The best beer for a summer's day

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When the days get sunny and warm it is time to celebrate the weather and generally the good days wit a bottle of Oude Geuze. Not only is it a great tasting beer, the proces of opening a bottle is a pleasure in itself.

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Oude (Old) Geuze is basically a Lambic. And a Lambic is a type of beer, brewed in Belgium in the region southwest of Brussels and in Brussels itself. The typical thing for a Lambic is that it is fermented through exposure to wild yeasts. After the wort is cooked for several hours it is left to cool, exposed to the open air. It picks up enough of the wild yeasts present in the air to start the fermentation proces. The lambic is then put into barrels, mostly old port win and sherry barrls, and left to ferment. The fermenting period can be as short as three months and as long as three years.

A Geuze is made by mising young Lambic (one year old) with old Lambic (three year old) that is the bottles in champagne bottles. The young Lambic is not yet fully fermented, and the mixture undergoes a secondary fermentation in the bottle. The carbon dioxide the results can lead to pressures up to 6 bar in the bottle, hence the need for strong bottles like champagne bottles.

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The result is a dry, sour (in a good way), characterful and refreshing beer. That makes it the best beer to drink when the waeather is hot. It is also a festive beer to drink. It is bottles in a champegne bottle, complete with a champagne cork and the muselette tht fits over it. Opening a bottle of Oude Geuze is the same ritual as opening a bottle of champagne. Including shooting the cork away in a nice ark.

As Oude Geuze comes in (semi or is it demi?) champagne bottles, one bottle is 37,5 ml of beer instead of the common 30 ml or 33 ml of ordinary beer bottles. And that's just the little extra you always miss with ordinary beer.

Summertime = time for Oude Geuze Boon

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Cheers!



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1 comments
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A dry sour sounds interesting, and yes I would intentionally open everyone's been for them if that's what we were serving. Thanks for sharing.

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