The jong ones

I came back from the Toer de Geuze weekend in May with a bunch of bottles for the cellar and a handful of others to drink in the shorter term. Most of them are quite summery in style so I waited for the August bank holiday weekend to get stuck in.

Blanche Lambicus, in nip bottles, was given out as a parting gift for anyone who endured the Timmerman's tour. The lambic base has been sweetened, flavoured and antioxidant-ised producing something at 4.5% ABV that smells and tastes like lemonade. I could probably push that as far as radler were I feeling charitable -- there is a wheaty malt character at its core -- but the sourness is no more than a squeeze of lemon juice would give you, and you can forget about any oak spicing or other complexities. I quaffed this outside on a sunny day and deemed it not bad for free.

Meanwhile at Lindemans they were giving a big marketing push to their new Summer Berry, so I threw a bottle of that into my box of takeaways. "Freshly picked red berries" says the big writing; 15% strawberry, apple concentrate and elderberries says the small print. It's a mere 3.5% ABV and a deep red colour, looking cloudy and quite natural. The sweetness level is off the charts, beyond syrup and jam, and into some non-euclidean realm of fructose where all standard measurements are useless. Yes, there's something identifiable as strawberry purée, and maybe some maraschino cherry too, but there is nothing that tastes like beer, sour or otherwise in this. Perhaps there's an undocumented arms race among the big lambic producers to create the sweetest possible fruited version. If so, Summer Berry may be in breach of a nonproliferation treaty somewhere. There's no call for this kind of escalation and very little need for this "beer" to exist.

Hanssens had also just released a mixed fruit beer, though one would expect the approach of this micro-artisanal blender to be rather different. It's called VSOR, standing for "Very Special Old Red" and includes strawberry, blackberry and sour cherry. It poured dark red and almost totally flat, deciding only at the last moment to form any bubbles. This was certainly an antidote to the sweet beers that went before: it's extremely sour, right at the front of the palate; almost burning with acidity. But there's nuance too, after a moment. The first complexity is a farmyard funkiness, one which infuses the rest of the taste delightfully. There's a brief hit of oak spicing next, and after it settles in the glass and on the palate, the fruit flavours start to emerge, with the cherry most prominent. Raspberry is there too, bringing a sweetness that goes some way to offset all the sour and funk. It's not an easy beer, being both busy and severe, but once you get used to it it makes for rewarding sipping.

A reminder, then, that for the big lambic brewers, the good stuff is much more an oddity than the norm. And that not every Hanssens fruit one is pure vinegar.