The funk's in the stink

The man behind the beermoth counter looked at the bottle, looked back at me, and asked, "You do know what this is, don't you?"

"Yes," I nodded. And I'm still buying it. 

The beer was Cantillon, made by a legendarily maverick Belgian producer whose beers are made in the lambic and geuze styles. 

Lambic and geuze (pronounced kurrs), probably the two most difficult and challenging styles of beer out there.

And I still bought it.

why?

Last September, I was in Seattle visiting @drinkaddition. My mission was to get him drinking lots of great Washington and Oregon wine with me (which you can read about here); his was to get me drinking lots of great Washington and Oregon beer with him. No problem with that I thought, until he introduced me to sours...

what?

I've been to Belgium a few times and drunk great beer there. Beers at 9% I could cope with until I fell asleep; lambic and geuze beers I just couldn't. These are beers that are fermented for several months so that the beer becomes a weird wine; this prolonged fermentation encourages the monster yeast Brettanomyces (familarly known as Brett), a strain of yeast completely anathema to wine. There's no control over how the yeasts develop and the beer often ends up smelling of a diseased sewery. So, obviously, there are lots of hipster Americans making beer in this style. 

why? 

Good question. No idea. Imagine sitting down and saying, "I'm going to make a beer that smells like a diseased sewer. Because that's what the Belgians do."

Cascade Brewery in Portland, Oregon pretty much did exactly that. They make almost exclusively sour beers and it was there that, 5,000 miles from Belgium, I understood the appeal of these stinky beers. (The official term is "funky".)

Beers aged for 18 months in old Chardonnay casks; beers made to look and taste like ruby port; beers made to look like goats grazing in a field - wait, that was across the road.

This is a not a sour beer, but I was drinking one when I took the photo

These beers were, at the very least, intriguing; difficult, yes; involved, yes; memorable, yes; unique, yes; and, yes, good enough, to make me buy beers of a similar style over here in the UK, drink them, and write a blog about them. 

what?

A lambic beer is, the way I follow the story, one that has had yeast thrown from the heavens down upon it by the angels. Given how a lambic tastes, and my belief in angels' bodily humour, it's the story I'm going to keep on telling.

The point is that the development of a lambic is a random process over which the brewer has little control, apart from ingredients, acidity, and fermentation temperature.

Lambics then form the base for several drinks: Faro (brown sugar is added; this is a style even Belgian beer aficionados are sceptical about), Oude Geuze, and fruit lambics, in particular cherry and raspberry. It's these latter lambics that I've found too sweet in the past.

Geuze or Oude Geuze is a blend of lambics, where, like Champagne or blended whisky, the skill of the blender is integral to the quality of the drink, and is beer at its most extraordinary, its most aged, and its stinkiest (sorry, funkiest).

Sours - this is how Americans refer to their versions of these beers. What's the difference? Not really sure; as far as I can tell, it allows hipster Americans to claim a style of drink for their own without using confusing European terms like lambic or geuze. It also allows, however, for a huge degree of experimentation - the flight of sours I tasted at Cascade in Portland all had the stink in common, but had remarkably different, individual characteristics that came from the many different ingredients in each beer and different casks used for ageing. This New York Times article gives an overview of the increasing popularity, both with drinkers and brewers, of sours in the US.

what I tasted 

Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze (6%; 375ml)

My tasting notes were succinct: "smelt of apples rotting in a toilet, tasted like a fresh, appley cider."

That aroma, strong to the point of violent, causes you to jerk your head back in a mixture of shock, disgust, and disbelief. And then you can't help but smell it again. Did that really smell of apples rotting in a toilet? And you smell it again, approaching the glass more delicately this time. Yes, that's really what it smelt like and those aromas are going nowhere.

So what on earth does it taste like? Dare I even taste it? And it turns out to be full of beautiful, delicate, crisp, fresh, citrus and apple flavours. How can a beer stink so much and drink so subtly?

looks harmless, is harmless, but smells of rotting apples

Stillwater Artisanal Table Beer (4.7%; 650ml; beermoth £11.55)

Much of the beer I tasted in Washington and Oregon is unavailable in the UK as far as I can tell. Besides Cascade and its sours, the brewery I would recommend checking out if you're ever in the Pacific Northwest is Deschutes, from Bend, Oregon, who also have a separate brewery in Portland. They produce an impressive range of individual and consistently high quality styles of beer. To my surprise, beermoth do stock one brewpub I visited in Portland - Rogue - though I found their well-presented beers good without being particularly exceptional. So, when in beermoth choosing some funky beers, I opted for this interesting looking bottle from South Carolina which the label says has "the light funk of Brettanomyces."

The authentic CAMRA glass aided the tasting experience

In a stinky sense, this was quite disappointing: on the nose, there was a faint citrussy lambic whiff, followed up on the palate by crisp citrus flavours, with a lightly hoppy structure. In a purely beer sense, though, this was an extremely interesting and well-executed beer: unexpectedly lager-like bubbles and colour, with a really unusually combination of light stink/funk and hops, all balanced enough to allow the citrus fruit flavours to be at the front of the taste.

£11.55 is quite a price for a bottle that's less than a litre, but for a hard-to-find artisanal beer I just about understand the price - and this beer is subtly unique. The balanced combination of hops, fruit, and funk is both refreshing and complex, and, although full of familiar flavours, not like something I've encountered before. And I have to say I'm impressed how the brewer has used the Brett to create flavour but not an overpowering stink.

Cantillon 100% Lambic Geuze (5%; 375ml; beermoth £5.65)

The grandaddy of Geuze...  

you know a beer's serious when it needs a corkscrew

The aromas of this beer are subtle and complex: like tangerines that have been left out in the warmth but haven't started to rot - no way near as aggressive as the Drie Fonteinen, but still earthy, developing into aromas of muddy potatoes lying on the ground. The smell of it alone is like the veg from a roast dinner: pumpkins, butternut squash, and potatoes, with a marmalade sauce. A sweet smell, but underpinned with a rich earthiness.

The taste is sweet, a sweetness I've previously found off-putting when trying these styles of beer, but it's balanced by earthy apple flavours. Like the Drie Fonteinen, this is reminiscent of a proper cider, even though it's not made from apples. 

In terms of complexity and depth of flavour, this is a beer that comes as close to wine as I have had - and it claims to be drinking till 2030. The label is terrible, though: the Belgians really need to get over the Manneken Pis. A little boy pissing in the air: it's just weird.

well, this Manneken Pis isn't peeing in the air...

do I want more?

@drinkaddition clearly trained me well during my trip to the Pacific Northwest, for I no longer find these styles of beers that extreme. They're an acquired taste that take some getting used to, and I still wouldn't drink them that often, but the complexity, the unpredictability, and range of styles mean that from now on I will always be keeping an eye out for them.

My old copy of The Good Beer Guide to Belgium & Holland, which is one of CAMRA's more open-minded publications, sums the crazy, unforgettable style of Geuze well and I think it applies in general to these styles of beer:

"Many of the people who have come to regard oude geuze as one of the great taste experiences of international drinking will tell you that all that kept them going through that first bottle was a sense of duty to history. At the end, they congratulated themselves on finishing their task and determined to move on. But decided on another bottle, just in case they missed something." 

Will I learn to appreciate Oude Geuze - and its New World alternatives - as one of the great taste experiences of international drinking? Well, I'm thinking about buying some more bottles...