Put down those overly hoppy IPAs and ditch that fruity glass of rosé, people. It’s time to get funky.
You may not know it yet, but you will, soon: On a warm, late summer day, nothing beats a mouth-puckering sour beer.
Popping up in some of the country’s most fertile beer producing regions, sour beers are produced through the use of wild fermenting yeasts, unstable critters that are typically the undesired end result of non-sterile brewing environments. If that sounds a little down and dirty, well, you’re bang-on right. They’re tart; sometimes sweet (if they’re made with fruit), sometimes full of barnyard funk; maybe citrusy or green apple-y; but above all else? You guessed it: Sour.
Sours may be the new big thing with beer lovers, but there’s nothing new about the genre.
According to Ron Jeffries — brewer and partner of Michigan’s Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales, the country’s first and still only 100-percent oak-aged sour beer producer — once upon a time, pretty much all of the beer in the world was sour. Remember those aforementioned wild yeasts, usually considered bad for brewers because they turn everything sour? By nature and necessity, they’re unsterile. We know that now, but four centuries ago that kind of brewing chemistry wasn’t understood. (And sterility? Well, sterility wasn’t so much a “thing” back then, as you might imagine.)
With wild yeasts any beer can be made into a sour beer, but it takes knowledge to do it right. And experience. Ron Jeffries has both, having started out back in the craft-brewing Dark Ages of 2004, when it was nearly impossible to find sour beers. At that point, sours were nearly entirely the territory of the Belgians. Quirky Flems pretty much single-handedly kept the sour styles alive over the years, with “lambics” being the most popular and familiar, like Lindemans Framboise.
When Jeffries opened Jolly Pumpkin, he took on the responsibility of educating a beer-drinking public that had only just started experimenting with craft beer and still had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the now-old-hat pale ale.
“It seemed like a no-brainer at the time; no one was doing it,” Jeffries explains, referring to his decision to go the sour route.
“Here’s this great style of beer not available domestically. We thought, ‘This is going to be hugely successful’ . . . that was not the case!”
Taking a gold medal at the Great American Beer Festival — the Oscars of domestic brew, held annually in Denver — after only six months of operation didn’t help wholesalers sell it or customers wrap their heads around these tart, pucker-up, funky beers.
“People would keep coming back to me saying, ‘Hey, you got a bad batch.’ It took a long time for the rest of the world to catch up to us,” he says. “Now it’s a growing trend; there are a lot of breweries making sour beers all over the country.”
Because of the high levels of acidity in sour beers (a by-product of those wild yeasts is lactic acid) and their inherent tartness, they make for fantastic food pairings: They’ll cut right through salty meat and stinky cheese alike, balancing everything out beautifully.
Not that they need to be paired with anything — because of their delightfully tart, tingly nature, they’re just as good solo, especially on patios, but really, you can drink them anywhere, anytime and often. Heard that expression, beer is the new wine? A sip of a delicate, complex sour and you might find yourself in agreement.
While breweries across the country are now dabbling in the genre, distribution of the best stuff is often still quite limited; a journey to the source remains the best introduction for the curious drinker. Here are a few essential stops:
Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales Michigan
Sours may reach their peak appeal in summer, but this pioneering Detroit-area brewery offers something for every season. Right now, it’s all about their Sobrehumano Palena ‘Ole, a limited-release beer that made quite a splash this past summer. A collaboration with Maui Brewing Company, Sobrehumano brewed with liliko’I (native Hawaiian passion fruit) and Michigan cherries, then aged in oak barrels for one year. (Note: Only the Jolly Pumpkin bottled version is a proper sour, though Maui Brewing’s take, available in cans and on tap across the West and in Hawaii, is no slouch.) As summer moves into fall, the seasonally appropriate Fuego del Otono (brewed with chestnuts and spices) takes center stage; come Christmas, figgy Noel de Calabaza will make visions of sugar plums dance in your head (and on your tongue).
Where to sample Jolly Pumpkin operates a lively bar and restaurant in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor, one of the country’s more agreeable college towns.
Info jollypumpkin.com
Russian River Brewing Co. Sonoma
They’re best known for their bright/hoppy/citrusy Pliny the Elder IPA, which tastes a lot like California in a bottle. But Russian River, one of the country’s most competent breweries, brews up several exemplary sours that are truly among the best in class. Try Sanctification, their dry, spicy 100-percent Brettanomyces-fermented golden ale (Brett is kind of wild yeast royalty), or Consecration, a dark ale aged in cabernet sauvignon barrels with currants.
Where to sample Russian River’s low-key brewpub is one of the only reasons to visit downtown Santa Rosa, one of those Sonoma County towns that isn’t exactly on the tourist circuit. Still, it’s an essential stop for any beer lover that finds themselves in the region.
Info russianriverbrewing.com
The Bruery Orange County, Calif.
The Los Angeles region has been slow to join the beer revolution, but this Placentia brewery has been garnering considerable recognition for its rambunctious attitude towards their craft, which leads to interesting beers such as Sour in the Rye — rye is used as the base malt and the ale is then aged in oak for over a year — and the Trois Poules Francais, a specialty Christmas ale brewed with juice from Syrah grapes from the Santa Ynez Valley and aged in wine barrels for one year. Also try the Filmishmish, a barrel-aged sour blonde ale with apricots.
Where to sample The brewery’s tasting room is open until 10 p.m. nightly; popular food trucks can often be found outside in the parking lot. This is one of the better places to spend an evening in Orange County.
Info
thebruery.com