Geuze Bus Tours II

I mentioned unfinished business off the back of the 2017 Toer de Geuze: the two participants I missed out on last time. This year's Toer, earlier this month, was a chance to resolve that. The bus schedules meant that I visited two places twice, and one of those was one of my prime targets: Timmermans.

It also happened to be among the worst-set-up experiences of the weekend. Getting to the beer involved a painfully slow, non-discretionary, single-file trudge past the vessels and equipment of an admittedly pretty lambic brewery. Towards the end there was a chance to try Timmermans Jonge Lambik, from the maturing barrels in the attic. It definitely tasted unfinished, with the same sort of harsh bitterness you get in a hopped wort prior to fermentation, and flat without being smooth. A background oaken spice hinted at the beer it will hopefully become, in time.

The snaking queue eventually disgorged into the roomy tasting bar at the end of the tour. Unfortunately the people staffing this were not at all set up for serving the thirsty hordes descending from the rafters, the process further hampered by an unnecessarily complicated token system. Fight to the bar to see the pricelist; work out how many of which colour tokens you need; queue to buy tokens; queue at each part of the bar where the beer you want is being served. Ballache. On the Saturday afternoon I did manage to procure and quaff a Kriekenlambic from the cask engine. It was a deep pink colour with an unsubtle cherry syrup and an only slightly mellower wax bitterness. It was drinkable, and I was gasping, but not as good as a plain handpumped lambic, I think. With that it was on to the bus and away to the next venue.

On Sunday we were prepared. At the entrance we asked to skip the tour, and the lovely Timmermans folk escorted us through the courtyard and straight to the bar. It was early doors and none of our fellow visitors had made it to the end of the plod yet. And it still took ages to get served. I went with the one remaining unfamiliar beer: Brewer's Desire, a one-off created in 2016, released in 2018. From the brewery's official description I don't know how it differs from ordinary two-year-old lambic, but apparently they're very proud of it. Honestly, I couldn't see why. There's a harsh and almost bleachy sharpness dominating the flavour. I did find some more subtle lemon rind and a pleasant mineral sourness, but the finish is acridly acidic, there's no spice, and none of the smooth finesse of age. It would be passable were it not for the horrible bleach thing.

A lovely, more orthodox, Timmermans Oude Geuze cleansed my palate after that, and I deemed Timmermans resolutely done.

The other producer to feature on both days' itineraries was Tilquin. They certainly warranted it too, with a superb range of beers on offer and, behind the bar, a team who knew exactly how to keep the queues moving.

So, on the left there we have their Assemblage de Lambics, a 6.4% ABV blend which presents murky and headless. As one might expect from an expert blendery, there's an excellent balance of fruit, minerals and spice: all the lovely things about lambic in perfect harmony. Somehow it manages to both scorch the throat and quench the thirst at once. Sheer wizardry.

Next to it is quite a scabby portion of Guezérable, a geuze made from maple syrup. It's probably for the best that I didn't get more of it as it really doesn't work as a flavour combination. The funky, sticky syrup retains its full character and fights with the clean spritzy lambic beneath. There's a woody, sappy element which turns acrid in the finish. The one redeeming feature is that you can taste around the gunk and appreciate the excellent base beer, but the added syrup brings nothing positive to it.

Quite a few of the Tilquin offerings were from their two Experimental Fruit Series. I began exploring these with Groseille Blanche (white currant) from series 2, on draught. It's a hazy dark yellow colour and, like the others so far, has a great lambic base, assertively sour with a hard minerality. The sweet and juicy berries peep through this beautifully; a total contrast but a perfect complement too.

Also from the series was Myrtille, arriving a gorgeous rich purple colour. The flavour is packed with funk and spice, tasting of cork oak and old leather in particular. The bilberries add a certain softness to this without coming across as sweet, and I certainly would not have been able to identify the fruit tasting blind. This tastes very mature, any puckering sharpness long since mellowed away. The funkiness more than compensates for any loss of character. Overall, a thoroughly ungimmicky fruit lambic and another winner.

All this experimentation has to lead somewhere, so I'm guessing that's what the Oude Grosseille Rouge is: a bottle, 6.6% ABV and a pinkish-orange colour. The distinguishing feature here is a woody dryness, like a berry seed. There's a saltpetre spice at the base but I think most of the significant tartness is coming from the redcurrants. A dusting of pepper finishes it off nicely. It's balanced and complex, making great use of the different components. The experiments paid off, then.

Finally, for no particular reason, I gave Tilquin Faro a go. This was sugary and slick, but oddly not especially sweet. There's lots of oak spice next to soft candyfloss and a sort of blackcurrant bitterness, though no fruit is involved. The smoothness makes it very easy to drink and gentle on the palate, demonstrating for me the reason faro was developed in the first place. Unlike most extant examples, this one isn't janglingly sweet or sickly.

Pretty much wall-to-wall classics at Tilquin, then. The Toer rumbles on, however, and the four guezeries in the next post will visited on more of a quick-fire basis.