Question: Why Not Zwanze Day?
Answer: Maybe Yes! (see below for more, including 3 original
knock knock jokes)
Zwanze is Brasserie Cantillon. Zwanze
is a word from a unique dialect that exists more or less only in Brussels,
Belgium. I was told that it means
something like a person who would never answer a straight-forward question: Well,
yes maybe. Somebody sarcastic, I guess.
The first Zwanze beer (it was not originally thought of as an ongoing series)
was a lambic made with Rhubarb (a tart/sour vegetable). The laugh here is classically Brussels: Why
would you need to add a sour vegetable to a sour beer?! Ha! (insert roaring laughter track)
For the uninitiated, it needs to be
said that Brasserie Cantillon is very perhaps the place that led to a world-wide
reverence (and resurgence) for sour beer.
They brew lambic, generally consisting of raw (unmalted) wheat and malted
barley produced via a turbid mash (to amplify the starches). Those liquid grain
sugars and starches are cooled overnight in a shallow vat up in the attic…then they
are moved to oak barrels. No slurries of lab cultured yeast or bacteria are
pitched. Everything that impacts the beer lives within the air, the walls, the
pipes, and the barrels…of that place in Brussels. Once in the barrels, the beer ferments and
evolves from 1 to 3 years before being blended with other batches and maybe
seeing some fruits (or vegetables!) added towards the end. The result is dry, acidic, woody, wacky,
lactic, and frequently intense but still nuanced. In the 1990s, these beers influenced the people
who would become the icons of the American craft brewery scene…and they still
influence and inspire. Even if you won’t
find vanilla or milk sugar in any of them…
So what?
2 years ago, I ordered a single keg of Kerkom Kriek from Shelton Brothers (the importer of Cantillon). When the shipment arrived, the Kerkom Kriek wasn’t there…but there was a keg of Cantillon Kriek. Whoops! I tucked it away. Eventually, I got tired of moving it around my warehouse as we grew…so I asked Dave at Casual Pint if we could tap it on what has become International Zwanze Day…and call it “Not Zwanze Day.” We couldn’t get a keg of Zwanze here (they are too limited) so this isn’t Zwanze Day. Dave was worried we would make somebody upset by using the name Zwanze at all, so I called my friends at Shelton Brothers and they said “That’s cool, we can probably send another Cantillon keg if you want it.” Answer: maybe Yes! But time got delayed (time is NEVER on time, is it? Certainly not when you want it to be), and we couldn’t get the second Cantillon keg here in time to tap them both ON “Zwanze Day.” So we decided it was cool to delay the Kriek tapping because in the end, this is NOT ZWANZE DAY. No Zwanze is being offered. Yes No Maybe Thank you. Right?
So, for your beer drinking needs,
we have that accidentally shipped Cantillon Kriek keg, Cantillon Classic
Gueuze…and some beers from folks that are very much friends of Brasserie
Cantillon: Brouwerij De Ranke, Brasserie De La Senne, and from the USA Hill
Farmstead.
You will never find all 6 of these
beers on tap at one location in Nebraska again. Some may never appear again
even on their own. But RaritY isn’t the point. The soul is what we
are concerned with here. Coming together. Friends & Community. What makes
us in common and what makes us other? The people that make these 6 beers are
some of the most dedicated artisans I have ever encountered. They are all also
very unique, interesting, and empathetic souls.
The ghostly souls of those far away folks will wander into
the Casual Pint community and fall out of the faucets for a day. I am so giddy.
Peace.
KNOCK KNOCK
Q: Who is there? A: Not Zwanze.
Q: Not Zwanze Who? A:
Maybe No?
KNOCK KNOCK
Q: Who is there? A: Rhubaarb Fool
Q: Rhubaarb Fool Who? A: Who did put Rhubaard in my lambic?
