What we faced at the tasting was a diversity of styles and colors that indeed sometimes had little in common beyond high acidity. Chase suggested afterward that we could probably have broken the tasting down into four subcategories: lambic, fruit lambic, Flemish sours and miscellaneous sours. Perhaps, but our purpose was to gain an overview of the field.

After we tasted the beers, it was clear that balance and control were issues. Some of the beers we rejected were almost repellently tart or sour, as if the flavors had accelerated beyond what the brewer had intended. But the ones that were in balance were complex and refreshing, with long-lasting flavors that would go beautifully with food. Any of our favorites would do nicely on the Thanksgiving table.

No beer impressed us more than our No. 1 bottle, the 2010 Kriek Ale from Cascade in Portland, Ore. This lambic-style vintage beer is flavored with cherries, but was not sweetly fruity or cloying. Rather, it was beautifully tart and richly complex, with just a hint of fruit flavor for balance. We liked this beer so much, we gave a rare top score of four stars.

Not too far behind was our No. 2 bottle, the Classic Gueuze from Cantillon of Belgium, a brilliant exemplar of the style. The gueuze is a blend of three different lambics that have been aged for one, two or three years in old casks. It offers a rare complexity and a funk that, to me at least, is simply beautiful.

Cantillon, by the way, makes a range of great lambics, many of which could have qualified for our tasting.

Two other Belgian gueuzes made our top 10. Drie Fonteinen’s “geuze,” as the brewery spells it, was incredibly rich and savory, while the Tilquin was intense but not as complex as the other two.

One of the more unusual beers was the Guava Grove from Cigar City of Tampa, Fla. Adding fruit to beer is a Belgian tradition, but guava is certainly a New World innovation.