could perhaps be linked to a small remainder of bourbon in the barrels? Ends dry, leathery, tannic and lactic with a very late dash of old hop bitterness, but nowhere does this geuze behave too sharply; effervescence too is relatively soft for a geuze, resulting in a 'mals', soft, 'moelleux' mouthfeel - again, as with De Bascule geuze. Quite a rich and long flavour profile here, contrary to expectations perhaps: there are certain resemblances of course with De Bascule, but this one feels much more mature, has a drier and funkier main character and a more 'full' feeling to it. Actually not a bad geuze at all - but for that fierce gushing, which I will not easily forget, I have to take off a point or two; had this not happened (and it happened unexpectedly, without any temperature contrasts or shaking preceding it), then this would have been a high level geuze for me and the first truly memorable Sako lambic beer.

19 August 2023. At 13de Gents Bierfestival. Cheers to Anke, Tim & so many others!

A: hazy orange, small, off-white head.
A: overripe orange, wet straw, gooseberry, unripe pear, sourdough.
T: sour orange & apricot, jam, biscuit, sourdough, funky straw.
F: old grassy hops, funky stone fruit, wood, herbs and herb cheese.
P: medium body, moussy texture, fizzy carbonation.
Commendable ultralocal Geuze.

Small white film remaining, opaque ochre beer. Nice woody-horseblanket aromas, with oak, green fruit, ever so slightly sulphury. Light sourishness, very woody, old oak, bit of rhubarb, green grapes. Not quite ripe stonefruit, hints of unsweetened yoghurt. Dry - almost astringent - if nowhere sharp. Really "malse" gueuze.Has a little bite to the mouthfeel. Excellent oude gueuze, and this being the fruit of a first try. Even with the help of the absolute Brewmaster Van Herreweghe, this is truly stunning.