just peachy

On the last days of Labirratorium I thought I would help lighten the load of the shelves before they got sold off.  I was later than most, so it wasn't a surprise that there was already a lot of empty space.  There were still some venerable Belgian beers left, and one a peach Lambic, which I don't mind too much.  It's been quite a while since I've indulged in a traditional fruit beer, much less a Belgian.  I remember being pleased with Lindemann's, and Kasteel has received some rave reviews on certain Youtube channels.  High hopes for St. Louis Premium Peche.  This is in spite of it being in a refrigerator door for almost a year.

It's darker than I expected, but maybe that's the aging involved.  Still good head and it didn't explode with extra gases, so that's positive.  It has an almost nostalgic beery aroma, with a touch of peach in it, for some reason it brings the old Cervezorama to mind.  The flavor is very heavy on the fruit, and the beer even feels a little thick, full-bodied and not much of a summery whisper.  It isn't just sweet peach, it's almost natural with its sourness, and maybe that is a little aging going on.  It almost has a winey quality, more of a white than a red, but the foundations of the drink still let the grain shine through to remind you what you're really drinking.

Hey, it's spring, time to clean out the fridge?

summer harvesting

Squeezing in another purchase before a short vacation, I grab a couple of things from Birra Y Paz (they're going on vacation, not me.)  I feel like I ought to be getting some things that I don't normally subject myself to, and actually the bars are full of various types of ale more than anything else.  A lager here and there, but there's a downright shortage of sours this year, plus the typical lower offer of stouts for the summer.  As interesting as lambics are as a style, I just can't get into them as much as a taste experience.  I do, however, deeply enjoy a black currant drink.  It's one of Lindemans lesser-seen lambics, at least in Madrid, but I think Cassis is worth a shot.

Slightly winey smell, fruity, but old fruit.  Like a lot of lambics, it has a deeply tinted appearance with the essence of its most promoted ingredient.  It looks a lot like black currant nectar, in fact, but with a rosy head on top.  It has that fruity lambic stickiness, and a good amount of sweetness with no bitter at all, very much like Mort Subité, for example.  It's maybe even heavier than currant nectar, with more body and staying power in the mouth.  It builds in sourness, but maintains a refreshing cleanness to the flavor that allows it to take a place among summer beers.

Supplier: Birra Y Paz

Price: €3.15

have a little punch

I'm conflicted about La Cervecista.  It's a decent enough place with shelves full of appealing beers, but it's really a retail space for Mahou.  Oh sure, there are a bunch of craft looking beers on shelves and in fridges, but they are part of Mahou's network, like Founders and Nómada, or they're the typical Belgian and German imports.  Still, I feel like I ought to at least check things out.  Also, they have some quick and easy ciders right now, and it's still not as cool as I would like outside.  No cider just yet, though, I bow to Belgian influence today with Lindemans Framboise.

The heavy smell of fruity lambic fills the air immediately, in a tantalizing way of course.  The dark red beer sits in the glass like a vampire's party drink and the cotton candy head makes it all the more celebratory.  The flavor is tangy, like ripe ripe raspberry, not a lot of sweetness underneath.  I remember Mort Subité being a little sticky, but much like with the peach, Lindemans shows it knows how to balance out its beer.  It's a lot like a barely diluted fruit syrup still, with a powerful amount of taste.  Aside from the head there isn't much to indicate you're actually drinking a beer.  It's not a very alcoholic beer either, at only 2.5%.  You could easily fashion a cocktail out of this and fool people into thinking there's no alcohol at all.  Not that you want to go around fooling people about those things.

Supplier: La Cervecista

Price: €2.30

Door #14

Oh dear, a lambic.  Beer from the north, a reminder of the cold season...if only it was a beer I liked better.  They've been picking up in popularity for a few years now, certainly benefiting from their history, a retro, hipster choice, and one that a lot of people are happy to make anyway, considering the proliferation of sours in the craft world today.  Oude Geuze Boon has the name to back up the style, if that's what you're into.  Well, maybe my tastebuds will die off someday.

It has that lambic champagne color, and something of a champagne aroma.  I might have let it sit in the refrigerator a little too long, as it's more active and bubbly than it probably should be.  The taste is surprisingly bland, with just a hint of sour and wood.  Even though it feels like it should be a mouthful of water, it's not very easy to drink.  It grabs at the throat a little, kicking on the way down.  Although the sourness makes it feel like a summer drink, something to cool you off and perk up, that roughness gives it a more wintery coat.  I don't know if I would like a mild cheese or something to go with it, something fatty does seem like it would pair well.

