{"id":2575,"date":"2011-04-11T00:01:39","date_gmt":"2011-04-10T12:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=2575"},"modified":"2011-06-06T16:01:48","modified_gmt":"2011-06-06T04:01:48","slug":"lindemans-cuvee-rene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/04\/11\/lindemans-cuvee-rene\/","title":{"rendered":"Lindeman’s \u2018Cuv\u00e9e Ren\u00e9\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Lindeman's<\/a>
Lindeman's \u2018Cuv\u00e9e Ren\u00e9\u2019 Gueuze<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And now for something completely different. Because gueuze beers are<\/em> different in a staggering and mind-bending way. Some people are entirely horrified by them, despite otherwise being big beer nerds. Other people would drink them all day and all night and go a bit kittens-with-catnip at the mere sight of one.\u00a0Myself, I’m somewhere in the middle. (Though it’s the latter people who freak me out more than the former. By quite a margin.)<\/p>\n

Brewing is a delightful mix of Bucket Science and Rocket Science — it calls for meticulousness roughly as often as it demands a healthy dose of “fuck it; biff that in and see what happens”. And so while you’ve got brews that call for very<\/em>-particular strains of yeast, carefully cultured over decades and gently prodded in some desirable direction, genetically speaking — you’ve also<\/em> got beers that are basically made by quite-literally leaving the windows open and just running with whatever-the-Hell drifts in on the breeze. Then these beers, the lambics<\/em>, go out of their way to emphasise their oddness by using older, dried (and so less-potent) hops and usually fairly easy-going malts; a subtler canvas upon which the Jackson-Pollock-y<\/a> crazypants of their random yeasts can shine. Lambics often have fruit (or fruit syrup) added, but a “gueuze” is an unsweetened blend of young and old lambic, and they get a bit… eccentric.<\/p>\n

It’s one of those Belgian styles which quickly calls for the word funk<\/a><\/em>. Surprising adjectives flow from people who are praising<\/em> these things: musty, sour, medicinal, cheesy. The blessed subjectivity is in sharp relief; devotees and detractors will describe them almost identically, really differing only<\/em> on whether on not they personally find those characters appealing. Tim and I probably enjoyed drinking<\/em> this more than we enjoyed it<\/em>, if that makes any sense. It was a hell of a ride: an enjoyably confusing and confronting barrage of sensory assaults clanging around and in a strangely fascinating way, like when forgotten change works its way out of the pocket of your jeans as they go around in the tumble-drier. It’s baffling, but never quite<\/em> enough to make you give up<\/em>. Each sip put a pained and alarmed look on our faces, but it was never very long before we went back for more; you just can’t not, somehow. The sheer weirdness<\/em> of it prompted some hilarious conversation.<\/p>\n

Sticking with obviously-positive descriptors for a moment, this had the sharp tartness of a cleansingly-acidic white wine. The fruit flavour in the forefront of my mind was crabapples<\/em> — and I’m a sucker for crabapples, since I grew up with a tree full of them in the front yard. But there’s just no denying the scarier flavours: an imperfectly-made homebrew cider, the too-clean chemical smell of hospital disinfectant, the spiky aroma of a bowl of lemons just about<\/em> to start rotting, and the dried-sweat stench of a gym towel that sat neglected in a corner somewhere and missed last week’s round of laundry.<\/p>\n

But like I say, people who love them\u00a0love<\/em> them. Try one when you’re feeling brave — or give one to someone who foolishly says something like “just get me a beer, anything, I don’t mind; beer’s beer”, if you’re feeling particularly bastardly<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Lindeman's<\/a>
Diary II entry #88, Lindeman's \u2018Cuv\u00e9e Ren\u00e9\u2019 Gueuze<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Verbatim:<\/strong> Lindeman’s \u2018Cuv\u00e9e Ren\u00e9\u2019\u00a0Gueuze 11\/4\/11 $16 \u00f7 2 with Tim @ MH. He had an embarrassing run-in with a Lambic, way back; threw it out, thinking it was off. Ah, our pre-geek days<\/a>. Lovely hazy gold. Turning-fruit, hospitally nose. Amy freaked out: nappies with lemons growing in. The sterile-chemically-ness is in there. Along with the usual crabapples I like. It is<\/span> confronting. Hard to imagine the people who’d casually drink it. Tim: homebrew cider. Totally. A glass of gym-towel; dry and sweaty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And now for something completely different. Because gueuze beers are different in a staggering and mind-bending way. Some people are entirely horrified by them, despite otherwise being big beer nerds. Other people would drink them all day and all night and go a bit kittens-with-catnip at the mere sight of one.\u00a0Myself, I’m somewhere in the … Continue reading Lindeman’s \u2018Cuv\u00e9e Ren\u00e9\u2019<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[26,6,16],"class_list":["post-2575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","tag-belgian","tag-pages","tag-belgium"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5348,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2013\/02\/11\/the-lost-podcast-archive-part-i\/","url_meta":{"origin":2575,"position":0},"title":"The Lost Podcast Archive, Part I","author":"Phil","date":"February 11, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In not-at-all breaking news, it is apparently\u00a0February. 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I'm in Sydney for a few more days, having one of those holidays1 wherein you stop wearing your watch, stop wearing even shoes, and swiftly lose track\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Metablogging"","block_context":{"text":"Metablogging","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/meta\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Beer Diaries, etc.","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beer-Diaries-etc.-1024x575.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beer-Diaries-etc.-1024x575.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Beer-Diaries-etc.-1024x575.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":55,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2004\/01\/07\/sam-adams-boston-lager\/","url_meta":{"origin":2575,"position":3},"title":"Samuel Adam\u2019s \u2018Boston Lager\u2019","author":"Phil","date":"January 7, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"So starts the diary. 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I should add that even now, at the time of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Martinborough 'Tora Dark'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-1018-Martinborough-Tora-Dark-300x280.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2575"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2636,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2575\/revisions\/2636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}