The Beer Thread

[JL21]

I had a couple of the New Glarus Sour Brown and it made me want to light my tongue on fire.

I also had their Oud Bruin, which is technically listed as "tart" instead of sour. And I had a similar reaction.

[Freed Roger]

I was trying to imagine you had a good first impression of a sour beer. I was like - what? Don't you just reflexively spit out sour beer?

It was like when someone says -"try this fruit* beer, it's really not bad." I'll take a sip, and - it's usually not as bad as expected, and then i'm done with it and want a beer, and my wife takes the crappy fruit or sour beer off my hands
*from what I read, sour/tart beers probably get their weird taste differently than fruit beers
-------------------------
I suspect it's like most things when you have a group of guys drinking - let's see what we can burn in the fire. Hey, we got a deep fryer, let's see what we can make work in the deep fryer. It's got to be a challenge for someone like the Carey's at NG to see what kind of stuff you can concoct into drinkable beer. New Glarus Belgian Red is pretty impressive, but hell if I'm going to drink more than a taste. I won't even waste one of my samplers on it at the brewery.

and as a disclaimer - I typically want to like all the beers I buy, especially when they are expensive. The more varieties I can like, the better. I'd rather not have to exclude all the belgians and saisons etc from my choices.

[lukethedrifter]

There are quite a few sour beers that I do like. I don't know if Berliner Weisse is considered a sour or not but it's definitely tart and I definitely like it.

[JL21]

There are quite a few sour beers that I do like. I don't know if Berliner Weisse is considered a sour or not but it's definitely tart and I definitely like it.

Are you talking about the 4 Hands Prussia Berliner Weisse?

If so, I've had that and it didn't bug me nearly as much as the other two. In fact, I kind of liked it.

[lukethedrifter]

Don't think I've had 4 Hands BW. I really like Perennial's Peach Berliner Weisse. And funky and sour though it was, I dug Schlafly's Oud Bruin.

[33anda3rd]

They now use the term sour to mean something intentionally done to a beer?

It's not a Now thing. There have been sour beers for as long as there have been beers. Gueuze, Gose, Berliner Weisse, and other sours are some of the most complex and interesting beers in the world. The beers of Cantillon are some of the most sought-after in the world. Are the beers that good? Yeah, they're that good. It's not like trading someone online for a Pliny The Elder (tastes like a lot of incredibly hoppy, unbalanced DIPAs and not worth going to the effort if you can get a Three Floyd's DIPA or a Pipeworks or some of Boulevard's upcoming The Calling that will be in the Smokestack series and readily available year round) or a Goose Island BCS because it's actually worth trading someone on the internet or going to a lot of trouble to get/drink.

The Sour beers I had were citrusy, kind of summer shandy-ish, with less carbonation.

That doesn't sound like a sour. A shandy is a radler, and that's roughly half beer and half lemon or other citrus soda, dropping the alcohol content and adding more sweetness, with a hint of citrus, than what a legit sour is. Legit sours have low alcohol but it's not because the beer is cut with soda, it's because they ferment for an incredibly long time (hence the high price tag) and more alcohol evaporates out in the fermentation process. A pale ale ferments for 7-10 days. A legit sour is in the tank or barrel for months, sometimes years.

Gose beers blew up this year. Anderson Valley's "The Kimmie, The Yink and the Holy Gose" was my beer of the summer. I probably crushed six dozen cans of it, and sold the crap out of it at the restaurant. It got to the point that I didn't need to order it at Sportsmans, my favorite bar, because Wade and Jeff and Jacy there knew that's what I was having. It--and other Goses, like Off Color's Fierce, and Westbrook Brewing's Gose--are wheat beers blended with sour beer, often with a bit of salt* and coriander included. They're fantastic. Great beers.

