Lambics. Truly an interesting brewing style. A style that is unique to the brewing nation of Belgium. A style that takes a form of wheat beer, and blends it with spontaneously fermented wild yeasts, and various fruit flavors to create a drinking experience that is in a class by itself. A style that one might not fit into a series of articles that deal with dark beer, but in this case, we can make an exception. The reason being is that the lambic we are about to highlight uses black currants to produce a dark, bold, zesty beverage that will raise your eyebrows and awaken your taste buds. I am talking about the Cassis Lambic from the Lindemans Brewery’s family of sweet, bitter, and fruity beverages.
In 1809, the Lindemans family worked on a farm in Vlezenbeek, outside of Brussels. In the winter, the family started brewing lambic beers on their farm grounds when the harvests had come to an end. By the 1930’s, their brewing activities excelled to the point where farming became insignificant, and making beer became their vocational calling. Lindemans brews a variety of these spontaneously fermented bittersweet beers, including a Gueuze, a Framboise (raspberry), a Kriek (cherry) and a Peche (peach). The Gueuze, and the Kriek were the first of this group to hit the beer scene, followed much later by the Framboise in 1980, and the Cassis arriving in 1986.
Lindemans Cassis is made from barley that is indigenous to the area around the brewery, mixed in with unmalted wheat, and wild yeasts. After these wild yeasts float around the wort during the spontaneous fermentations, the lambic is aged in oak giving it a merlot-like flavor on the tongue. Then the suds masters at Lindemans add the black currants creating a secondary fermentation, and yielding complex flavors and aromas.
Once poured from the bottle into the flute, a big dark pink head rests on top of the purple carbonated body. The aromas are earthy and shocking. One might smell a variety of scents wafting from the glass, but I smelled tobacco, marijuana (I am NOT kidding) and Welch’s grape juice. I could not believe my nose! Cassis has an acidic, tangy, and sugary flavor to it. This, with the end result of sweetness from the black currants overriding any oakyness. The aftertaste is where the oak quality comes out, with a dry, bitter finish. Like it's Framboise, Kriek, and Peche siblings, the flavors of Cassis are medicinal and reminiscent of jammy preserves.
Although Cassis might not be as well known as the other Lindemans lambics, this dark purple fruit juicy beer makes for an excellent aperitif for after dinner drinking, and a nice companion to a hunk of cheesecake or a dish of ice cream or sherbet. There were rumblings in some of the beer publications that the Belgian government and health departments were going to start cracking down on lambic brewing because of alleged sanitary issues. Let’s hope the brewers of Belgium will not allow such a crackdown, and that this fascinating style of brewing will continue for a long time to come.
