Monday 31 August 2015

#287: Oud Beersellers

Cool beer in a sunny garden is the very meaning of summer and few beer styles perform well under a clear blue sky - such as it might be in an Irish summer - as a lambic.

This one is my first from Oud Beersel, and it is their standard Oude Geuze Vieille, a 6% effervescent, pale orange in the glass that smells spritely, slightly cidery and woody. There's not even a hint of vinegary sourness about this, thankfully, and it stays in the realm of citric acid and farmy, yeasty simplicity. To taste it is an eminently refreshing dry, bitter leafiness, with a follow-up of tart lemon and overripe green apple. There's even the perception of sweetness in the apple drop and sherbert sourness, but all in all the beer plays like a weirdly well-rounded, grainy and satisfyingly tart geuze. 

It's tempting to call this kind of beer complex, bearing in mind that sourness is meant to be the sophisticated acquired taste for the beer geek, but in reality, this is a simple, straightforward, even archaic type of beer.
A gorgeous geuze, worthy of your time.

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