The invention of tradition

Beer blogging's big brother Alan is attempting to revive The Session, a cross-platform themed event last seen in these parts in 2018. His chosen topic for us is perhaps an obvious one for such a revival:

What is the best thing to happen in good beer since 2018? 

Straightforward perhaps, but for me, not easy.

One thing I really enjoy about the beer world is how quickly it turns. The product itself only takes a week or two to produce, so trends move fast. Ideas that are outré and esoteric become standard practice worldwide within months. That hop, that yeast, that brewing method: they're all very communicable, and brewers love to copy each other; to give their customers that thing they read about, or drank, in Brooklyn or Hornindal or Catharina or Marlborough. Time means little and distance even less. That's fun, and saves me lots on air fares. So there must have been loads of innovation to pick from under the topic. Except there isn't. Haze has been mainstream since 2016 and shows no sign of going out of fashion. Ireland's first kveik beer arrived courtesy of Eight Degrees in 2017. I still consider those to be new things in beer, but they're outside the scope of the question and, honestly, I'm not sure either counts as "good" to this drinker, never mind "best". Things don't seem to have moved much for the good. Non-alcoholic beer? Sure, there's a lot more of it around, but while I don't object to its presence, I haven't found many that are properly enjoyable.

What do I enjoy then? This is where I'd love to be waxing lyrical about the oft-predicted lager revival, but that was never delivered. Nor the West Coast resurgence, nor the black IPA comeback: these styles are still noteworthy when they appear at all. They're not being revived; they just didn't quite die.

My ruminations in this direction did finally settle on a revival that has largely happened since 2018 and is very much positive, for my drinking tastes at least: lambic. Here we have a downright medieval style of beer, where the brewing establishment -- much of it dating from the century before last -- has been very established and unchanging. This derives from the nature of the product: where it can legally be made and the timescales of production. It's not one for those who have a rented warehouse, a start-up grant and a few stainless steel tanks. It takes patience, and that's an expensive commodity. I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I've tended to view lambic production as a largely static thing. Newcomers have been rare, and haven't constituted anything that can be called a trend. Until recently.

I don't know what the cause is, but there seems to have been a run of new lambic producers in recent years: your Eylenbosch (2019), your Boerenerf (2020), your Kestemont (2021). Den Herberg just misses the window by being 2017, but they're still illustrative of my point. I visited most of them last year, and by and large was impressed with what they're offering. A lambic revival seems to be taking place, and it's genuinely good: not simply cash-ins by business people who've spotted a high-margin product with potential for quick wins. I hope it's sustainable, and I'd like to see more of the same in years to come.

That's the demands of The Session satiated, but this blog has its own strictures, and I need a beer to go with that. None of the above named are available to me locally, so I've picked something else that is, in its own way, a post-2018 innovation. Timmermans wouldn't be my favourite of the lambic brewers. It has a couple of good oude-style beers, but is mostly a purveyor of over-sweetened crap. Its collaboration with Guinness is one of the most egregiously overpriced examples of big brewers trying to exploit the beer-curious that I've ever seen. But putting black pepper into a lambic? Hello. Let's talk.

Created in 2022, Kriek Black Pepper Lambicus is what's before us today: a name in English and Latin suggests Belgium trying to disown the whole affair. 4% ABV and an aroma of Bakewell tart tells us immediately that this is very much in the sugary milieu. Not that it smells bad, just not like proper lambic. The colour is nice too, an almost glowing crimson, which I put down to food colouring, although the two E-numbers listed on the label are only innocent ascorbic and citric acid.

On the first sip is the standard sweetened lambic, all glace cherry and marzipan. It finishes on that too, but the black pepper flashes brightly, albeit briefly, in the middle. It's a very real version of it, at once crunchy and oily and spicy. I liked it, but I don't think it really belongs here. As with that Guinness/kriek blend, the elements don't integrate very well and are less than or equal to the sum of their parts. You could recreate this quite simply by taking any sweetened kriek you like and adding a twist of finely ground pepper to it.

I don't really get properly angry at sweet krieks. They pay for those breweries to make the beers I actually like to drink. However, I don't quite understand what they were trying to do with this one. Somebody must have added pepper to an existing beer and decided that this is something customers would want to drink. It's a bit of a shrug from me. Shaking up the world of lambic requires more than just the nearest jar from the spice rack. The new kids know that; I'd expect better from their eldest surviving relative.