Should blended American sours be considered gueuze?

Just to stir the controversy… Should we categorize sour blends from U.S. (or anywhere) as gueuze? Unless we have full on agreed to respect the notion that lambic by definition must come from pajottenland.

No matter what the answer is i dont know why some brewer in north america hasnt made a living mixing classic allagash/ jolly pumpkin or whatever sours and selling them.

spontaneously fermented ones, yes (I think this is the case right now).

mixed cultures / pitched yeast, no: We also don’t consider Flanders Red Geuze, which is a blend of Belgian Sours.

4 Likes

+1

Yes to blend of spontaneous beers with comparable recipes, no to blend of anything else. The beers on RB listed as geuze largely follow this rule.

1 Like

Funny enough I just had Allagash’s coolship resurgam and saw it was listed.

Heres an unblended lambic from the uk, but it was made in the traditional manner, from what I believe https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/elgoods-coolship-lambic/250543/

that’s my take and I change styles for beers if they don’t meet this criteria.

Adopt the Method Traditionale category?

If something is spontaneously fermented I use the lambic styles. It does seem a fairly complex subject that is not dealt with all that consistently though. Do spontaneous ferments using barrel microbes rather than leaving open count? How important is the wheat aspect? There are certainly barrel aged blended fruit sours made here which I have left as sour / wild ale even though they’re made a lot closer to the traditional method than some of the Belgian fruit ‘lambics’.

1 Like