Beer 85: Drie Fonteinen Doesjel

While Gary thinks this beer adventure is teaching him foreign pronunciation, I recognize that I am completely inept when it comes to figuring out where to put accents, what letters are silent.  It’s all me putting the wrong emPHAsis on the wrong sylLABble.  So I point a lot.

And I’m very glad I pointed at this one.  The Drie Fonteinen Doesjel is an old lambic beer aged in oak.  This one blends one, two and three-year-old lambics.  The yeasts in the youngest go dormant for inexplicable reasons, allowing the flavors of the original lambics to shine through.  Doesjel is Flemish for snoozer -- an apt description indeed.  With the yeast having gone dormant, this old lambic beer pours as if it is unblended…no head!

Even more interesting is that this particular bottle is six years and ten days old.  It was bottled on February 23, 2006 and would have kept for another four years had I not shown up.  This beer is older than my nephew!  I like perspective like that…it helps…with the…you know…perspective.

So here it sits - deep apricot in color.  No head.  Smelling all funky like a good lambic should.  The smell is earthy and reminds me of wet hay.  The lack of carbonation makes it a very light beer to drink.  Doesjel tastes of sour apples, lemon and a similar mineral taste to what one would get from a very dry white wine.  I guess it goes without saying that it also finishes very dry.

While this one is very good, I’m not ready to put it in my top 25.  Although I do feel kind of bad that I’m drinking it alone while waiting for my chicken pot pie to cook wearing the most ridiculous outfit because I was too lazy to get matching clothes from the laundry room.  Oh well.

You don’t get a photo of my ridiculous outfit, but I will leave you with this….

Cheers!