Glossary
Blending
Combining beers of different ages or batches to produce a consistent or more complex finished product.
The full record
Blending has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
Blending — Combine beers of different ages or batches to produce a consistent or more complex result than any single batch would give.
Central to lambic, where gueuze is made by blending young and old lambic so that the residual sugar of the young beer refermented by the mature culture of the old produces carbonation in the bottle. Also traditional in Flemish sour brewing and in British porter and old ale, where aged and fresh beer were routinely mixed.
A blender who does not brew is a recognised trade in Belgium, and several of the most respected gueuze producers work this way.
Related
- Gueuze — The style defined by blending.
- Parti-gyle — A related historical practice.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation · Cold break
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.