Friday, 19 February 2010

• Lambics: What Are They? (Plus A Review!)

  

  
  

  The Lambic is perhaps one of the least known varieties of beer. Several people associate them necessarily with fruit beers (and that seems to be the majority of lambics brewed today), however they aren't always necessarily. Lambic refers to any beer that's brewed in this fashion, whether or not it has a fruity element or not.

  
  
  The style originated in Belgium and was originally a rather weak beer designed for rehydration as water quality was poor at the time, and often times it wasn't safe to drink water. Lambic has expanded to be varying levels of alcohol and flavor profiles, and the style is barely recognizable from when it got its start 500 years ago.
  
  Lambics have a characteristic flavor of having barely any hops detectable (though they are still used in the brewing process), and having a rather dry, sour aftertaste. This base is what lends it so well to flavoring. Its characteristic flavor is a result from how it's brewed: rather than using either ale or lager yeasts, Lambics are brewed with wild strains of yeasts in a process known as "spontaneous fermentation." This also results in a rather flat beer with little to no carbonation.
  
  Lambics can also be "derived" so-to-speak from other ingredients and is even blended with other beer styles. These make for a broad range of beers that might be characterized as "Lambic" but perhaps aren't pure Lambics. Lambic itself is a combination of barley malt and unmalted wheat, and aged, dried hops (aged and dried as to impart very little bitterness to the beer, but still able to be used as a preservative).
  
  All that said, fruit Lambics are probably the most widely and most popular Lambics today, and today's review is the Raspberry Toffee "Stout" (which is the name, but it actually is brewed in the Lambic style) brewed right here in Pocatello by Portneuf Valley Brewing.
  
  Pour: Deep, dark red-amber in color with little head. The picture shows a rather black beer, and when poured like that it does look that color, though you really need to have it poured rather thin and held to the light to see the red.
  
  Smell: Raspberries hard up front. Underlying it is the toffee, and a bit of the malts. No real hop aroma detectable.
  
  Taste: Tart raspberries combined with a bit of the toffee sweetness. Sip it just right and you can detect a bit of a coffee flavor in the background, and a touch of the sweet wheat malt. Finish is nice and tart, as is characteristic for the style.
  
  Mouthfeel: Very low carbonation and somewhat thin. Has body, but not too much.
  
  Drinkability: It's easy to drink, though I wouldn't want more than one of these.
  
  Final Notes: It perhaps was an act of bravery to give this one a try. I normally do not like fruit beers. That said, I found this one rather nice, and was great as a dessert beer and to follow up what was a rather spicily hopped beer before that. Not something I'd drink all the time, but good as an occasional change of pace. I'm rating this one a solid "B."
  
  Have you ever tried a Lambic?  If so, what did you think?
  

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