Sweetened Lambic

← An Overview of Lambic

Sweetened Lambic

No beer style has a greater dichotomy than lambic. For many, it is an entry level beer, marketed as easy drinking, sweet, and a great transition for people who generally do not like the taste of "regular" beer. On the other side is a complex beverage: an acquired taste that is considered to be one of most evolved and sought after beers among aficionados. The continued popularity of sweetened lambic serves both as a vehicle for commercial success as well as a polarizing entity among brewers and blenders who chose not to sweeten their products.

The Introduction of Sweetened Lambic

The dichotomy between sweetened and unsweetened lambic has been represented for more than 200 years. Until the mid-1800’s, when pressurized barrels enabled beer to move more freely, beer in the Brussels was primarily lambic blended into faro. Traditional faro is lambic that has been sweetened with brown sugar. Drinkers who did not appreciate the tart nature of lambic would add one or two lumps of sugar to make the beer more palatable. A tool called a ‘stoemper’ was often used in lambic to help the sugars dissolve faster. Despite the popularity of faro and sugar sweetening, some lambic drinkers insisted on drinking their lambic “neat.”

This trend has not gone away entirely. In the 1940s and 1950s, the demand for sweetened lambic continued to grow as consumer tastes trended toward the sweeter side of things. During World War II, those brewers who were still able to brew were severely restricted in terms of the quality and quantity of their ingredients. In order to continue producing kriek, many brewers added extra flavorings and colorings to combat the lack of available fruits. With the success of cola and soft drinks, both small and large brewers alike followed this trend by bringing capsulekensgeuze to the market. Capsulekensgeuze was generally comprised of a blend of lambic and top-fermented beer, was filtered, pasteurized, sweetened, pressurized with CO2 and bottled into 25cl bottles. Belle Vue and other lambic brewers also began to pasteurize their beers to prevent bottle conditioning and potential bottle explosions as a result of the residual sugars being left in the beers. Filtration also removed many of the bugs and created a cleaner beverage suited for the soda drinker market.

Fruit Shortages, Juices, and Sweeteners

Shortages in fruits traditionally found in Belgian lambics also played a part in the addition of fruit juice and extracts. After 1945, European agriculture was in dire straights, and many producers were left unable to grow or supply fruits. Postwar food rationing and a rise in sugar consumption in general also played an important role in the shift to sweeter beers. In the postwar era, much of the sweetened lambic was primarily the result of blending young lambic or other top fermenting beers that contained significant residual sweetness with more tart, aged lambic.

Lindemans, for example, began sweetening in 1972-1973 because of a shortage of Schaeerbeekse cherries. Some lambics are even sweetened artificially with Aspartame or Saccharin, listing 'sugar substitute' as an ingredient on their beer labels. As fruit lambic became more and more popular in the late 1980’s and 1990’s, fruit juices were used to further sweeten lambic. De Troch uses this process today for their fruit lambics both to satisfy the market for a sweetened product and to introduce more exotic fruit flavors like pineapple and banana into the beer that are not readily available in Belgium.

What's In a Name?

Significant confusion over unsweetened and sweetened lambic products ensued, and some brewers note that sweetening lambic was squeezing out traditional lambic. Jean-Pierre Van Roy is quoted in Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition as saying that “the sweet lambic, the sweet fruit beer, and the sweet gueuze don’t exist. It’s impossible. If it is very sweet there are three possibilities: It is not a lambic, it has aspartame added, or it is pasteurized. Lambic is a natural product.” However, history has shown that sweetening has played a significant role in the history, success, and survival, of lambic in general throughout the years. Indeed, Jean Van Roy has agreed on at least one occasion that his father was using saccharine to sweeten beers as a “means to basically save the brewery … because people wanted sweet things.” Sweetening lambic was viewed as a normal part of the business.

As lambic brewers and blenders began to recognize the importance of keeping the older traditions alive, some banded together to form HORAL. This group aims to promote lambic beers, brewing, and culture in Belgium. Their stated goals are "to promote the craft lambic beers and related products, paying attention to the entire process of brewing to serving lambic; denouncing irregularities concerning artisanal lambic beers and related products; take steps to protect the traditional lambic beers and related products." HORAL has worked to obtain and maintain current European Protections on traditional lambic beers since the Traditional Specialty Guaranteed (TSG) label was assigned to them in 1997. It guaranteed that any sweetened geuze would simply be called ‘geuze’ and any fully traditionally produced geuze would be called ‘oude geuze’, with the adjective ‘oude’ as a title that guarantees that the beer has been prepared the old, traditional way.

All lambic producers except Cantillon, who is not part of HORAL, have generally followed this terminology. Van Roy's reasoning is that they feel no need to distinguish their product as such because everything they make is traditional. This is not to say, however, that all HORAL members make all traditional products. It is well noted many HORAL members make both unsweetened products as well as sweetened products. Today breweries like Timmermans and Lindemans produce both sweetened and unsweetened products. Recently, Lindemans has moved to sweetening their lambics with stevia, a natural product.

Conclusion

Both sweetened and traditional lambics have a complex history in Belgium. While unsweetened lambic has made a significant comeback, the sweetened products continue to dominate sales for many of the larger breweries. It is easy to dismiss sweetened lambic as poor quality or even laziness on the part of the brewers, but exploring both varieties provides a more comprehensive understanding of the history of lambic beers in Belgium, the various brewing techniques, and its impact on the survival of lambic in general. To dismiss out-of-hand sweetened lambic as non-traditional is to dismiss a significant chunk of lambic culture.