Brettanomyces beers (Brett is a yeast strain) have a sour that's really more wild than sour. Think horse-blanket, barnyard funk. They're everywhere. If you're lucky enough to still find a 750mL bottle of Perennial's Dual Artisanship in a bottle shop near you in IL or MO, get on it. Another beer that's just magic from the wild yeast. Kerry from Perennial was in to see me the other day to set up a pair of events at our place in March and April and she brought some up to me. Jesus. Amazing beer. Against The Grain had a Brett beer that was called All Funked Up: Brett The Hipman Hop that was a pale ale fermented quick then fermented again with a few strains of Brett. I could not keep it stocked this summer. Another beer that's just magic. Boulevard does the Saison-Brett every year, it's coming in April, and it's awesome too. American craft brewers are doing a lot with Brett now, and you're going to see exponentially more of them in the coming years because yeast is the new hops, as far as fads go, and you get into yeast by getting into wild beers like Bretts. Penrose out by Jim in Geneva, when they release their Wild series in bottle at the taproom, Eric and his team have a line of people in the parking lot at 6am and they open the doors at 11 and are sold out before 1pm. These beers are hotly in demand.

Berliner Weisse has been around since the 1500s. Northern German style. Wheaty, gets a secondary fermentation with lactobacillus yeast. Very unique flavor, you can get it sometimes in yogurt, pickles, kimchi and other fermented foods. New Glarus Thumbprint, if you've had that, is a good representation of the classic style.

Darn near everything Cory is doing at Side Project down in STL has some kind of sour/wild element. All his stuff is aged in barrels using different bacteria in the fermentation and they carry great levels of funk.

If you're looking to get into sours, I'd look for some of these. If Perennial's Dual Artisanship doesn't float your boat, the more out there stuff like the lacto/Berliner Weisses probably won't land with you. They're worth a try though.

*This is I'm sure gonna be a sticking point. Salt in beer? Salt is magic. It's magic in food. It's magic in cocktails--we make a salt solution at the bar and use a couple drops in all our cocktails that have coffee, fruit, and chocolate (like amaros with cocoa nibs or something with creme de cacao, we don't make straight-up chocolate drinks) elements and it intensifies flavor. Salt in Gose is magic.

[haltz]

The Sour beers I had were citrusy, kind of summer shandy-ish, with less carbonation.

That doesn't sound like a sour. A shandy is a radler, and that's roughly half beer and half lemon or other citrus soda, dropping the alcohol content and adding more sweetness, with a hint of citrus, than what a legit sour is.

A radler is a shandy, but not necessarily the other way around.

Legit sours have low alcohol but it's not because the beer is cut with soda, it's because they ferment for an incredibly long time (hence the high price tag) and more alcohol evaporates out in the fermentation process.

Alcohol evaporates at a rate that's due to temperature/humidity. Fermentation creates it. I know you understand this, but I don't get what you mean.

A pale ale ferments for 7-10 days. A legit sour is in the tank or barrel for months, sometimes years.

The sacch process is the same, it's the brett refermentation where you let it eat the sugar that sacch doesn't like that gives you the fruity to barnyard funk flavors, yeah? At this point to me it sounds like you're going in the wrong direction in terms of abv.

At 70% humidity alcohol and water evaporate at the same rate, so you're just losing volume. That's the average humidity in St. Louis. In a barrel in Kentucky your abv will climb. In France it will lower. You're more of a beer guy than me. In a year it would seem fairly negligible regardless. Tell me what I'm missing here.

[lukethedrifter]

At 70% humidity alcohol and water evaporate at the same rate, so you're just losing volume. That's the average humidity in St. Louis. In a barrel in Kentucky your abv will climb. In France it will lower. You're more of a beer guy than me. In a year it would seem fairly negligible regardless. Tell me what I'm missing here.

The vapor pressure of water is nearly twice that of ethanol so is that true?

[Freed Roger]

I mentioned I knew sour and shandy were diff.

Just because a beer took extra skills to make and is expensive, doesnt means it tastes good to me.

My wife likes the Side Project Grisette. A bit more expensive and trouble to make than the Mich Ultra or Corona mixed with lemonade she normally goes for. To each his/her own.

[jim]

I would say very few people really care about how much effort went into the beer. Don't tell me about the labor pains, just show me the baby.