Sour Beer Trend

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Twenty years ago I was a home brewer—mainly because I was living in places where Genesee Cream Ale was considered exotic. I made my own beer, and I drank a lot of other guys’ home brews. Sometimes they were pretty good, sometimes only okay, and sometimes they were flat-out eye-popping, pucker-till-your-cheeks-meet sour. If I brought this up, I’d usually be told, quickly and defensively, “Oh, it’s actually a Belgian-style.” I’d nod, try to look knowing...and then “misplace” that glass as quickly as possible.

What used to be considered a mistake is now a small but fast-growing niche in American craft brewing. This year, the Great American Beer Festival, for 25 years the preeminent American beer competition, added two new categories for sour beers to the judging (the first was created in 2002). Now, in addition to all the breweries that have added a sour beer to their lineup, there is at least one craft brewery, Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales in Dexter, Michigan, which makes only sour beers.

“Good” sour beer is largely differentiated from “bad” sour beer by virtue of intent and intensity. When you plan for sour, you formulate a beer with enough body to balance the tart heart.

The Belgian sour beers, which have been around for centuries, and of which Rodenbach is probably the best-known example, are interesting and balanced, with wood and fruit notes that make them refreshing and rewarding. The brewers age their beers in unlined wooden vessels instead of modern stainless-steel ones, and the wild yeasts and microflora that live in the crevices of the wood work on a different schedule and agenda than plain, standard beer yeasts: The results are more complex and much more tart.

American craft brewers started experimenting with sour back in the mid-’90s, usually attempting to copy Belgian lambics, beers that can exhibit combinations of sharp acidity and barnyard funk. New Belgium Brewing of Fort Collins, Colorado, has been using some of the profits from burgeoning sales of its smooth and popular Fat Tire Amber Ale to build up a large wood-aged sour beer program during the past seven years, starting with the beautifully multilayered and aptly named La Folie. “Follow your Folly,” the brewery encourages customers.

Brewers have taken direct inspiration from the phrase and the landmark beer. You’ll find a rapid ferment of ideas about sour beers in many corners of the country, like at Russian River Brewing, in Santa Rosa, California, where brewer Vinnie Cilurzo has been on the front edge of American brewing for years and is generally acknowledged as the first brewer of the massively hopped double-imperial I.P.A. style. About a month ago, I was lucky enough to get a sample of a sour ale he brewed for the 20th anniversary of the landmark Toronado beer bar in San Francisco: a balance of sweet malt and dry cherry, with a smooth veneer of oaky tannin to pull it all together—a masterpiece. As most brewers do with these beers, Cilurzo charges a premium price to reflect the costs of the longer aging and the difficulty of the brewing process.

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