Lost Fruit Beers of Belgium and The Netherlands

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Roel Mulder

A few months ago, I received an e-mail from Senne Eylenbosch, a young beer maker in the Zenne Valley near Brussels. Recently, he had started blending his own beers, using lambics from several breweries in the region. As you may know, lambic is a unique, spontaneously fermented beer that is aged for one or more years in wooden barrels, during which time it acquires an exquisite, slightly tart, yet mellow taste.

Blends of differently aged lambics become gueuze, a bottle-conditioned beer dubbed “the Champagne of Belgium.” Faro, another lambic derivative, is lighter in alcohol, a tad darker, and usually sweetened with sugar or other agents. And then there are lambic blends with various fruits, including kriek, which is made from the eponymous sour cherries. Other fruit lambic blends include raspberries (framboise), blackcurrants (cassis), peaches, (pêche), strawberries (fraise), apricots, and even bananas…

Access the full article in the January/February 2022 Zymurgy magazine.

This article includes the following homebrew recipes:

• Braam-Boosen-Bier, ca. 1690
• Ratafia de Cerises
• Krieken-Lambic, 1907