Open It! Beer Review: Oude Geuze by Drie Fonteinen

The name Drie Fonteinen should say enough.  Oh, you wanted more info?  Sorry about that.

Drie Fonteinen was a blender of lambic beers, then a brewery, and then went back to blending.  It is hard to know which beers we will never see from this place again.  At one point the owner was making beer himself.  Disaster struck and hundreds of bottles exploded or had to be dumped.  Yes, you can cry a little.  The owner has said he will never brew again, so blends which where heavy on his beer can’t be replicated.  The website is in Dutch and I don’t speak Dutch so information is hard to get.  Then again, my website is in English, although I am hopeful, I doubt he reads this.

There are two versions of Oude Geuze, vintage and regular.  Vintage is the higher end version, but I have a regular version.  What I love about this beer is the lack of sweet nose and flavor.  Many lambics consumed here in the States are sour but with some series sweet too.  This beer is just sour, but in a good way.

Tasting Notes:

This bottle was corked March of 2008.  It had a huge fluffy head and I actually had to wait a while for it to settle down before I could get my nose in the glass.  At first whiff, I thought maybe a horse was in my glass.  Oude Gueze had that wool funk.  If you do not like funk you would hate this with a passion. On the other hand if you like funk then this is a party in your nostrils.  It was not as sour for the style as it could have been, but still sour with no real sweetness.  Oude Geuze is also a dry beer with an almost champagne like carbonation.  If you can buy one, and be sure to let it sit for a few years if it hasn’t already.

Tags: Drie Fonteinen, Gueze