This one is a special one.
A classic Belgian beer style is a Flemish red-brown (I think that many English speakers refer to it as Flemish red ale)
This is a style from the West of flanders, characterized by a sweet-sour style of beer, refreshing, and light in alcohol, great with seafood, and a classic accompaniment with shrimp.
For this style, a beer is brewed, and it is fermented in the modern way (addition of yeast, followed by fermentation in stainless steel tanks. However the same brew is also fermented for a long time (months up to over a year) in great wooden barrels, in which lactic acid bacteria are present, which than will create an acidic beer. Prior to bottling, a blend is made with barrel fermented beer, and regular fermented beer, and caramel is added to tone down the acidity, and obtain the regular flavour of Flemish red-brown.
In a distant past however, Michael Jackson visited this brewery (the beer-writer, not the singer), and upon tasting the pure barrel fermented acidic beer, he convinced the brewery to bottle it as such, and sell it as such.
The brewery obliged as a one off, but it was such a hit, that ever since they kept on producing this beer. Because it does not include the addition of caramel, it has the regular look of a regular blond beer, but it’s flavour is distinctly that of a Flemish Red-brown.
Without the caramel, the acidity is more pronounced than it is usually in this style, almost threading on Geuze territory (although Geuze is mostly acidic due to acetic acid(think vinegar), and Flemish Red-brown is acidic due to lactic acid (think sour cream), so the experience is very different).
This beer specifically spends 24 months in those great wooden barrels prior to being bottled
Below is an example of such barrels, though these are from a different brewery making the same style of beer
By Nancy W. Beach - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41934430
The acidity is front main and center for this beer, right from the moment you pick up the glass and smell it, until it washes away down your throat, but never is it aggressive, or “too much”.
Weighing in at a somewhat more hefty 7.2% alcohol for this beer, it is on the stronger side, but that adds to the body of the beer. It has a nice long finish.
A great beer to drink chilled in summer if you are looking for a refreshing pick me up.
Cheers