Every three years, the internet feels the massive toll of scores of sour-beer fans loading and reloading the same page at the exact same time in hopes of securing a rare and fleeting prize: Duck Duck Gooze. A New World take on gueuze, a Belgian blend of one-, two- and three-year-old lambics (spontaneously fermented sour beers), it is one of the most coveted beers on the planet. Due to excessive costs, labor and storage requirements, batches of this gem from San Marcos’ The Lost Abbey are small and all too finite, necessitating the above online-presale situation that, by its very nature, results in dashed hopes and hurt feelings. But for those whose hunts land said ducks, there is only elation, for this is a legitimately special beer showcasing not only complex and compelling flavors and aromas, but the skill of a world-class brewing operation in liquid form.
“Duck Duck Gooze is an homage to the great lambic beers of Belgium. We age beers in oak barrels for one, two, three and even four years with the hope of producing a wide range of acid profiles from which we will blend to create one amazing beer,” says The Lost Abbey’s co-founding partner and the engineering mind behind Duck Duck Gooze, Tomme Arthur. “One of the coolest part of the blend is that we seek out the beers that speak to us. We do not fill a standard set of barrels each year and say, ‘this is going to be the two-year-old portion of the blend.’ Rather, our crew works with over 200 unique single barrels—as well as our large format fouders—to cull the best-tasting beers from the aging area in the hopes of making something incredible.”
The Lost Abbey has consistently come through in its quest for a remarkable finished product. That fact is proven not only by the insane level of interest for Duck Duck Gooze during pre-sales, at rare tappings and on the secondary beer market online, but by the gold and silver medals the beer garnered in 2009 and 2018, respectively, at the world’s largest and most prestigious professional brewing competition, the Great American Beer Festival.
The aforementioned top prize was awarded to the inaugural vintage of Duck Duck Gooze, which blended beers aged between 2006 and 2009. Ironically, Arthur says he had the least amount of oak-aged liquid to work with when putting that edition together. No such scarcity exists now. Time, success and planning have resulted in a bounty of available barrels for Arthur and his team to pull from. The blend for the 2016 vintage took into account a total of 50 unique barrels on its own, resulting in the largest batch of Duck Duck Gooze to-date.
This year, The Lost Abbey expects to produce 500 cases of the 2022 vintage plus 120 cases of a new, special-edition offering that’s sure to further tax the world-wide web: Mother of All Ducks. A blend of ideally preserved Duck Duck Gooze from 2016 and 2019 blended with the upcoming 2022 vintage, it’s an example of taking something next-level to the nth level.
“I’m actually known for being somewhat of a hoarder, so the cold-box here at the brewery is a treasure trove of kegs and great beers that we have collected over the years. I always thought it would be cool to try something like this blend,” says Arthur. “In order to make the Mother of all Ducks this year, we will deplete the lion’s share of our back stock, so it’s time to put some more on the shelf as I think we will revisit this every third release of the beer.”
The addition of Mother of All Ducks is sure to intensify the virtual maelstrom that will be next week’s Duck Duck Gooze sale, but The Lost Abbey’s e-commerce vendor, Nexternal, has implemented a “real-time” inventory system, which is similar to Ticketmaster’s timer check-out system, and allows an extra layer of protection from overselling or latency issues. Sales of 2022 Duck Duck Gooze and Mother of All Ducks will take place via The Lost Abbey’s online store at noon (Pacific) on Monday, February 28. Beer pickup will take place at The Lost Abbey’s San Marcos brewery during its Duck Days events on Saturday, April 9, and Sunday, April 10, which will feature a number of specialty-beer tappings, games and more.
The MO for DDG and MoAD
When asked what the overriding objectives are when devising each blend of Duck Duck Gooze—and now blending different vintages of that American gueuze—Arthur responded with the following:
Duck Duck Gooze is always an awesome experience, boasting bright acids in the form of stone fruit and white grapes, which are expression from our house cultures. We marry those characteristics with some great barrels and look for just a kiss of oak to round out the profile. The goal is to have a present acidity that is neither exhaustive nor all-consuming. Ultimately, a great batch of Duck Duck Gooze should be inviting and have enough character to mature for many years to come. The Mother of All Ducks is the real wildcard here. We have some incredible tasting 2016 and 2019 gallons we have been storing. We plan on adding a kicker of Brettanomyces at packaging time to ensure that enough funk is present. We expect the acid profile to have a different depth than our 2022, due to the age of those beers. This is the result of ‘oude’ beers being married to the new version.