My First Steps Blending at Home

After meeting some lambic brewers and gueuze blenders, like Toon from Vandenbroek, John from ‘t Pomphuizeke, and many others I met at Carnivale Brettanomyces, I got inspired to make my own blends too. Having made fermented beverages, vinegar, and sourdough bread before, wild fermentation isn’t new to me, but making a traditional product like gueuze is.

What is gueuze?

In short, gueuze is the only beer that’s not brewed but blended. To make a gueuze one needs to blend different lambics together and let it age and referment on the bottle. Lambics are the base beers for a gueuze, but also for many fruit variants like Kriek (cherries), or Framboise (raspberries). Blending 1-year-old, 2-year-old, and 3-year-old lambic together would result in Oude (Dutch for old) Geuze. Oude Geuze has the Traditional Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) label from the European Union. For gueuze to be called an Oude Geuze, the weighted average age of the blend has to be more than one year, and the oldest component has to be aged in wooden barrels for at least three years.

Why?

Long story short, I love to drink this stuff so I wanted to see if I could make it myself too. All blenders certainly have their own characteristic style, and I’m curious to see if I can develop my own blending style too. Furthermore, I’d like to share my own blends with friends, family, and other interested people. I like experimenting with different tastes, but I’m also fond of the tradition of gueuze. Therefore I made several blends of Oude Geuze and experimented with some other blends and macerations (more about this below). Last but not least, blending gueuze at home is the perfect way to learn more about lambic beers with a limited budget and on a small scale.

Goal

My goal with these own blends is to share some of them during Carnivale Brettanomyces next year. The homebrewers market this year was amazing, and it would be awesome to attend next year’s edition, sharing my own blends and fruit lambics with fellow wild-fermented beer freaks.

What do you need?

You don’t need much to start blending, and it can be done within a small budget. All the equipment and ingredients are listed below. To cut costs, I tried to buy most of the necessary equipment second-hand. The items in italics are optional. A recipient for the lambic isn’t needed if you buy the lambic in a bag-in-box, however, not all breweries provide this option. A funnel isn’t needed either but came in pretty handy when filling the fermentation jugs. If you’re only interested in making blends and not in macerations, you don’t need any fermentation jugs, fruits, herbs, or spices. I made some test blends by weight using a kitchen scale, but you can also measure by volume and use a graduated cylinder.

  • Blending vessel with faucet
  • Hydrometer and graduated cylinder
  • Champagne/cider bottles 37,5cl or 75 cl
  • Corks
  • Crown caps (29mm)
  • Cork machine
  • Cap machine
  • Lambics
  • Patience/time
  • Recipient or jerrycan for the lambic
  • Funnel
  • Kitchen scale
  • Fermentation jug with an airlock
  • Fruits, herbs, or spices, optional

Where to buy lambic

Admittedly, this is probably going to be a whole lot easier if you live in or close to Belgium. Of all identified breweries that sell lambic, most required me to pick it up at the brewery. However, it’s not impossible to get your hands on some lambic if you’re living farther away. Terroir Blending from Bulgaria uses lambic from Lindemans, so they ship outside Belgium too. And, even if you can’t get Belgian lambic where you live, it’s worth checking out if there’s a brewery nearby that brews this type of beer. Did you know that I already identified almost 600 breweries from over 30 countries that make some type of wild beer? Maybe there’s one in your proximity that can help you out.

In the end, I bought lambic from four breweries. 12-month-old lambic from De Troch, old lambic with an undefined age from Girardin, 24-month-old lambic from Kestemont, and 36-month-old lambic from Timmermans.

How?

Now that I had what I needed, it was time to get started with the actual blending. For me, there were three basic principles in this first blending adventure. The first one, ‘Taste is King’. After tasting all lambics individually, I made sure to try out blends with varying ratios of the different lambics. Secondly, ‘Oxygen is the Enemy!’ If you don’t want your lambic turning into vinegar, make sure to keep the exposure to oxygen as low as possible. If you buy bag-in-boxes, this isn’t an issue. However, if you get your lambic from the brewery in your own jerrycan, make sure to either store it appropriately or blend and bottle as soon as possible. Lastly, ‘1010 is the Max’. Make sure to measure the specific gravity of your blends. You want enough sugar in there for the re-fermentation to take place, but not too much as this could result in exploding bottles. Therefore, anything over 1010 is too much.

After I tested and tasted some blends and was happy with the results, it was time to blend. For this, I measured the right amount of lambics by volume and added them to my vessel with faucet. After a quick stir, I filled up my bottles. With the last bottle filled, I corked all of the bottles one by one by hand. And, I can tell you, this is a workout. Somehow, it took a lot of force to get the corks in. After some reading and asking around on the internet, I found out that it might be easier if the corks are placed in cooking water for a few minutes before cramming them into the bottleneck. After corking the bottles, it’s important to let the bottles stand vertically for 24 hours before storing them horizontally. The next day I capped every bottle with a crown cap and off to the cellar they went. During bottle fermentation, it’s recommended to keep the bottles horizontally.

For the fruit macerations, I cut up the fruit in manageable chunks that would fit through the mouth of the fermentation jug, added spices, and topped this off with a blend of lambic. These jugs went straight to the cellar after placing an airlock on the top. It’s important to store these jugs in a dark place, as light can have an effect on the taste and quality of the beer.

My blends

After some intense evenings of tasting, blending, and bottling, I ended up with 5 blends and 3 macerations. Four different blends of Oude Geuze and one wine-lambic hybrid, using Armenian pomegranate wine. For the macerations, I used wild peaches, rhubarb, and kiwi. When using fruit, make sure to use organic fruits because you don’t want pesticides swimming around in your lambic. To add some uniqueness to my macerations, I chose to add some spices. I added dried cascabel peppers to the wild peach lambic, black kumquats to the rhubarb lambic, and black pepper and black lime to the kiwi lambic. The black citrus fruits were all homemade from organic produce. To dry and blacken the kumquats and limes I kept these at 50 degrees Celsius for a number of weeks. The result is a very refreshing sour and citrussy aroma. Can’t wait to see how this works out in the lambics.  

The gueuze bottles will need to condition for at least 6 months, although I’ll likely be checking in and trying a bottle after a month or three. The fruit lambics will ferment for at least three months, after which I’ll decide whether they need longer, or can be blended and bottled. Want to stay up to date about this project? Then follow me on Instagram by clicking the button at the bottom of the page!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *