Sour brew has long history in Europe
Sour beer? Why the heck would anyone want to drink such a thing? After all, if a beer is sour, isn’t something wrong with it?
Actually, sour beers have been a part of brewing culture for centuries, but contemporary craft brewers have only begun exploring them in recent years, so most people here in North America still know little about them. This year’s Victoria Beer Week festival, which runs until Saturday, includes a special event that celebrates sour beers called Pucker Up, Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Victoria Public Market.
If you go back to pre-industrial brewing times, many beers were likely at least a little sour, just because of the lack of hygiene and poorer quality of brewing equipment. According to the Oxford Companion to Beer: “Most people avoided brewing during warm weather, when acidifying bacteria and wild yeast were more prevalent and likely to produce mouth-puckering acidity, sometimes with a vinegary tang, within days or weeks.”
However, certain European brewers chose to produce sour beers on purpose. In Germany, the classic sour style is Berliner weisse, a very light (less than three per cent ABV), tart wheat beer that is traditionally served with sweet syrup. Another German sour beer called gose is tart and slightly salty — in Victoria, Driftwood Brewery produces an excellent example of that style in the summer season, called Cry Me A River.
But it is in Belgium where the most robust and interesting sour-beer tradition developed — one that continues to this day. The most famous is called lambic, referring to its origins in the town of Lembeek, an appellation that is protected just like Champagne’s. Today, there are fewer than a dozen authentic lambic breweries in Belgium.
Lambic beers are spontaneously fermented in a large, shallow rectangular vessel called a coolship, which is usually located under the roof of the brewery, with louvers or vents in the wall opened to allow fresh air to flow over the beer, bringing with it a rich mixture of local wild yeasts and bacteria.
Then, once fermentation has started, the beer is transferred into wooden barrels, where it is aged for several months or years, allowing different microorganisms to take turns fermenting and acidifying the beer.
In some cases, fruit might be added to the barrels later in the process, resulting in specific styles such as kriek (cherries) and framboise (raspberries).
The final beers are not sweet, because all the sugars from the fruits are fermented, leaving just the fruitiness and colour, along with a tart acidity and complexity.
Other Belgian sour-beer styles include Flanders red ale and oud bruin (old brown) ale, both of which are aged in oak vessels for several months. These tend to be not as sour as lambics; they are slightly acidic, with rich cherry, plum and raisin aromas and flavours, even though no actual fruit is included in the recipe.
While some contemporary North American craft brewers have initiated barrel-aging programs to replicate these traditional beers, they have also developed their own method, called “kettle souring.” Essentially, this accelerates the souring process so that a beer can be produced in weeks instead of months or even years.
Some purists decry the kettle sour as a poor imitation of the authentic original, but I think it’s better to look at it as an entirely different approach to producing sour beers — just as modern IPAs are radically different from the original India Pale Ales produced by British brewers more than two centuries ago.
Craft brewers in B.C. have embraced kettle sours wholeheartedly, exploring a wide range of styles and flavours, sometimes adding fruit or dry hopping with aromatic, tropical-tinged hops for even more complexity. Arguably, our province’s brewers are leading the way in Canada: the Beer of the Year at the 2016 Canadian Brewing Awards was a kettle sour called Nectarous from Four Winds Brewing in Delta.
If you’re uncertain about sour beers, think about how refreshing a glass of tart lemonade is, or how delicious a vinegary pickle can be. The best sour beers are well balanced so that the tart acidity doesn’t overwhelm the fruity and other “beer-y” characteristics.
Personally, I wasn’t an immediate convert to sour beers. I enjoyed tasting them, but after a sip or two, I was done. Then, one day as I was looking at a shelf of beer bottles at a liquor store, I glanced at a bottle of Nectarous and my mouth began watering. I realized I was craving it, and ever since then, sour beers can commonly be found in my fridge at home.
The best way to learn more about sour beers is to try some. Tap houses such as the Drake and Garrick’s Head always have some sours on tap and their staff will be happy to tell you more about them.
At Victoria Beer Week’s Pucker Up event, you can sample more than a dozen sour beers, including Nectarous from Four Winds, as well as these locally produced options: Yuzu Gose (4 Mile Brewpub), Mother Pucker Berliner Weisse (Axe & Barrel BrewHouse) and Little Sunshine (Spinnakers Brewpub).
Who knows — maybe you’ll become converted to sour beers, too. • Victoria Beer Week includes 16 events over nine days, wrapping up on Saturday. Details at victoriabeerweek.com. Tickets at vicbeerweek.ticketrocket.co.