A quick tour of the brewery (quick because of what is promised at the end of the tour), it was time for a few bevs. You can see how excited Matt was about the tour.
We started off with our freebies, the straight lambic, framboise, kriek and gueuze. All great but not what we were here for.
We followed up with Zwanze 2012, a rhubarb lambic, Zwanze 2013, an abbey style beer blended with lambic, and finished off with 50°N-4°E, a cognac barrel aged gueuze. Nix liked the increased tartness provided by the addition of rhubarb to Zwanze 2012, I thought 50°N-4°E was a beer highlight of our trip and Matt, well he's just there to "enjoy the ride", he just "rides the waves", as does Todd the Mental Beaver (that poor bastard).
MY F UPS - PART 2
In a little town on the outskirts of Brussels there's a pub called In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst, which is quite possibly the best sour beer pub in the world. Its selection of cellared sour beers is unparallelled. The only problem being that it's only open from 10am 'til 130pm every Sunday.
So clearly you would want to be there before it opens at 10am.
However, when you're sat on the couch at 930am eating breakfast and buses only come on the 55 of the hour and it clicks that you've taken down bus times to get you there an hour later than you'd wanted to, you can tend to lose your shit. Nicola, Matt and the couch felt my wrath. Maybe I should stop working out directions, bus times and the opening times of establishments the night before, after a few too many.
Anyway, we made it, albeit 40 minutes after Grote Dorst had opened. We pretty much had to race a bus full of oldies from the main road to ensure we got decent seats. I believe we managed drag the mean age of Grote Dorst down to about 60.
The rage, the rush and the tension between us all was worth it though, this place is bloody amazing.
We started off with a few "standard" sours from the vat and then got into the vintage list.
A 2005, 2003 and 2002 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze were good places to start. The 2003 the first of the beers that was literally "liked nothing you've ever tasted".
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| 2003 and 2005 |
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| 2002 |
We then followed up with a 1988 Eylenbosch Lambic, which had gone beyond lambic and become an entirely new beer. F*cking amazing and genuinely like nothing we'd ever tasted. However, we agreed there's probably no need to try it again.
The good thing about drinking sours is the ability to jump between different types within the category, so it was time for a couple of old krieks. We began with a 2004 3 Fonteinen Schaerbeekse Kriek. Tasty, yet not amazing.
The 2004 De Cam Kriek though, f'ing amazing. So much overriding sour cherry-ness still remains and it was a true treat to end on. We walked down the road at 4ish (flexible opening hours clearly) feeling well and truly satisfied.
Grote Dorst is where you go to pay your dues to sour beer. WOW.
A couple more at Moeder Lambic and it was home time. A great day it was.
The Beers
Cantillon Lambic, Kriek, Rose de Gambrinus, Gueuze, Zwanze 2012 and 2013, 50°N-4°E, Fou' Foune, Mamouche, Lou Pepe Pure Kriek, Faro
3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze 2002, 2003 and 2005, Schaerbeekse Kriek 2004
Boon Vat 44
Eylenbosch Lambic 1988
De Cam Oude Kriek
Allagash Open Cask
Gouden Carolus Classic
Rulles La Grande 10
De Ranke Cuvée, Guldenberg
Brasserie de la Senne Tripel
Val Dieu Grand Cru, Tripel
Dupont Monk's Stout
