Jason Moore
Brouwerij Omer Vander Ghinste, quite a mouthful of a name has a really neat history of producing beer. The brewery started all the way back in 1892, this was a time in Belgium when every brewery produced it’s own type of beer and that’s what they were known for. At the time they were brewing Ouden Tripel, which today is called VanderGhinste Oud Bruin.
The Jacobins Series began with a Gueze they started brewing in 1970, then a Kriek they began brewing in 1983 and then a Framboise in 1986, all of these beers were crafted using fruit along with young and old lambic beer.
The beer I’m reviewing today is the Cuvée Des Jacobins Rogue, which is a Flemish Sour Ale. The beer is crafted using spontaneously fermented beer, which starts out being cooled down in a stainless steel vessel called a coolship. This process allows wild yeast from the air to get into the beer, it is then transferred into French oak foudres where it spends a minimum of 18 months fermenting and resting to pick up the oak character.
The beer pours a really beautiful deep hazy ruby red color, it’s very dark with a hint of brown, there’s a little head when poured a very thin line of lacing that remains around the edge of the glass after it rests.
There’s a really beautiful bouquet of aromas is coming out the top of the glass with this beer. I am getting a lot of tart fruit, cherries, very sour apple, citrus peel, oak, lots of funkiness and vinegar.
The taste follows pretty closely to the nose, the predominant flavor I taste is sour apple, but there are plenty of other profiles going on. Sour cherry is prominent along with a good amount of acidity like lemon peel. The oak shines as it warms up some and there is a strong vinegar presence throughout drinking it, however, it’s not unbalanced and doesn’t have near the amount of vinegar as say, Duchesse De Bourgogne has. The beer is obviously sour, but again it’s not a punch you in the face sour, there is sweet malt that balances the beer very nicely.
