3 Fonteinen Doesjel

Bottle, 37,5 cl; bought @ Willems, tasted yesterday at home. Dark golden (little hazy) color, almost no head. Aroma very sour, malts. Medium body. Taste also good sourness and very nice mouthfeel, refreshing; dry, but really great stuff.

Bottle from De Bierkoning in Amsterdam. Interesting that after 6 days in Belgium, at all the best stores. the only place I could find this was Holland.

Pour has a little bit of head; it certainly wasn’t still, as the description may have you believe. Aroma is the tartest sour hay, funky as hell and very inviting. Taste is similar, with a perfect sourness and brilliant mouthfeel, rich and refreshing going down like no lambic I’ve ever had. Tough to even have some left to rate as my sips are so huge. This stuff is fantastic, and I hope it becomes a staple beer in their lineup. Since the re-opening under Armand, the gueuze simply hasn’t stood up to the old stuff, but this really makes up for that in a huge way. Bring this baby stateside!

Bottle shared by eyedrinkale at Spuyten Duyvil. Hazy golden with a beautiful rich earthy, musky cologne aroam. Rich and quite fruity as well. Woody aroma, sandalwood, musk, and soft bretty funkiness. Very soft tartness with a light orange marmalade character. Wow... this stuff is delicious.

A close inspection reveals loads of upward flowing micro-carbonation, so small a microscope is almost needed. This supports wispy streams of white foam at the surface, but no real inkling of a head. The body is a lightly hazed deep orange with yellowed amber glints. This looks lively for what it’s been through. The nose is packed to the breaking point with a three-way combination of saturated oak, barnyard funk and sun-drenched fruits covering erratic maltiness. Moderate tart acids and sweaty Brettanomyces are evident in this fresh sample. The tartness weaves back and forth between the soft and silky and the truly crushing tartness that may or may not appear upon first sip. Notes of sugary lemon juice, apple cores and navel oranges flitter in and out as well. Acidity is nearly tangible in the aroma is the liquid nears room temperature. Balance within the confines of the style is phenomenal. Oak is transparent down to its deepest tart layering. The intermittent bursts of cheek-wrinkling acidity from just a deep inhalation is the newest form of temptation. A young vibrance keeps me on my toes and forces the glass to my lips before I feel like I’m finished sniffing this one out. Barnyard notes are muddled and compressed by high acidity, but they’re explosive when they pop out of a candied Brett shell. This tastes absolutely amazing. More character - I can’t believe it’s been extracted - in this than any other 3 Fonteinen beer I’ve had, except J&J Blauw. Remarkably refreshing and tingly while retaining a marvelous maltiness and superiorly complex and ever-changing barnyard taste. Leather, horseblanket, yogurt enzymatical flirtation, must and sugar-coated lemon wedges seem to be actively bumping each other out of the way in a desperate pursuit to be the first one down the hatch. Sweetness is mild but grows steadily and quickly to a medium-high level that washes over the tongue and leaves an acid barrier. Astringency is moderate. I suppose this would seem more astringent if there weren’t heavy tannic buildup in the deepest corners of the mouth preventing much else from settling there. The flavor is highly sour and boldly refreshes with a subtle variance and a unique new twist on what never ceases to amaze, style-wise. The finish is mildly sweet, with drying acidity encroaching first, followed by punchy sourness, then fruity tartness and finally a drying of the mouth that is blended with an interesting sweet coating left to linger. The mouthfeel is light-medium bodied and very oily, very lightly sticky; this, in each sip, is just a prelude to refreshing spicy zing from tannins and velvety micro-carbonation. This drinks like an organism in liquid form, a free-flowing attack of excitement and genius. A shocking surprise in a month filled with amazing beers and breathtaking discoveries, the most brilliant and drinkable lambic I’ve encountered since my first brush with Blauw.

February 2006 Bottle Date; Sampled February 2008
As expected the beer pours quite still and it is an almost clear, honey-amber color. The aroma is nice an funky, though not aggressively so. Tart with notes of lactic acid, a touch of uriatic acid, somewhat similar to tart grapefruit, overall this is sharply acidic and while certainly aggressive is not over the top for a Lambic. The funkiness leans toward light Brett notes of butyric acid, funky farmhouse cheese, hints of nail polish, . Around the edges of the nose I get a sense of pears, a touch of green apples and even some peach like notes at times as well as some dusty, cracker like grain notes.

Tart tasting up front, yet it has a silky sort of mouthfeel due to the lack of carbonation. The acidity and structure of this brew can remind me of grapefruit at times. It does have a hint of carbonation, much less than a real ale, but still a hint of carbonation just barely tickles the tongue as the beer passes through. The acidity is predominantly lactic, but it is definitely quite fruity in its tartness, which isn’t always the case. The cat pee is more in the aroma than in the flavor, but it does play a small role here. The mouthfeel of this is quite nice, one might expect this to be quite watery as it has been fermented so low, but this is definitely not the case. Some of the texture comes from the malt, but it also seems derived from mellow, tannic oak contributions that really seem to round this beer out. Only lightly funky, the barnyard Brettanomyces notes play only a subtle role here; slight cotton ball note, a touch of barnyard, and a minimal musty earthiness.

I love a good Lambic & it is so rare that I get one, much less a good one here in the States; this one drinks so nicely. Certainly not an aggressive / hard version (the blend clearly influences that), but I really like the mix of flavors & aromas found here. To be perfect I would request a touch more barnyard funkiness, but this is fabulous as is. A 375ml bottle almost isn’t enough as I find this so drinkable that I am having a hard time collecting my thoughts about the beer and am instead just enjoying it (definitely a good sign).