Name: Chapeau Winter Gueuze
Style: Gueuze
Brewery: Brouwerij De Troch website
Country: Belgium
Region: Wambeek
ABV: 5.6% Abv
How served: 12.7 oz capped & corked bottle poured into an Alexander Rodenbach glass.
My Overall Opinion: OK. 
I paired this beer with: Lemon Pepper chicken.
Tasted on: Monday February 22, 2010.
Note: As a Gueuze fanatic I was really looking forward to trying this beer. I also haven’t had any beer from De Troch to date, so I was curious to taste one of their beers. The presentation of a capped and corked bottle got me thinking of Fantôme, so my expectation was raised a bit. The aroma was good with a hint of cherries. Then a huge let down on the taste. This was a bit too sweet for my taste. It didn’t have a bad taste & it didn’t have an over powering cherry flavor, it just tastes as if it was sweetened with fruit syrup. Now I do not know if fruit syrup was actually added to this Gueuze, it just tasted like artificial flavor to me.
I need to go have a different beer now to get his taste off my palate. Maybe a nice crisp St Bernardus Tripel will do the trick.
From their website: Visit the bucolic countryside around Brussels and discover Wambeek and the Brewery De Troch, which produce the “CHAPEAU” fruit beers. A 19th century land-use plan of the area mentions a brewery owned by a certain Petronnella De Troch. Even older records indicate that her father, Pieter De Troch, was running a brewery on the same site in the late 18th century. Petronnella married Egidius De Troch and in 1898 their son Louis took the family business over. Louis Married J. De Neve, and their son, also Louis, inherited the brewery and farm in 1936. The same Louis married M.L. Van den Moortel. Their nephew Jos Raes and his wife M. Vanderhasselt took on the family tradition in 1974 and have been running this rare craft brewery ever since. In 2002, their son Pauwel Raes jointed his parents into the family business.
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