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Aren't traditional kriek's unblended?

No. Typically Oude Krieks are usually blends of multiple barrels, and some are spiked with a little young lambic (Cantillon Kriek) or a simple sugar syrup (Lou Pepe Kriek) to spark refermentation in the bottle. The Kriek Lambiek is flat and does not undergo meaningful refermentation in the bottle.
 
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No. Typically Oude Krieks are usually blends of multiple barrels, and some are spiked with a little young lambic (Cantillon Kriek) or a simple sugar syrup (Lou Pepe Kriek) to spark refermentation in the bottle. The Kriek Lambiek is flat and does not undergo meaningful refermentation in the bottle.

Doesn't the inclusion of the "bottling sugar" in Lou Pepe Kriek actually, by definition, not make it a Oude Kriek anymore? doesn't Oude Kriek have to be a blend of young and old lambics, like Oude Geuze?
 
Doesn't the inclusion of the "bottling sugar" in Lou Pepe Kriek actually, by definition, not make it a Oude Kriek anymore? doesn't Oude Kriek have to be a blend of young and old lambics, like Oude Geuze?

100% strict definition, yeah. I've found Oude Kriek is a bit looser (in practice) to include anything that's not artificially sweetened (for the purpose of sweetening rather than priming).
 
No. Fruit fades, it's just a matter of how much. Even the 30-year-old Cantillon Framboise I had still had some perceptible fruit in it, but it was far less than you'd get in a fresh Rose de Gambrinus. (I'm assuming the recipe stayed roughly constant across time, which I think is fair.) Some fruits fade quickly, I think Fou has faded noticeably after a few months. This will also vary with palates, depending on how sensitive you are to various things you might not perceive beer as fading as much.
Probably a stupid question, but if you plan on aging a Cantillon bottle long term and they obviously leak/evaporate what would be the downside to waxing them? Would that negatively affect the cork?
 
Probably a stupid question, but if you plan on aging a Cantillon bottle long term and they obviously leak/evaporate what would be the downside to waxing them? Would that negatively affect the cork?

Rust the cap, probably. Not sure other than that... wax is gas-permeable, likely wouldn't change how it aged too much...
 
Rusting is the other thing I was thinking, but wouldn't the wax prevent evaporation and leaking?
Sure, but to what end? What's the goal? To keep liquid inside? I mean, if the liquid inside the cap/cork wants to get outside, then waxing is just going to end up with a metal cap sitting in an acidic solution for a long period of time, which seems obviously terrible to me (the cap will corrode and now has an easy diffusion path back into the bottle). Is that worth keeping some small amount of liquid in the bottle? I dunno, I don't see why it would be.

As tehzachatak said wax is gas-permeable, so wax won't prevent oxygen infiltration into the bottle, though it may slow it down. But, again, does it matter? Lambics seem to be pretty robust to oxidation, and elemental oxygen actually isn't a big deal for oxidation anyway. I've read that it requires metallic ions to form into a free radical that can actual oxidize something, so to take it back to my point above having a rusty cap sitting in solution would be bad for a second reason: the iron atoms can now convert the elemental oxygen to a free radical (note: I'm not a chemist and I may be misunderstanding this).

Further along the "to what end?" question, we have the fact that, aside from catastrophic amounts, I haven't heard of leakage harming the beer (I actually just recently had a 2012 3F Geuze that was covered in a sticky film that smelled like vinegar, given that it had been sitting untouched in my cellar for months this pretty much had to have come from the bottle, it was perfectly fine). And if the bottle for whatever reason wants to disgorge half its contents, will some flimsy wax actually stop it? I have no idea, and I'm sure it depends a lot on how you wax it, but in general I'm pretty skeptical.

Finally, I can't see why you'd care at all about evaporation. In fact you'd probably rather that any leaked liquid evaporate quickly into a (relatively) harmless film than sit around and cause corrosion.

