Duck Duck Gooze – New Lost Abbey Beer Info

As mentioned last week, The Lost Abbey will be hosting a Christmas in July Celebration/Fundraiser July 25.  One of the biggest items of note is the anticipated release of Duck Duck Gooze. We talked with Tomme Arthur to find out more info about this beer.

When did the Duck Duck Gooze project/creation start?
The idea for Duck Duck Gooze came to me about 6 years ago. I love the word play in the name and wanted to take the essence of Geuze (blend of new and old beer) and put it to work in our brewery. We launched our barrel program in 2006 and at that time filed barrels in April with some Avant Garde that is the 3 year beer in this blend.

What beers did you blend to comprise Duck Duck Gooze? (Gueze is two or more blened lambics)
There are at least three different beers at work. We have Young mellow yellow. We have middle aged Phunky Duck and the oldest is the barrel aged Avant Garde that has been soured. The barrels are a mix of french oak from various wineries all previously holding red wine.

Did any old world/traditional Guezes or Lambics inspire this beer?
I would say that my travels through Belgium (both literally and their bottles) has taught me about flavor perspectives. We know that this batch of Duck Duck has a hint more acetic qualities than traditional geuze and is more Cantillon like in this regard. I love the earthy and mushroom like tone that is found in Drie Fonteinein but our cultures don’t make beer this way (yet). Hopefully someday we’ll get that worked out. Until then, we have our Duck Duck Gooze as a nice example of blended beer (albeit not lambic).

Although a small group has sampled this and given great feedback, would you recommend someone drink it now or wait?  If so, how long?
We packaged the beer about a month ago. It has great carbonation (go figure) and is drinking nice. Although we have seen it settle down a bit in the last couple weeks and seemingly the bottle shock is starting to wear off. I believe some time certainly won’t hurt it. I seriously doubt, we’re at the peak of drinkability here. Our patrons will be given a chance to sample the beer on tap at the party and make a decision for themselves.