Souring on the market
Pretentious, other brewers take different route to interest beer-drinkers’ palates
Sour beers are finding a sweet spot.
Three breweries devoted to sour beers — Pretentious Barrel House, Random Precision Brewing Company and Antiques on High — have opened in Columbus in the past year and a half, roughly the same amount of time it takes to make a sour beer.
“When we started, it was cool to be the only sour beer brewery,” said Joshua Martinez, Pretentious Barrel House owner and brewer. He opened his East Side brewery at 745 Taylor Ave. in October 2017.
Martinez has gotten flack for not having an IPA or a lager in any of their 12 taps, but he doesn’t mind. For him, it’s a way to stand out among central Ohio’s 50-some breweries.
“There are so many IPAS in the city, so many lagers in the city,” Martinez said. “Why do you want me to make one?”
In maybe the biggest sign that sour beers are making
their mark on the local craft beer scene, Seventh Son Brewing Co. opened Antiques on High, a sour beer brewery, in the Brewery District at 714 S. High St. in November.
Seventh Son — which built its name on IPAS — wanted to open a sour brewery for years. Its brewmaster, Colin Vent, even brewed sour beers at home.
“We just always loved those kinds of beers,” said Collin Castore, Seventh Son co-owner. “It’s given us a chance to play with a lot of those styles that we haven’t had as much of an opportunity to (at Seventh Son).”
Antiques on High always has one or two of its beers on tap at Seventh Son, and Seventh Son keeps a couple of its beers tapped at Antiques on High. In fact, the best-selling beer at Antiques is Seventh Son’s Humulus Nimbus, a 6 percent Super Pale Ale, suggesting that many drinkers still prefer a pale ale over a sour beer.
“As sour beer is taking off, it’s almost the opposite of what you’d expect to see,” Vent said. “It seems like people are most drawn to as sour as possible with as much fruit as possible. It’s not ‘start subtle and work up.’ It’s definitely ‘jump in with the most screamingly sour, super-fruited.’”
Some beer drinkers turn their noses up at sour beer. For them, they might as well be drinking Sour Nerds or Sweetarts candies in alcohol form.
“While there are a lot of craft beer lovers out there, the amount of those craft beer lovers who actually like sours or think they like sours is a lot less,” Jason Grable, Random Precision owner and brewer, said. “People sometimes think sour and just think Sour Patch Kids.”
Sour beers are complex and take a long time to brew. Beers can sit in barrels for anywhere from six to 36 months after fermenting. Antiques on High sour beers take an average of 18 months from start to finish. An IPA takes about two to four weeks to make. Sour brewers are constantly concerned that their barrels could go bad and ruin a batch.
“It’s better just to get rid of anything that’s not where you want it to be than bring down the overall quality of a batch by trying to blend out a barrel that’s just bad,” Grable said. His brewery at 2365 W. Dublin-granville Road recently celebrated its first anniversary.
After sitting in barrels, sour beers are blended to get their distinct tart taste that makes tongues tingle and faces pucker. Sour beers are sometimes mixed with fruit to give them an extra kick.
“The more sour, the more fruit,” Vent said.
Sour beers also include fewer hops than conventional beers and include lactic-acid producing bacteria.
Even though sour beers are gaining traction, they won’t overtake IPAS anytime soon.
Sour beer sales nationwide skyrocketed 42.7 percent from July 2017 to summer 2018 with consumers buying $14.8 million worth of sour brews, according to the market research firm Nielsen.
Brewers Association, a not-for-profit trade association, estimates retail sales of craft beer in Ohio in 2017 was $891 million for final consumer spending, said Bart Watson, chief economist of the Brewers Association. While he doesn’t have a way to break down the sale of sour beers, he said sales are accelerating.
“I can say that sours have been growing pretty rapidly in the market, but they are still very small, so that growth is off a very small base,” Watson said in an email.
Martinez agreed that sour beers aren’t going to topple IPA off the craft beer pedestal.
“I don’t think anything is quite like IPA as far as its ridiculous popularity, but if we could get just a little slice of that pie, that would be great,” he said.
mhenry@dispatch.com @megankhenry