Cantillon Cuvée Florian (Zwanze 2014)

Description

Cantillon Cuvée Florian (also served as Zwanze 2014) is Iris Grand Cru (the base beer for Iris, without being dry hopped, then aged for three years) with cherries added. This was not intended to be a kriek clone, rather a beer where the cherry flavor accents the fruitness and mellowness of the base beer. As such, 40% fewer cherries were added (120 grams per liter (g/l) as opposed to 200g/l in Cantillon Kriek). Next, the beer was dry hopped with a small amount of Brambling Cross hops.^[1]

History / Other Notes

Zwanze 2014 was originally intended to be a spontaneously fermented stout. Because of this, there are photographs circling of the chalkboards at Cantillon showing Zwanze 2014 with an incorrect 2013 bottling date. However, Jean Van Roy determined that the stout would benefit from another year of age prior to serving.

The first batch of Cuvée Florian was made as a gift to Florian Van Roy for his 18th birthday. It was a single cask and not sold publicly. Based on the success of this experiment, Jean and Florian decided to create a larger batch of Cuvée Florian and serve it as Cantillon Zwanze 2014.