Newbie lambic blend

This is my first post on this forum, and this is my first blend so there will be some newbie questions ... .

Since I am a beginner I decided to start blending before brewing lambics.
How can I do this? Well I happen to live in Belgium where I can buy lambics from different ages.

So at first I wanted to add fruit to the lambic, but it isn't exactly the right time to buy fresh fruits, so I decided to just start with blending.
I bought Lindemans lambic of 11 months and Girardin of 3y and a blend of 1+2y of Girardin.
I am testing with 60% of young Lindemans, 30% Girardin 1+2y blend and 10% old Girardin.
For the blends to start refermenting in the bottle, at what temperatures should I actually put them? they are on 14°C now.

Now I decided to do a side project in a glass bucket for the fruits to add.
I've put the blend in a warmer temperature of 20°C, and I see things happening.
I guess this is Brettanomyces?
At what point should I actually add the fruit?
Should I add the fruit to the blend, or to the original lambic? (old or young?)

Extremely jealous. Would kill to do some home blending like that. As to your questions, if I had access to those beers and breweries I'd ask the brewers.

so you bought the bottles of these beers, then dumped them in a carboy at different ratios?

Did you get these lambics in poly containers? I have looked into bringing some lambic to the US in a poly container, and hadn't considered blending them!

It is likely that the refermentation will be fairly slow. With the high proportion of young lambic, you should have plenty of activity, but you should probably avoid high temperatures to avoid ropiness, which may alter the character of the blend. For this reason, traditional blenders never blend during the summer. This would suggest keeping temperatures on the low side- 17C should be good.

From what I have read, most lambic producers in BE wait from 1 to two years before adding fruit. You may wish to taste your blend to help you decide what fruit to add, and at what stage. The youngest lambic is nearly a year old, so you may be okay to blend now.

WHY! These beers are already brewed/blended to get the best balance from the beers. Why screw with them. You do know there are many folks on this forum that are really jealous of you for having access to all these beers and think it sacrilegious that you should be messing with them.

I am getting the lambics in plastic containers that I bring to the brewery.
This is certainly not to make people yealous, if that should be the case I won't post it here.
These lambics are not blended yet, that is what I will be doing.
Most of the geuze makers in Belgium are blenders and not brewers, so I don't see the difference with what I am doing, except I don't buy the wort (which I can't) but I buy the lambics to make geuze blends and fruit lambics.
Next week there even is a day of 'blending' at the Oud Beersel (Boon) brewery, just to learn us blending their lambics.
I am sorry I am offending people by saying this

I do not personally feel offended at all!

In many places in the US, we do not have any access to Belgian lambic, only gueuzes. I live in Cleveland, and locally I can get Cantillon (sporadically), Lindemans Cuvée René, Hanssens, Oud Beersel, Drie Fonteinen, Tilquin, and a blend called LambickX from Vanberg and DeWulf.

Last year, my wife and I were in Payottenland for the HORAL Toer de Gueuze, and we had the opportunity to sample lambic at De Cam, Boon, and Drie Fonteinen. We had a wonderful time getting lost and delighting in the carnival atmosphere, while sampling lambic in its original state. We had Cantillon lambic at Moeder Fontainas in Brussels. We had a 2008 barrel of Boon Lambic at 't Brugs Beertje in Brugge. What a wonderful experience it was to meet brewers and fellow lambic lovers from Belgium and around the world.

Your easy access to these lambics is probably envied by many here who do not have such access. I, for one, never had Girardin or Mort Subite until I was fortunate enough to visit your beautiful country. Traditional brewers like Jean van Roy, Frank Boon, and Armand Debelder have attained an iconic status to many gueuze lovers in the US.

I hope you will continue to share with us the results of your blending experiments and some of what you learn in Beersel. I, for one, am so happy to encounter renewed interest in these fabulous beverages, both in Belgium and elsewhere. Such interest will hopefully ensure that these brewers carry on the tradition of producing these time consuming but heavenly beers!

t-quest said:

I am getting the lambics in plastic containers that I bring to the brewery.
This is certainly not to make people yealous, if that should be the case I won't post it here.
These lambics are not blended yet, that is what I will be doing.
Most of the geuze makers in Belgium are blenders and not brewers, so I don't see the difference with what I am doing, except I don't buy the wort (which I can't) but I buy the lambics to make geuze blends and fruit lambics.
Next week there even is a day of 'blending' at the Oud Beersel (Boon) brewery, just to learn us blending their lambics.
I am sorry I am offending people by saying this

Click to expand...

I think what people are jealous of is the fact that you live in Belgium and have access to buying un-blended lambics in bulk - that would be a dream for beer lovers in the US.

I'm still a newbie at sour beers so I can't offer you any advice, but I'm hoping you'll post your blends and results here so we can see how they turn out.

By the way, I just had some Oud Beersel Gueuze a few weeks ago. That's a great beer. If you go to the class please share any useful information from it with us.

Good Luck!

