I wouldn't mind quaffing a couple pulls of Chimay myself!!! The key to making Lambic beers besides mineral content and water quality is that although the ingredients used are virtually the same for making any beer, the process is more akin to making wine. Also, Lambic beers are double fermented, once with a thermophillic group of yeasts-immediately after being poured from the mash tun and held at a certain temperature for several hours before chill-down process. After a period of many days, the fermented mash is filtered then bottled or fassed i.e. put in kegs. Now, a group of mesophillic yeasts are added, the bottles and kegs are laagered for several months to develop flavors and ferment. It would be nearly impossible for an American brewery,whether micro- or regional- or national- to make money with all the labor-intensive processes and costly materials and the length of time to ferment; for it to be cost effective and still make a profit without compromising some part of the process? It's no small wonder that Trappist monks make this elixir?
Now, I had home- brewed this Chimay style of beer, several years ago. Had a deep well (487 ft.) and the water was very hard with many dissolved minerals but no iron,luckily. Also had a BIL living in Bastogne, Belgique; working as a chemical engineer for Bayer Inc. His daily diet included a pull or four of this stuff and the pommes frittes with mayo slathered on top! He said that my Lambic was very close and my Chimay was very good, but he admitted he was no expert and he couldn't precisely judge the minute nuances and differences between my home brew and the real thing? Maybe the fact was that there was a huge dent in the keg and that he "might" have had somehow been directly connected to this and was in no condition his condition was in!
Leffe blond Miss Prissy? I do know that a Hefeweisse is a lightly colored (blonde perhaps?) wheat beer. Hefeweisse literally means "wheat-white".
Maybe it was from lab meeting and not the cheese.
