Spiderman saves beer! Read all about it!

Communicating with a close mate, need not be a thing of many laboured words. In  fact, the bonds of friendship can make sense of even the most incomprehensible of utterings, even those as mad as my own. The uttering which would lead me to this review was the ever fondly held and often heard battle cry of students everywhere, "Pint?". One problem, it wasn't actually a pint I ended up having. 

In fact, the beer of choice for the evening was a Lambic beer. Now, for anyone unacquainted with Lambic beers don't worry you probably aren't alone. This just so happened to be my second encounter, not only that but also my second chance encounter. My first had been at a Beer Tasting with the guys from Trouble Brewing that we had organised for Long Legs. At the tasting an interesting bottle containing what we would soon find out to be Lambic beer was produced and consumed with much vigour and glee. My second encounter was this week, on a stroll into Dublin to pick up wine which ended in the a quiet drink with a mate in one of Dublin's many rising craft-pubs, The Porterhouse.

So, what's a Lambic beer? Well, as I mentioned, it's a little slice of madness. It also happens to be a little slice of history. Lambic is the worlds oldest beer style still being made commercially. No small feat when you have some 400 odd years under your belt as a beer style. Shunning conventional things like cultured yeast, science and technology, these beers and their dedicated followers prefer a more straight forward, give it a lash type approach. Interestingly this approach is yielding some amazing results for the faithful.

In terms of how it's done, the brewing starts with a copper boil, and then it is chucked into what is called a "Cool Ship" for a bit and left for nature to sort out for a bit. These Cool Ships are simple pot/trays placed on higher floors of the brewery usually in the roof. On these higher floors the windows are left open and sometimes slates are removed from the roof to allow the the night breeze to carry sneaky yeast in to attack the unsuspecting brew and begin the process of spontaneous fermentation. Once all is ready, the beer is then taken to the cellars where it is housed in oak casks for a bit to be attacked by some microfloral.

Finally, tying the title of the article into the actual article. These beers, especially the ones like this one that have a healthy dollop of fruit thrown in attract a lot of unwanted attention, most namely from  fruit flies. This world being of the competitive nature it is, only one of us can drink this, us or the flies. Enter our eight legged friends. Whose many webs and fondness for flies help us make sure it's us that get the drink. Once you taste the brew you'll be watching Eight Legged Freaks with a wholly new perspective to a point of cheering the spiders on a little.

Framboise, Boon 2010

A pale ruby beer, with it's head dancing between pink and purple. The beers nose is pronounced and clean with an intense nose of tarted fruits, raspberries (oddly) the most pronounced aspect of the beer. On the palate it's a love hate thing, I am a lover in this case, a strong bout of acidity, lactic sourness complementing a slight wild raspberry tart. Notes of seed/pip and fleshy raspberry also begin to emerge on a medium to long finish. Overall a refreshing mouthful. Bang on as an aperitif or even better as a dessert beer to accompany some plain vanilla ice-cream or a fitting raspberry tart. Even if it is a love hate thing, it's well worth trying.


Score: 85
Price: €5.80 (Porterhouse, take-out)
Value: 4