7/22 Update: A lengthy discussion ensued at RateBeer after I posted this article. There was some misinformation in it (see my comment as to why) and Tomme cleared the air (look for the post on that page by ‘brewboy1.’
(San Marcos, CA) – For the lashings that The Lost Abbey took over the winter for delays in shipments to Sinners Club members and then for “Bottlegate” during March and April, culminating in multiple statements issued by Tomme Arthur, it looks like much of that is behind the brewery. Over 600 attended the brewery’s 3rd Anniversary party in early May and they celebrated with a number of special releases.
With another big day for the brewery coming up, Arthur & Co. are not looking back. The Lost Abbey celebrates Christmas in July on July 25 (full details here) with a huge event.
After three years, the brewery has approximately 50 beers under its belt and is making two of its top six (by RateBeer standards) available on this day including its #1 beer, Bourbon Barrel-Aged Angel’s Share. That beers also ranks 16th overall out of nearly 25k in RB’s database. The brewery will also debut a bourbon barrel version of its Santa’s Little Helper Imperial Stout. All of that said, I expect that the most anticipated beer will be the debut of Lost Abbey Duck Duck Gooze. There are already a couple “ISO” threads on that beer (‘in search of’ aka people getting in a virtual line offering/asking to trade for the beer).
Part of that desire comes from the fact that this beer has been a long time in the making, with the earliest part of this “blend” dating back three years. The name Gooze is a play on words on the Belgian style after which the beer was modeled, a type of Lambic called, “Gueuze.” For those who don’t have a good grasp on what this means, I will quote the “lambic” entry on Wikipedia, “Unlike conventional ales and lagers, which are fermented by carefully cultivated strains of brewer’s yeasts, Lambic beer is instead produced by spontaneous fermentation: it is exposed to the wild yeasts and bacteria that are said to be native to the Senne valley, in which Brussels lies. It is this unusual process which gives the beer its distinctive flavour: dry, vinous, and cidery, with a slightly sour aftertaste.” Arthur’s blend follows Gueuze tradition, blending one, two, and three-year old barrels of Lambic-style beer.
Pictured above is the debut of the “pre-approval” label courtesy of the kind folks at the brewery (hint: that means that the label is not final). Click on the pic for a slightly larger version.
Finally, on a side note, Panzer Pils is returning in August in both draft and bottles.
Duck Duck Gooze is not a traditional geuze (a blend of 1-, 2- and 3-year-old “lambics” to create an additional fermentation and a blend of flavors). I’m not 100% sure that it isn’t blended (in fact, I’m quite sure the end product *IS* an extensive blend, at least of many different BARRELS that have been aging individually in the brewing warehouse for some duration), but I’m sure that the oldest component does NOT date back the full 3 years. I spoke to Tomme at their 1st Anniversary Party over two years ago, and they had not yet brewed the base “pseudo-lambic” that they would use for DDG. Moreover, he sounded confident at the time that he could produce a finished product in a MUCH shorter timeline than the traditional 3+ years a Belgian geuze would take, even suggesting something like 9 months to a year from brewing to sale date. I was incredulous, and I suggested that they might still benefit from brewing multiple batches over several years and doing the full-on “traditional” approach of blending, even if just for pedantic reasons. He said at the time (off the top of his head) that maybe they would create one batch and call it “Duck,” then do a blend with a second batch at the two-year mark and call it “Duck-Duck,” and then produce a traditional geuze at the three-year mark and release it as “Duck-Duck-Gooze.” As exciting as that sounds, they obviously did not do that.
At the 2nd Anniversary Party, I’m pretty sure they had already brewed the DDG base beer, and it was aging in barrels at the brewery. I don’t know the exact brew date (although I’m sure there are photos of the aging barrels floating around on the interwebs, and each barrel was tagged with a sheet of paper that identified the liquid inside and the date of the fill).
So my best guess is that the *oldest* of the base lambics used in the blend is somewhere around 18 months old (if this beer is even made of multiple vintages of base lambics, which I have not heard definitively one way or the other– my guess is NOT).
Hey, thanks for the note, Chris. I’ve actually posted one of those aging barrel photos up here (dug it up on Flickr). “Mother Culture” would imply the first blended batch, no? One that is approximately 18 months old as you suggest.
Unfortunately, I went off of the info in the Beer Advocate beer fest guide which sounds like it may be incorrect.
“Phunky Duck
A single barrel from their Duck Duck Gooze program, which will eventually release Duck Duck Gooze (a blended sour ale with 1, 2 and 3 year old beer) in 2009. Phunky Duck was brewed as the back bone for this blend; 7.0%”
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