Lambic. Natural yeasted wheat ales from Belgium left to go thin and sour. Sounds foul but it is like drinking fresh wine the small champagne corked bottles of usually fruit brewed ale. Fruit brewed as the freshness of the harvest is added to the fermentation in the best of these real ales not as some syrup later in the process. This raspberry lambic is the colour of homemade wild strawberry jam, blush with a brown edge under a pure white rocky head that dissipates to seafoam. The scent is earthy twig berry and the sharp tang of the beer. A long lingering true fruit flavour mixes with the bite of the fine carbonation. Like many Belgian ales, the hops are a fine delicate aged presence almost deprived of all their acid before being added to the boil. Not cheap at $4.15 CND at the LCBO for 375 ml. Try topping up a can of draft Guinness with another 20% of this ale. A better black and tan.






Comments
Jason Kuznicki - March 27, 2005 12:53 am
...and best of all, its name means "Sudden Death" in French.
Alan - March 27, 2005 10:33 am
Apparently from a dice game played in a Belian bar that sold this beer that then became the name of the bar and the name of the brewery's line of lambics. I was in the Mort Subute tavern in Paris in 1986.