So I think that, without actually trying it in some kind of weird experiment, you'd probably rather not wax your lambics. (I can think of one exception to this and that's if you're about to ship something and are particularly worried about the integrity of its seal. SeaWatchman did this with an old bottle he shipped me that only had a wine cork to keep the contents in, but there the wax served mostly as a mechanical means of keeping the cork in, a large amount of tape would've worked too.)
 
I haven't really figured out a good reason why anything is waxed, so more curious about the benefits than anything.
 
On the topic of fading fruit, it would appear that most of the esters we associate with fruit smells aren't very robust and decompose out of a beer quickly. That said, the process of decomposition is almost certainly complex, and will yield other esters or related compounds that can taste like things other than the original fruit. This is how a wine that started out as grape juice can taste like pineapple, or grass, etc. With that in mind, fruit beers will sometimes age into something different, but still delicious. It's a bit of a crapshoot, though, and usually the brewer has made the beer with fresh fruit flavors in mind.

Also, to add to what stupac said, the flavor we associate with a fruit is usually a complex mixture of different compounds. Some may dominate the overall sensation, but rarely can a single chemical fully capture the taste of a fruit. Some of these compounds are undoubtedly more robust than others to the effects of age, and so it is not that all the flavor of a fruit fades evenly with time, but rather parts of the flavor of the fruit fade at different rates. This means that a fruited beer might loose most of its fruit flavor in a couple months, but then still have a clearly recognizable flavor of the fruit left for decades. The fading of a flavor is not a linear process, particularly when that "flavor" is actually composed of many disparate chemicals.
 
Okay guys. I am really sorry to be this guy. But Neither on BA or TB did I ever read the lay down vs. stand up debate. I really dont have the time to go through 72 pages in this thread.

So yes right now I am being a lazy bastard and asking and didnt want to start a new thread.

So. I am sitting on bottles for my kids. Opening in 2027 and 2033. Stand them up or lay down. Or stand and then invert every year to wet the cork? In a wine fridge at 59.

I need help.
 
Okay guys. I am really sorry to be this guy. But Neither on BA or TB did I ever read the lay down vs. stand up debate. I really dont have the time to go through 72 pages in this thread.

So yes right now I am being a lazy bastard and asking and didnt want to start a new thread.

So. I am sitting on bottles for my kids. Opening in 2027 and 2033. Stand them up or lay down. Or stand and then invert every year to wet the cork? In a wine fridge at 59.

I need help.
http://www.talkbeer.com/community/threads/cellaring-faq.1488/

If that's TL;DR: it doesn't matter.
 
Okay guys. I am really sorry to be this guy. But Neither on BA or TB did I ever read the lay down vs. stand up debate. I really dont have the time to go through 72 pages in this thread.

So yes right now I am being a lazy bastard and asking and didnt want to start a new thread.

So. I am sitting on bottles for my kids. Opening in 2027 and 2033. Stand them up or lay down. Or stand and then invert every year to wet the cork? In a wine fridge at 59.

I need help.

Vertical argument:
Blah blah something about oxygen and surface area

Horizontal argument:
cantillon-brewery.jpg
 
both are very compelling arguments

The characteristic time scales for the diffusion of headspace gas for vertical and horizontal storage are both going to be very small in comparison to the months/years that the bottles are stored for. I doubt the surface area argument holds that much water. I welcome anyone with numbers to prove me wrong, though.
 
Okay guys. I am really sorry to be this guy. But Neither on BA or TB did I ever read the lay down vs. stand up debate. I really dont have the time to go through 72 pages in this thread.

So yes right now I am being a lazy bastard and asking and didnt want to start a new thread.

So. I am sitting on bottles for my kids. Opening in 2027 and 2033. Stand them up or lay down. Or stand and then invert every year to wet the cork? In a wine fridge at 59.

I need help.

Lol_no_no_no_cleveland_gif_family_guy.gif
 
Bay Area TBers, do we ever get any De Cam? I don't think I've ever seen it, but I haven't ever looked for it.
 
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