I do the same thing but with Cantillon. The straight one year old lambic you can get in barrels from the brewery. I usually just buy it right before my cherries are ready in my back yard. This year I will be doing it again with fresh raspberries and rhubarb.

So to answer some of your questions, hopefully; I would add the fruit to the straight lambic, like they do at the breweries. I, just this last year, put about 4kg of cherries, with pits, into straight lambic. I aged it for about 8 mos. then bottled with the standard amount of sugar. I opened one up about two months ago and it was carbonated pretty close to kriek that I buy. This was after a few months in the bottle. It's pretty good, but not as much cherry as I would like. Next time, and what I would suggest for you, I will age it until there is nothing left but pits. I pulled it out of the cherries when I did because it was really, really dark red.

If you have any questions, want to hang out and drink, or brew some beers together, I am only about 1.5 hours east of Brussels in Germany.

Oh, I also come to Ghent quite often to go to Dranken Geers and Hopduvel. If you want to show me around.

Superchunk, I see you are from Germany, then I guess you will know 'Uli', also a geuze blender from Germany who visits Belgium alot. It's also Uli who will lead the blending day at Beersel.
I will try to take as much pictures as I can in Oud Beersel, and try to record most of the time so I can share it here.
Thank you for the good advice. I think I will add strawberries to the lambic so I can recreate the 'Hanssens Oudbeitje'.
Next time I will add them to 1 Year old lambic, now it's already a 'blend', which was kind of a mistake ... I also have to learn, guess it will still turn out as a fruit lambic, we'll see.
Geers and de Hopduvel are also my two favourite shops, although for geuze I prefer Geers. For brewing materials and foreign beers it's Hopduvel.
If you should visit Ghent again, let me know so maybe we can do some tastings.
I am planning on brewing my own lambic also, would be nice if we can brew together some time.

Afraid I do not know Uli. When is the blending day? And is it open to the public? I would like to see how they go about doing it. Would be good information, that's for sure.

'blending day' is 25 feb.
It's not open to the public, only to the 'friends of Oud Beersel'.
I could get you in, but the last time I checked there were no places left

I am incredibly jealous.

Don't worry, I will try to get everything on video (if I am allowed) so I can share with everybody.
That way we can all learn from the masters

Just thinking of smth ... it will be in Dutch :/
I'll take notes, together with pictures and translate it.

Yeah, I wouldn't be able to make it anyway. I've got a brew day planned on that day.

That will be helpful if you could do that. Appreciate sharing it.

And so this is how the strawberry lambic looks now.
I've added more strawberries and some 'Oud Beersel' lambic.
The first to stop the acetic acid and the second to give a more bitter lambic touch to the blend.

t-quest said:

I am getting the lambics in plastic containers that I bring to the brewery.
This is certainly not to make people yealous, if that should be the case I won't post it here.
These lambics are not blended yet, that is what I will be doing.
Most of the geuze makers in Belgium are blenders and not brewers, so I don't see the difference with what I am doing, except I don't buy the wort (which I can't) but I buy the lambics to make geuze blends and fruit lambics.
Next week there even is a day of 'blending' at the Oud Beersel (Boon) brewery, just to learn us blending their lambics.
I am sorry I am offending people by saying this

Click to expand...

I am definitely envious of your situation, but definitely not in a negative manner! I'm looking forward to as many notes/pics as possible from your blending day, to further fuel my jealousy.

And so we are back from Oud Beersel, a great afternoon between the barrels of Boon.
The teacher that day was Uli from Germany who tought us about blending the different lambic into geuze.
So first of all, cleaning of the bottles, setting up all equipment and then the most important part ... tasting the lambics!
There are only a few geuze brewers/blenders who still sell their lambics in Belgium; that is Girardin where you can find very young (< 6month), 1 year old and old (2y+) lambic.
The second one is Hanssens, but that is a blender, so we can buy Hanssens lambic which is actually Boon, Lindemans or Girardin wort in Hanssens barrels (= more acetic).
Third one is Tilquin, the new blender, which has lambic from wort of: Cantillon, Boon and Lindemans.
And then we have off course Oud Beersel, which is mostly Boon.
De Troch also has lambic from time to time, still have to check that one.
So, out of the 6 lambics I did manage to get 3 correct, which is already quite an achievement
So the first one was De Troch, which was quite wood and bitterness.
Second one was an old Girardin, easy to guess because of the darker colour (longer boiling times).
3rd one was Cantillon which can be recognised by the lactic acid.
4th one was Hanssens, which already had a very good taste of the 'Oud Beitje'.
5th was a young Lindemand and the last one was Oud Beersel (which smells bad and had a very strange taste).
We did a 'megablend' of all lambics, together witch the finishing touch of some bottles of De Cam old lambic 2001.
In total we had 99 750ml bottles and 11 magnum bottles.
We took 10 of them home and will try them after 6 months to begin with.

Very, berry nice. Please keep us updated and the pictures coming!

Nice! Please post tasting notes.