Sours: Help for Noobs

It is. Im in Norcal. Ship me some good stuff and I'll send you a 100% brett from RR, a Cons, and a Supp. Figure out what bacteria you like.

 

@whiskey you could also try berliner weisse style beers. they aren't aggressively sour and lack the funkiness that you might have liked in the gueuze you tried. dfh festina peche, bell's oarsman, dr. fritz briem's 1809, bruery hottenroth are all worth a try.

 

forgot Bear Republic Tartare, since that one is from CA as well it's a good one to mention.

 

anyone interested in actually breaking down the broad, and often used term, "sours" into categories with explanations? instead of just saying to the guy "lol, bro, sours isn't really a style".

everyone seems to agree that "sours" isn't really a thing but won't explain the difference between a Flanders Red and an Oud Bruin, the good/great beers within each style and what they like/don't like about them.

 

@elkabong I think the style guides on BA are decent at doing that. http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/style/

 

i don't disagree, but don't think that everyone wants to wade through all that info.

sometimes you want your peers/friends to tell you what they do/don't like rather than reading a textbook or tech doc. experience is a better teacher in my opinion.

 

Tartare is an acid bomb! like drinking pickling juice

 

Fine I'll take a quick, undereducated stab at it. Flanders Red differs from Flanders Oud Bruin the same way a Red Ale and a Brown ale differ, brown ale tends to be maltier and a little fuller, whereas red ales can have a little more fruity sweetness and are lighter; almost exactly the same differences go for Red vs Oud Bruin. These two styles, while they have their differences, are pretty similar styles to each other when compared with other sour beers.

Lambics are a pretty large category of sour beer, traditionally open fermented and aged in caves, commonly with fruit added (Framboise/raspberry, Kriek/cherry, Cassis/currant, Peche/peach) When no fruit is added at all, it's an "unflavored lambic", a type of beer all its own, or they are then blended new with old (3 year ageed with 1 year aged, for example) to make Gueuze, which you've had in Tilquin. The base lambics themselves, and how they are blended, create drastic changes in the flavor profile, so within the single style of Gueuze there's a ton of variance, one of the things I like about them.

Fruit lambics can also be exquisite, or they can be somewhat heavy handed and cloying, as in the case of Lindeman's Framboise (in my opinion), this is (probably, no citation) the most popular lambic out there, and is enjoyed by those looking for something sweet and fruity that is also called beer. Fruit lambics are often at least as "tart" as they are "sour", and again will range significantly due to variance in aging, blending, fruit addition (and how it is done, whole fruit vs syrup for example, heavy handed vs light touch, for another)

Gose is a style from Germany near Belgium, a refreshing style of sour brewed with coriander and salt. Despite that the name Gose (pronounced goes-uh) is pretty similar to Gueuze (pronounced goo-zzz), and that they're both sours, I've read that they in fact do not share a common brewing origin. Nevertheless, this style is a very traditional German one, predating the Rheinheitsgebot, but is also somewhat a recent invention, as there was a 20 or 30 year gap between the closure of the last gose house in germany and its revival, during which time some information was lost about exact recipes/brewing process, and the first 'new gose' producer honed his recipe by sharing test batches with the old guys who used to drink it decades earlier, getting a consensus that he was accurate. Long story short, while different goses will differ, the style is a bit simpler and won't have nearly as much variance as gueuze, for example.

Berliner Weisse is also a traditional german style, these days commonly served 'with a shot' either of Woodruff or Raspberry syrup. The bright green woodruff syrup comes from the baby's breath plant and is floral and a little earthy, and as a syrup of course quite sweet, whereas raspberry is self-explanatory. Either of these tint the beer their respective bright color, and make for a sweet/sour beer that is refreshing and very easy to drink. Without the shot, however, the beer is typically extremely sour, highly lactic, and (especially to those inexperienced with it) can be bracing and hard to drink. Personally, I prefer my berliner weisse without the shot, but I'll take it any way I can get it. This style is typically very very low in alcohol content, only 2-3% abv, and also uses very little or no hops whatsoever, and its flavor is almost entirely derived from the yeast.

American Wild Ale is a 'style' that, like 'American Strong Ale', is basically a catch-all for "whatever those crazy Americans come up with next", so you'll see this applied to nearly anything that is soured with one of the previously mentioned bacteria/yeasts but isn't specifically trying to be one of the other types of sour. As you might guess, this causes them to vary incredibly widely, to the point that i'm not going to bother trying to describe the 'style' any further.

 

I've mentioned previously in the thread some of the sours that I like and what makes them good (or good for a beginner) but if you'd like to discuss in more detail the individual sour beers I've had that I did or didn't like, BM me and we can discuss further; or better yet if you're ever in PA we'll grab a pint (maybe at Nodding Head, as I understand it the first place in the US to do a Berliner)

 

:golfclap:

 

Keep trying, you'll get there!

 

Trinity in Colorado Springs has done exactly this with Red Swingline. It would make a pretty damn impressive horizontal to try all the variant beside each other. In fact, I may do just that!

 

Right but unlike you I've read the whole conversation and was trying to steer someone in a particular direction based off what he has liked in the past. If he didn't care for the belgian sours that had a strong vinegar presence he's not gonna like this one either. The guy has had some good sours from California and you gotta take into consideration that a lot of the higher reviews for that beer are from people that haven't had the better sours first. Whiskey sounds like a good guy so I'm trying to help the guy out without having him waste money.

As for Lehighace06 perhaps I should have mentioned that the festival sold out so that is my motivation. I go to a lot of their festivals and have spent thousands at Stone. Maybe judge less?

 

Tartare rocks.

 

your not gonna like gueuze its not your think i can tell by your OP, its not mine other some people just cant hack em

 

Agreed, telling people to skip the best Flanders bar none (absolutely destroys those vinegar-bomb monk's and duchess') is asinine at best.

 

Which is why you should go buy all the beers and experience them yourself

 

Wh

Whale hunting with cantillons?? Dry , funky, Delicious but no sweetness. RRBC Supplication, Temptation & Sanctification set the bar with American year round releases. Trade Trade Trade Grasshopper. ;-)

 

Nope, if the festival sold out that means you either buy someone's ticket, not their individual pours, or you don't go. Again, this is assuming that this festival is set up like every festival I've been to. If this is set up differently then I would be mistaken, but neither you nor anyone else has pointed that out, so I assume not. I've spent lots of money at all sorts of breweries, but that doesn't give me the right to go and take some beer when I feel like it because I feel like I'm entitled.

 

I realize it's that simple to trade(I'm on a hiatus anyhow), but he was alluding to the fact that I live in CA as though I can swing by the local bottle shop and pick up a couple RR sours on the way home from work.

I've seen consecration on the shelf one time and had a dude at whole foods gran me a sanctification out of the back because we were BS'ng and I mentioned I hadn't tried it. Still have never seen supplication.

On that note, I got into the craft beer scene in Spokane WA where I easily became friends with a couple "beer guys" at a couple places...we became actual friends and had tastings together and stuff. It was easy to get a text or something about something limited coming in or I could call and ask and it was cool, because 8,000 other people weren't calling him.

Here I feel like a fucking douchenozzle calling a bottle shop, "Hi, do you have any RR sours in?"

Then I hear a sigh and a grumpy "No." I don't ask for shit here because everyone is so exhausted from being harassed all day long.

OK, I'm done bitching like a little girl. Thanks for listening.