Fruit Lambic

Fruit Lambic is a traditional Belgian beer style produced by adding whole fresh fruit — most commonly sour cherries (kriek), raspberries (framboise), or peaches (pêche) — to young, fermenting lambic in the cellar for several months. Unlike fruit beers brewed with juice or syrup, true fruit lambic is made by allowing the whole fruit to ferment in the lambic itself, giving the beer its characteristic deep fruit colour, tart acidity, and complex stone-fruit and earthy farmhouse flavours. The base lambic is brewed in and around the Senne valley in Pajottenland, south-west of Brussels, with wild yeasts and bacteria carried in from the cool, open brewhouse air.

The fruit is added at the rate of several hundred grams per litre, and the beer is aged in wooden foeders for anywhere from six months to three years. Kriek lambic — perhaps the most iconic style — is intensely tart and ruby-coloured, with a dry, wine-like finish; framboise is brighter and more floral; pêche lambic is fuller-bodied and stone-fruity. Modern fruit lambics are sometimes blended back with fresh, sweet lambic to balance the sourness, producing the sweet-tart style sold as "kriek" in supermarkets, while the unsweetened, traditional Oude Kriek remains the connoisseur's choice.

Today Fruit Lambic is produced at the Cantillon brewery in Brussels, the Boon, Hanssens, and Oud Beersel breweries in Pajottenland, the 3 Fonteinen brewery, and the Lindemans and Timmermans families. It is poured in Belgian beer cafés (Moeder Lambic in Brussels, Cambrinus in Bruges) and exported to specialty bottle shops in the United States, Japan, and the United Kingdom. It pairs beautifully with Belgian aged cheeses, pâté, dark chocolate, and duck à l'orange.