Sour Beer Trend

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The question is whether sour beers have a wide enough appeal to make them a viable new market segment, even at niche levels. “Sour” seems crazy as a descriptor to attract people to a beer, but so is “bitter,” and that’s one that has made a lot of friends for beer. I.P.A.’s, the bitterest of beers, make up the fifth-largest category for craft brewers, and the competition among brewers is to see who can stuff the most bitterness into a beer and have it still be enjoyable. That bodes well for sour, which has a parallel dryness on the palate. (Sour is like biting the fruit of a lemon; bitter’s more like biting the peel.)

“I may be optimistic, but I think sour beers are the next I.P.A.,” says Ron Jeffries, owner of Jolly Pumpkin. Jeffries’ beers are all oak-aged, soured by contact with the wood. The beers, sold in large, beautifully labeled bottles bearing names like La Roja, Bam Bière, and Oro de Calabaza, are not paragons of consistency, but that’s part of their appeal, and they are generating serious buzz among beer geeks.

I recently blogged about a delicious sour ale called Moxie from New Holland Brewing in Holland, Michigan, and got a rapturous response from veteran Oregon beer writer Jeff Alworth. “Sour is the new hoppy! Okay, maybe not, but sour is my fave note, even before bitter.”

Still, sour mania has its drawbacks, chief among them being cost. Jeffries’ beers are widely considered to be underpriced at $8 for a 750-milliliter bottle; others are in the area of $20 a bottle, and the rarer Belgian imports go up from there. These sourific wild yeasts and bacteria aren’t just sour, they’re slow, and some of these beers take 18 months or more to come to proper fruition. They’re also tenacious; brewers have to take extra care to isolate them from the rest of their brews or risk cross-contamination and an all-out funkification of their entire brewery.

There’s also the substantial risk that no one will want to buy them. Make no mistake, these beers are challenging. There’s a pretty steep acceptance curve, although once you develop a taste for them, there’s nothing else that can substitute.

There’s a bright side for brewers though. Given the skyrocketing cost of hops, sour beers offer a way to keep both geeks and brewers happy and interested. It’s cutting-edge stuff without the constant worry over supply issues: There’s always more yeast and bugs. Maybe sour will become the new hoppy by necessity.

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