Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René

Brewed By: Brouwerij Lindemans in Vlezenbeek, Belgium

Purchased: 355ml/12oz bottle bought at Spec's Liquor in Galveston, TX; 2013 (Bottled: 3 Feb 2012)

Style/ABV: Gueuze, 5.2%? 5.5%? 

Reported IBUs: 16

Tonight should wrap up all the beer I bought while vacationing in Texas...I snagged two bottles of tonight's beer, and this is the last of the two.

Lindemans is one of those breweries that is famous and available. Odds are if you've purchased beer at any major grocery store you've stumbled upon their fruity Lambics. But aside from their Framboise, Kriek, Pecheresse, and Apple Lambics, they also brew a traditional Gueuze, and a couple of other treats. The brewery was founded by the Lindemans family in 1822, on a farm in Vlezenbeek, near Brussels. During the winter months when farming slowed down, they brewed beer. In 1930, farming activities were dropped and the focus shifted to brewing. In 1991, the Lindemans family built a new brewery to accomdoate a growing market. You can read more about the brewery on Lindeman's website. It's worth noting that Wikipedia has some additional (and conflicting) information, quoting the start of brewing in 1811. You can check their blurb here.

Gueuze is a fun style of beer. Gueuze are labor-intense and time-consuming beers. The style is a blend of young and old Lambics (spontaneously fermented sour ales). Traditionally, Gueuze is made by mixing one, two, and three-year old Lambic, but the blends can range from Lambics as young as four months to as old as three years. The mastery in crafting a good Gueuze is to find the perfect blend. Once the beers are blended, they are then aged and undergo a secondary fermentation. Traditionally, Gueuze/Geuze were spontaneously fermented with naturally-occurring yeast and bacteria (usually found in oaken barrels), but craft brewers will often inoculate their brew with cultures of yeast including Saccharomyces, Brettanomyces, Pediococcus and Lactobacillus in an effort to reproduce this effect. The base malt for these beers is unmalted wheat, Pilsner malt, and aged hops (used as a preservative, not for bitterness). The flavor and aroma should be balanced and subtle, with mild sour/acidic character balanced by wheat, citrus/fruits, barnyard, and possibly some wood. With that said...on to tonight's beer.

The Gueuze Cuvée René is an Oude Geuze ("old Geuze"), and is unsweetened and a blend of Lambics (blended by hand). This beer has been imported into the US since the early 90s, and naturally, has some batch variation. This beer also ages well, and for the most part, is affordable and widely available. All these factors suggest that this is a great entry-level Gueuze, and maybe much, much more.

I have to give props to Lindemans...the cork containing this lovely elixir parted gracefully, and the beer didn't even hesitate to gush or get cute. Also, the foil wasn't GLUED ON (hint, hint, other breweries), and came off with ease. The beer pours into a hazy/murky dark yellow/straw-colored body. The beer kicked up a finger or two of off-white/gold-tinted head. The head is fueled by wheat, and is competing with the wild yeast and other deterring elements. Needless to say, it's holding up nicely. In bright light the beer is a juicy gold/orange color, and there are mountains of fine carbonation bubbles streaming upwards. This beer is effervescent, and looks like champagne. The head is still slightly off-white in bright light, and is only being kept alive by the streams of carbonation. 

Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René

The aroma on this is all kinds of okay. This beer embraces the funk, with big barnyard, wet rain, wet leather, some light cheesiness, and big underlying tart citrus. I'm getting white grapes, grapefruit, lemons/lemon bars/sugary lemon, apples, and pears. The nose is bold enough to set up big expectations in the taste. 

For the most part, the taste delivers. The taste is surprisingly sour up front, with puckering tartness (lemon, green apple, sour candies), followed by bright citrus and apples, and nice acidity. I'm picking up some oak in this, along with a hint of acid/vinegar. There's big lemons, grapefruit, apples/pears, grape, apple juice, wet leather, and tons of very mild funk. The finish shifts to a champagne-like dryness.

The mouthfeel is outstanding, divine stuff. The carbonation is perfect, and the finish is appropriately dry. This is a light-bodied beer, with plenty of tartness, acidity, funk, and a dry finish. While the palate depth is superb, there are moments where the body will fade out for a second and then quickly return...complexity is good but you have to wonder. This starts out sour/funky with some lemon, sour candy, and green apple; that transitions into acidic citrus, grapefruit, grapes, and apple; from there you get some nice wet leather/barnyard, wheat, and funk; the beer then fades out to dryness, with lingering vinegar/acid/lemon.

Rating: Above-Average (4.5/5.0 Untappd)

I'm feeling a Strong Above-Average on this. This is a great sour, with enough complexity to keep veteran drinkers initiated, but with some nice nuance and balance. I'd like to grab a few bottles of this to age. The price is right too...you can snag a 750ml of this for around 10-15 dollars, I believe. This beer would pair well with oysters, duck, mussels, risotto, ceviche, strong cheeses, and meats on sticks. Skip the fruity Lindemans beers and get this.

Random Thought: I think we all can agree that the three most important things in life are sleep, food, and sex. The question, then, is simply: on what order of magnitude do they fall? Surely food is the most important of the bunch (and beer is food). But sleep is pretty important too. But sleep on an empty stomach isn't fun. I guess sex seems like the luxury of the bunch, but anyone that's gone X amount of time without sex knows that it can interfere as much with sleep as an empty stomach. Perhaps the solution is a combination of these things, ala George Costanza. After all, pastrami is the most sensual of the cured meats.