Here's the lineup for this Friday's Lambic by the Glass.

Beer manager Mike Bauman and I have done the inventory, and I've selected the following assembly of Belgian lambics and fellow travelers (12 of them bottled, and three draft) to represent the range of styles in the genre. 4-oz sample pours are $4.00 unless otherwise noted, and if you don't know by now what I'm talking about, familiarize yourself with Lambic by the Glass, Version 5: On as scheduled for this Friday, September 4.

UNBLENDED LAMBIC

Cantillon 1900 Bruocsella Grand Cru
No vintage indicated. Straight, single-batch lambic aged three years before packaging. Minimal carbonation; usually almost still. This is the fundamental lambic flavor.

GUEUZE

Cantillon Organic Gueuze … DRAFT
Non-vintage. The famous Cantillon house blend of one-, two- and three-year old lambics, and a yardstick of sorts. One of three draft exceptions to the "bottled" theme of Lambic by the Glass.

Drie Fonteinen Doesjel
Bottled in ’06. The name means “snoozer,” and refers to yeast gone dormant in this blend of one-, two- and three-year-old lambics. The result generally lacks carbonation, much in the fashion of unblended lambic.

Girardin 1882
Black label; unfiltered – brewed in ’07, bottled in ’09. Girardin has been brewing and blending since 1845, and has been in the hands of the same owning family for more than a century.

St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition
When the Van Honsebrouck family installed a coolship at the top of their Kasteel (Castle) brewery a decade ago and began brewing lambic, they were the first in Belgium to do it outside the Senne Valley.

FRAMBOISE

Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus … DRAFT
Fresh raspberries are added to year-and-a-half old lambic.

St. Louis Premium Framboise ... $2.00
Sweetened version of Framboise (raspberry).

KRIEK

Hanssens Young Kriek … FIRKIN
Another first: Non-vintage Kriek in a firkin. Cherries are the most traditional fruit of choice for steeping in lambic. Hanssens uses black cherry pulp.

St. Louis Premium Kriek ... $2.00
Sweetened version of Kriek (cherry)

MISCELLANEOUS (FLAVORED) LAMBICS and SPECIALTIES

Cantillon Fou’ Foune Apricot ... $7.00
Bottled in ’08. Apricots from Bordeaux are added to a blend of aged lambics.

Cantillon St. Lamvinus ... $7.00
Two-year old lambic (bottled in 2008) fermented with red Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, generally from different vineyards for each year’s batch.

De Ranke Cuvee de Ranke
Not "pure" lambic, and unpreviewed by the Publican, but sounds like hybrid fun. Used as the base for De Ranke's Kriek, but without cherries added, Cuvee de Ranke is 70% ale fermented with a Rodenbach-like yeast strain, and 30% Girardin lambic. It is billed as "somewhat sour, somewhat hoppy." I have only 6 bottles (750 ml).

St. Louis Premium Peche ... $2.00
Sweetened version of Peche (peach).

Two Brothers Project Opus 10 Kriek
From the Chicagoland microbrewer, thid is a “pseudo-lambic” ringer, oak-aged, with cherries added. The last four bottles in our possession have aged an additional two years since the batch was last sampled during the year of release (2007).

Hanssens Mead the Gueuze
Circa 2006 or early 2007. A blend of Hanssens Oude Gueuze and English mead from the Lurgashall meadery. We cellared these bottles, and at my last tasting of an earlier vintage, the result was some oxidization and diminished carbonation, but with a whole different dimension to the character. It's anyone's guess what we'll experience this time.