Building possibilities for the new year is exciting, but not always easy to keep up optimism about.  Good thing there's a beer more to my tastes waiting for me.

and not even october

Although we had a very very nice day of storms and rain, it's still August and the temps are going to go back up.  It's just a fact.  I guess a lighter, fruitier beer would be nice after all.  And there aren't many fruitier than those Belgian lambics, despite my guarded appreciation for them.  This is Lindeman's though, and I have been rather pleased before.  I can see a nice apple beer being a calming beverage on a cooler night than many.

It's surprisingly standard looking, although quite aromatic.  At a distance the scent is like apple perfume or apple scent additives, but up close it's a stronger cider sour.  Pretty resistant, clean white head.  Plenty of happy little bubbles dance their way to the surface.  It's a very active looking beer.  The apple flavor is a little strong.  This is more like apple juice and something like champagne than an apple flavored beer, although it's true that most of the fruit lambics are rather heavily weighed down with taste.  And with substance.  It's not a light and bubbly session style or crisp cider, there's definitely some stickiness.

                              

Supplier: Más Que Cervezas

Price: €1.68

currant affair

Stick with red beers for now?  How about a black currant lambic?  I do love black currant juice, or "nectar", so it could very well be a delight.  Lindemans has surprised me in the past with a delicious peach lambic, so I'm not too apprehensive.  Black currants are something of a delicacy for Americans, because apparently we are not allowed to grow black currants.  They aren't native plants and as an imported species they have a tendency to disrupt the environment they grow in.  Either that or they're so tasty the mighty berry lobbies have been keeping them away out of terror of competition.

It looks very much like other popular red lambics, a much brighter color than currant juice to my recollection.  It has an almost astringent aroma, so that's different from the others.  The taste is subtle at first, and even when it comes out it's not exactly overwhelming.  It is a little heavy, sort of a sour candy more than fruit syrup.  I find it gets a little scratchy after a number of sips, almost like some citrus heavier NEIPAs.  Fortunately, it doesn't go the way of cherry or raspberry lambics with a heavier and stickier feel over time, staying fairly light despite the sweetness. 

Supplier: Birra y Paz
Price: €2.85

into the brambles

I don't know why I took this chance with a lambic.  Maybe because it's raspberry, which I love, maybe because there's a lambic tasting happening next week (can't go, though), maybe it's just the weight of the temperatures that makes me look for something less cozy than my black beers.  Anyway, it's St. Louis Premium Framboise.  The bottle is a bit smaller than normal, 25cl, so it nearly fits all in my beer glass in one pour.  Hopefully, even this small amount won't be too much lambic at one time.

Ahh, beer in the sun...

There's an immediate waft of fruit when you pop the cap, and the beer pours smoothly into the glass.  It's a promising dark red, like fizzy cranberry juice, but sweeter smelling.  More like black currant, now that I think about it.  The taste is sour and in-your-face at first, but slowly dies back to a sweeter feel.  As it gets sweet, I have a prickle of worry that the beer will get syrupy or heavy, like some lambics do, but St. Louis manages to stay light and even a little fluffy.  Although the beer appeared fizzy at first, I don't get a lot of bubbles while I drink, so it's just smooth and juice-like.  I'm quite pleased, actually, it's better than many fruit juices that rely on heavy flavors and probably too much sugar.

Supplier: Espuma
Price: €2.60

more ice cream for the coming summer

So, the beer floats just keep cropping up and I keep drinking them.  This time it's a tasting at El Sainete, downtown.  It's a very modern looking place, with several levels and 18 taps of craft beer, so things are promising.  I got there early, worried about how public transportation would be during Pride, so I had a pre-cata caña.  One of the beers was a Czech pilsner which I hadn't heard of before, so that temptation was impossible to pass up.  I only had a caña, 20cl, but it was €2.  I found the prices for quantities of less than a pint to be bit high, although that's fairly common.  Kout na Šumavě Koutská desítka pilsner I found to be light, bubbly, and only a little bitter.  It has a rather herbal flavor actually.  The sweetness evaporates in a moment, but that small bitterness hangs around for a while.  It's a tongue twister of a beer, in that it leaves a mark.

