Cantillon Announces Official Zwanze Day Beer -Abbaye de Cureghem

From the Shelton Brothers:

It’s time for the annual Zwanze Day. For the past several years, the Cantillon Brewery releases a special batch of beer, Zwanze, and brewer Jean Van Roy selects bars around the world to receive a keg of the current year’s release. This year, the beer is the Abbaye de Cureghem, a 7.2% "abbey" ale. It was brewed in March 2012 and was fermented for 4 weeks in stainless steel tanks with a cultured yeast strain before being blended with 10% lambic and put into barrels. After maturing for 6 months, the barrels were blended and the beer was put into casks to referment and condition until now. Since cultured yeast was used at the beginning, the brewery doesn’t consider this beer to be spontaneously fermented. However, there are wild yeast characteristics coming from both the added lambic and the wild yeasts floating about the brewery.

You can learn more about this year’s Zwanze release and the history of the mysterious Cureghem Abbey at the Cantillon website, http://cantillon.be

Tapping of the Zwanze keg happens simultaneously around the world at 9pm Brussels time, or 3pm in New York. This year, 2 locations were chosen to host the Zwanze Day festivities and both will be pouring kegs of Zwanze, Cantillon Gueuze, and a special version of Cantillon Iris with no dry-hopping, and various bottles of Cantillon.

The locations:
Alewife Queens, 5-14 51st Avenue, Long Island City
Spuyten Duyvil, 359 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn

These events are very popular so we recommend getting there early.  Both bars will be opening at 12pm for pre-Zwanze imbibing.
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