Gueuze Tilquin comes in a corked bottle, priced at $11 for 12.7fl oz. That is almost $1/ounce. This must be the beer version of platinum that you can actually price it per ounce. I popped the cork…. and it was louder than any champagne I’ve ever had in my life; like a warning shot fired to protect my valuables that I did not heed. Beer flowed rapidly from the bottle all all over my table and into my phone. Ugh, well, that went about as well as planned. Definitely lost a good dollar or two of beer in that. I think it’s pretty safe to say this is extremely carbonated in the bottle.
After that crisis unfolded, everything was cleaned up, phones were put in rice, some minor crying, etc. I finally got to pour what remained in the bottle into my pint glass. Yea, I know it’s the wrong glass; but I don’t care. The carbonation seems to have settled to normal. The color is golden cloudy and the head has decent retention. As I went to get a good whiff, my nose went into the beer. Like actually dove in. Mistake number 2 in my amateur hour rendition of a beer tasting and I have yet to even drink. The smell is great… I don’t know what it is though. I definitely pick up some funk mixed with fruity citrusy notes. It is also reminiscent of the smell of a college bar where everything is wood and it is infused with years and years of beer and they just tried to use some pledge so you know they at least tried to clean it. The taste is sour up front… like champagne infused with sour lemon warhead (which is the weirdest mimosa variant of all time, but surprisingly not too bad). The aftertaste is dry and reminiscent of many of the ciders I drink. As it sits in your mouth it is clearly sour, but it really hits you at the back of the mouth and doesn’t come into full effect until you swallow. HOLY CRAP THIS IS SOUR. This is my first sour beer so I have nothing to compare it to, so let me tell you what I do know.
According to the bottle, it is a blend of 1, 2, and 3 year old lambics. For those of you who don’t know, lambics are produced by spontaneous fermentation. That basically means random yeast and bacteria and whatnot get into the beer, giving it a very funky taste. I’m not sure how this style got started a thousand years ago, but I’d bet someone was definitely being lazy. Anyway, Gueuze Tilquin is unfiltered and unpasteurized, and refermented in bottle. The ingredients are water, malt, wheat, hops. Oh and random crap flying around in the air. Pretty basic. At 6.4% ABV, it comes from Belgium and is apparently best before February 2, 2024. That’s not a long time, or an oddly specific date. or anything like that. Let’s ignore the trends of other long lasting products such as batteries to put simply the month and year; these people actually have the gall to put an exact date 10 years in the future. Like it’s going to suck on Februrary 3, 2024 but still be excellent on the 2nd? I totally believe you.
The bottle says “2013” and “2014” on the top label. I guess that means even they have no idea when they bottled this? I’m not sure and my beer expertise may be failing us all here, but this is my introduction to sour farmhouse lambic things; maybe this is all par for the course for the farmhouse lambic style though? The website claims this brew is “accessible” to the non-expert, but I am having a problem finishing it. So not only am I not an expert, I’m not even as good as a non-expert. Talk about an ego boost. I would recommend trying it at least once for the uninitiated, if you can finish it then you’re more of a man than me. Just like a sour warhead, and your depraved fantasies, it hurts in a good way.