First we had Firestone Union Jack IPA with mango ice cream, which was much like the All Day mango at Toast Tavern.  We tried the beer by itself first.  Union Jack is a bit smoky, but hoppy in smell.  The taste is light, however, and the bitterness doesn't come out until the aftertaste.  When mixed the drink looks like a fresh squeezed orange juice.  As for the taste, the mango dominates, it's fruity, sweetish, and the bitterness has been conquered.  It's much creamier than what I had in Toast Tavern, since I didn't mix that one up.

Action pour!

For some reason I didn't get a picture of the ice cream

The second sample was a lambic, but not one of the fruit ones that we find all over.  Geuze Boon is a simple naturally fermented beer without added fruit, but the ice cream for the float was a snappy, tart raspberry.  The beer has a bitter smell, a little skunky, in fact.  The taste is cidery, sour, even grabby, but becomes sweet in the aftertaste.  The ice cream provoked a few eruptions, but with a little less beer I didn't have that problem with my glass.  Mixed, it resembles strawberry juice or a milkshake but with foam.  The taste is more beery, more bitter and less fruity, but it is very much like a fruit lambic.  Morte Subite was mentioned by more than one of us.  Even when the foam goes down the drink is foamy in appearance, and with a little more lambic than half the mix it's sourer and better in my opinion.

Very foamy

Beeruption!

Real raspberry, with seeds

Number three was Nómada's Manchurina gose, another sour beer.  Gose is a ... special sort.  It's not the bitter or grassy kind of beer we come across most often, it has another character.  I find it carnivorous.  It smells like deli meats, with smokiness, saltiness and a touch of bacon.  The additive was chocolate ice cream, which caused a few eruptions, but was less disruptive than the lambic.  Blended, it looks like a chocolate milkshake or Colacao, but the taste isn't what you might expect.  It's sour, chocolatey, but with the lime of the gose quite noticeable.  Some people thought it was like a milkshake that had gone off in the fridge, and there is a taste that could be called simply "sour milk" there.  But it still smells like a butcher shop.

The craft ice cream store, if you're curious

Finally, we had a "classic" beer float, stout with vanilla ice cream.  The beer was actually an espresso stout, by the Japanese Hitachino.  There is some coffee in the beer itself, although it's a mix of coffee, salt and stout bitterness.  Some people mentioned soy sauce, but I wonder if that's just the psychology of a dark Japanese liquid.  Again, when adding the ice cream, the foam comes right to the top of the glass.  I was lucky that mine didn't go over.  The taste is sweet and chocolatey, but a little too sweet for me.  A little more beer, approaching two-thirds of the glass, is better, more like dark chocolate.  There's just a touch of sweet, a little caramel, a little cream, and towards the end there's a little licorice, but not enough to bother me.

on top of the pre-sunday sundae

Another pick from the now defunct Cervezorama, St. Louis Premium Kriek was kind of a challenge for me.  I've had bad experiences with lambics in the past, but recently found a couple of good examples.

It has a strong cherry smell, not terribly sweet.  The beer is noticeably red, and the abundant head is also tinged with ruddiness.  The taste is sharp, cidery, not syrupy like many lambics, I'm pleased to find.  The aftertaste is exceptionally smooth and mildly sweet, reminding me a little of cherry yogurt rather than soda.  A cocktail of fruit develops in the taste after a good amount of the glass is gone, with hints of apple and grape.  Sometimes a little risk does have its reward.

yes, drink a peach

So, I've said many times that I'm not a fan of lambics.  But sometimes a challenge comes along, and you can't help taking it.  Besides the cider, The Beer Garden also had a varied stock of lambics, with the usual red berry ones.  And, peach.  That's new for me.  Guess I better try it.

So unassuming

Krtek?

It definitely smells peachy, like a peach yogurt.  Somehow I was expecting a pinker liquid, but really the beer is peach colored.  A light head bubbles up and settles down quickly.  Now the taste: changeable; first sweet and then sour, quickly becoming sweet again.  Much less tongue-strangling than the last lambic I tried - although with undeniable sour notes, very manageable and balanced.  The taste is clean, and also a bit like peach yogurt, and doesn't hang around much after the beer is swallowed.  The balance and smoothness remain from top to bottom.  I'm pleasantly surprised by this lambic.  I may even try other Timmermans', just out of curiosity.