This Will Leave a Sour Taste in Your Mouth
If a customer is unsure of what beer to drink but enjoys wine, then Houch is likely to recommend a sour, and she’s not alone in this line of thinking.
“Sours are usually a good entry into beer for people who say they don’t like beer but they like wine, because a lot of sour beers drink more like a wine than what most people think of when they think of beer,” says Matt Warren, head brewer for Hutton & Smith Brewing Company’s M.L. King Boulevard location.
Warren got his start in the beer industry with home brewing, being drawn to the scientific and artistic aspects of the process. Over the course of his career, he’s received multiple certifications from several programs, including the Beer Judge Certification Program and Cicerone Certification Program. Warren is the only advanced cicerone in
Chattanooga, meaning he demonstrates “expertise in beer, strong sensory skills and mastery of flavor vocabulary for both technical and consumer audiences,” according to the program’s website.
In addition to brewing for Hutton & Smith, Warren and his brewing partner, Ryan Golden, produce home-brewed sours, among other styles, for their own company, Dynamic Ales. Warren says he’s drawn to strong, bold flavors, and so Dynamic Ales’ sours tend to have high acidity and lots of barrel character and can be heavily fruited.
Within the sour realm, you have a variety of options, ranging from light to heavy, according to Van Pelt. A lighter sour is crisper and sometimes mouth-puckering; a midrange sour is heavier and a little creamy; and a heavy sour has strong fruit notes and is very creamy and heavy-bodied. Warren notes that someone who has never had a sour before will probably prefer a low-acidity sour to acclimate to the style.
If you’re looking to get your feet wet with sours, Van Pelt recommends WanderLinger’s Blackbeary Hug, which is “assertively tart but with a dry and slightly earthy finish” with “complex aromas” reminiscent of red wine, according to the company’s website. This fruited sour has a 7.3% ABV, according to Untappd.