This August the Brewers Guild Awards were announced, with singular trophy winning beers assigned to each of the sweeping fifteen categories. Amongst all the triumph and tribulation, one category produced something altogether miraculous.
The trophy for European Ales (a broad category that primarily captures the many historic Belgian styles) went to Garage Project’s Chance Luck & Magic for not the first, nor the second, but the third time in a row. A hat-trick like this is all but unheard of in the Brewers Guild Awards, but perhaps even more surprising is the unusual style of this unbeatable beer.
Chance Luck & Magic is a Gueuze (‘Oude Gueuze’ technically), a primordial Belgian style of beer that in a very real way brews itself. Originating in the Pajottenland region southwest of Brussels, Gueuze dates back to the thirteenth century. While its basic composition is fairly ordinary, a mix of barley and wheat with a very minor hopping level, what makes this beer remarkable is how it’s fermented.
Where fermentation of a typical beer is controlled by a single, carefully controlled yeast strain, Gueuze is generated by a chaotic, uncontrolled array of wild yeasts and other microorganisms. This is achieved by exposing the beer to the elements overnight in a shallow metal trough called a coolship. Suitably inoculated, the fermenting beer is transferred to old barrels where it inherits yet another boost of microbial influence from the wood.
Inside the barrel, the beer ferments and further digests for a further year (up to as many as three), and to finally become Gueuze, multiple vintages of different vintages are blended together and gently refermented in the bottle.
It’s a long and painstaking process that draws many parallels to Champagne, and the final result is one of the most unique beers not just in New Zealand, but the entire world.
Just as the brewing process is extreme, actually drinking one of these beers is no small feat either. Sour beer has gained a lot of mainstream popularity over the years, to the point where most drinkers are familiar with it now. Gueuze is not a sour beer, it is the ultimate sour beer, and genuinely enjoying it can demand a very robust palate. Here are my tasting notes from the 2021 vintage, featured on The Pursuit of Hoppiness.
“A lilting aroma of dried fruit, toasted walnut and complex oak is punctuated by a razor sharp tang that hints at the force of the flavour pent up within. That flavour is brutally sour at first, but soon coalesces into a symphony of incredible depth and structure, treating the palate to a vast permutation of flavours on the way to the exceptionally long finish. Arresting and confrontational, while intricately complex and fragile.”
Consequent to it’s rampant success, Chance Luck & Magic is now very hard to come by (not to mention extremely pricey), but there are a few other intrepid local brewers producing their own examples around the country. Time from Wilderness Brewing, Oude Imperiale from 8 Wired, and Terrior Blend from Craftwork are all presently available.
