"Lew Bryson" > schreef in bericht
m...
> "Joris Pattyn" > wrote in message news:HNjyd.1153
>> It's a question of time. Lambic-brewing needs a stable endemic microbial
>> population that is STABLE. And that cannot be rushed, it takes years to
>> stabilise. But it will come in the future. However, SA Cranberry Lambic
>> is
>> as Belgian as mussels with ketchup and Freedom fries...
>
> What makes lambic lambic, Joris? The mashbill? The airborne microbes? The
> fact that they ARE airborne? Where it's brewed? The microbes in the
> barrels
> the beer is aged in? The finished character? It's a broad question, but
> why
> not take a swing: what makes lambic lambic?
>
> --
> Lew Bryson

Ah, Lew. That's a good one.
First - there's a difference IMO between lambic and spontaneously fermented
beer, and to be honest, in the above message, 't was me that was guilty of
the mix-up.
"Lambic" ought indeed to be reserved for the beers of spontaneous
fermentation in the Payottenland area, in the same vein really that
Champagne is a name reserved for the sparkling wines, made following certain
principles in the area around Vezelay, Epernay, Reims, etc.
Just as it is possible to make excellent sparkling wines elsewhere, I'm sure
that it is possible to make a decent - or even excellent - beer of
spontaneous fermentation anywhere else, including the New World.
More so, as I have serious qualms about the "airborne" thing of that
microbiological flora for the Payottenland. Rural as it might be in places,
the original area includes the whole of Brussels, and the air quality in
that part of the world has not exactly be of the best in the last century...
It's there that, again, the word "endemic" comes in. In a lambic brewery,
everything (woody) is simply soaked with the "right" kinds of beasties. That
lambic is such a variable thing, exactly relates to that, depending on a lot
of momentaneous data, which will give the genus X a more pronounced
character in the lambicpipes of the far corner in brewery Y - if you catch
my drift. The excellence of the gueuze blender, exist in overcoming that
variability to blend all those lambics into one, that will give the best
gueuze possible.
What makes lambic lambic, then? Exactly that, IMO: the, always
overattenuated (that's the term they use themselves), bone-dry quality, that
is immediately thirst-quenching, sourish and infinitely complex character
that is exactly the result of a layered fermenting of dozens of yeast and
bacterial strains, that have co-operated to make the brew. If you realise
how complex a beer can be, that has been fermented by just the one
cultivated strain (ever had P.U. or Budvar straight from the lagertank?),
than you start appreciating what this "teamwork" (though that's the wrong
expression, it's all about competition) of bacterial strains can do.
And the gueuze is that lambic squared.
To catch it in words is our goal, but it remains elusive, and tasting as
many lambics and gueuzes from the real source, is always most educative or
enlightening (that is a cliché, I know, but it isn't any less the truth for
that).

To come back to our first beer, the cranberry lambic from SA, fulfills none
of the above requirements. I would eat my hat, BTW, if it is really
spontaneously fermented. A scoop: the American importer of Cantillon is
currently having cranberries fermented in pipes at Cantillon brewery. Once
that's ready, compare for yourself.

Sorry for the verbosity, but that question of yours is enough to fill a
library, ;^}
Joris