THIS LEAVES A SOUR TASTE

I have often said that in Australia these days you have to really go out of your way to find a bad beer. Just about every brewery from the nano-brewery working out of a modest shed in an industrial estate to the various local offshoots of the global giants produces something you can enjoy.

The plethora of styles and variations available is what makes beer drinking an adventure. So, it was with some surprise that I found a beer I just couldn’t enjoy.

As is our want, Hugh the Neighbour and I sat to try a new style from Colonial Brewing Company, no slouches in the beer business to be sure, their award-winning sour beer called South West Sour.

It is a variation on a Berliner weisse and Colonial combines wheat and other malts with a variety of hops and then introduces lactobacillus to turn the beer sour.

The part of turning the beer tart and sour obviously works like a treat.

The only question I have is “Why?” Indeed, after each finishing two cans from the pack of six, HTN had a rummage around in his beer and found a large bottle of the Shepherd Neame Double Stout, which did salutary work in getting the taste of the sour beer out of my mouth. I accept sour beers may well be an acquired taste, but the nuances of the style escape me.

Call me old-fashioned, but so many different and magnificent beverages can be made from four basic ingredients that I am not sure we always need to push the envelope to the extreme.