Crosby's Kitchen & CocktailLou Pepe Gueuze

The Lou Pepe series of beers are made with two year old lambic, often coming from barrels in which only wine has been kept before. The second fermentation is not caused by addition of young lambic but of sweet liquor. The standard Cantillon Gueuze is a blend of 1,2, and 3-year-olds. The inclusion of the younger lambic (which still has some unfermented sugars in it) sparks a refermentation in the bottle that gives Gueuze its famous champagne-like spritziness. The simple idea behind the special Lou Pepe blend is that it should have much more of the taste of old lambic, which is of course much harder, drier, more sour, and more complex than the young stuff. (Though 3-year-olds are generally more complex than 2-year-olds, it's not necessarily so; the 2-year-olds used in this instance have as much character as most 3-year-olds.) This being Gueuze, it has to be spritzy, so the brewery opted for the same method used in conditioning champagne: everyday refined sugar is dissolved in water and added to cause a refermentation. The sugar ferments out completely, so there is no residual sweetness, which Jean-Pierre famously detests.