PEEK INSIDE BERKELEY'S THE RARE BARREL
If you’re a craft beer fan, you’ve probably been to many tasting rooms — and they all start to look the same after a while. But Berkeley’s The Rare Barrel is the exception. This hot spot opened in 2013 offering a lineup of sour beer. Yes, sour beer is a thing — and a very good thing for those who want to try something different.
The Rare Barrel doesn’t actually have a brewing system in-house. It pays other craft breweries to provide wort — unfermented beer. In a corner of the warehouse, you’ll find a few tall stainless steel fermenters, where the primary fermentation takes place, but most of the large warehouse is occupied by oak barrels — more than 100 of them — where the secondary fermentation occurs, often over several years.
The Rare Barrel adds yeast and bacteria that consume the sugars left behind by beer yeast and create a tart, sour flavor that can be very refreshing. Fruit or spices are often added to yield very distinctive flavors. Because sour beer fermentation is less predictable, different batches are often blended together to create the desired flavor profile.
On the day we visited, six house beers were available on tap, one in cans and several more in bottles. If you aren’t a fan of sour beers, don’t despair: The Rare Barrel also offers 10 or so guest beers and ciders on tap, and the kitchen serves upscale snacks, cheese and charcuterie boards, and shared dishes (a little pricey, but very tasty).
The Rare Barrel has won numerous awards for its sours, earning a reputation as one of the top sour breweries in the country. We sampled sour versions of an IPA, a double IPA, a golden sour with coffee beans, another with strawberries and pineapple, one with apricots and one with prickly pear. Five-ounce pours range from $4 to $6, with 10-ounce pours in the $7 to $10 range. We also tried two bottled sour saisons made with wine grapes that were outstanding.
DON’T MISS » Afterlight ’16 was my favorite of the beers on tap. It’s a dark sour, aged in French Bordeaux wine barrels, which provide an incredible depth of flavor at a very approachable 6.0% alcohol by volume.
DETAILS » The Rare Barrel is open from 4 to 10 p.m. Thursday-friday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays at 940 Parker St., Berkeley; www.therarebarrel.com.