Styles that are 'Sours'

Gose, Lambics, Berliner Weisse, Wild Ales, and Flanders Red are a few examples

 

American Wild Ale
Lambic (Fruited)
Lambic (Unblended)
Gueuze
Berliner Weisse
Gose
Flanders Red Ale
Flanders Oud Bruin
Saison (some are sour and some aren't)

I believe that is all of them that are listed on this site.

 

If the word "brett" or "brettanomyces" is mentioned in the beer name/label that will be a good indicator. In my experience the "sourness" of a saison is different from the sourness of a lambic is different from the sourness of a berliner.

 

I would read tasting notes on this site or others. There is no real way. Wild fermentation is a good indicator, but brettanomyces is not a 100% sign since it is the bacteria like acetobacter, pediococcus, and lactobacillus that generally give sour beers their distinctive flavor.

 

I would drop saison from that list. Some are wild, not sour, and most simply are neither

 

you are in minnesota? you have all sorts of options right now... you have Crooked Stave (all sours), dethil wild sour series, surly pentagram, boulevard love child 4, odell has some (blackberry gose is out), la folie from new belgium, white birtch berliner weisse variants, evil twin has a couple (nomader weisse), etc... I am sure there are a ton I am missing, this is just of the top of my head from what I have seen at the store recently.

 

Many will tell you saisons aren't sour, but can be tart. It's a slight difference.

 

OP is clearly asking for tart and sour beers since by his own admittance he does not have a lot of experience with the style; to a newbie, tart beers will probably appear sour since it's such a palate shock. MANY saisons are tart, including Hill Farmstead's entire saison portfolio, almost every saison SARA makes, many Jester King saisons, Orpheus Atalanta and Lyric, Sofie with ample age on it, Fantôme, and the list goes on. No, none of them are the same intense sourness of, say, a gueuze, but then again Berliner Weisses have a different sourness than gueuze as well. To leave them off the list would be incomplete in my opinion, and for the sake of completeness and the knowledge of OP, I included them with an obvious caveat.

 

Yes, and I understand the difference; I just don't think that difference is something someone new to sour/tart beers is going to care about or pick up on, ergo, I wanted to include them.

 

lol... ok, point taken I am very familiar with Alex. so if you aren't in the cities so your options are a little more limited... next time you are in the cities you'll have to stock up. check out the foreign beers as well, you might be suprised at what you can find.

edit: BTW, many of these ones I listed are not rare at all, you may be able to find a few of these in your area.

 

To assume someone new to sours (not new to beer, or the world for that matter) will decipher between sour and tart in a way different to you, is just flat out condescending.

Sour is not a hard characteristic to warm up to. Kids love sour for Christ sake

 

We're getting into the weeds a bit here, but brett alone does not a sour beer make. Brett will give you "funk" which is usually dry and occasionally a little bit of tartness. For instance, Orval is a brett beer and not sour, but funky.

 

I didn't mean it in a condescending way. I just was speaking from my own experience. Early on, I couldn't differentiate between sour and tart easily. I figured OP wanted to know all the styles of beef that have sour characteristics, which mentally I associated with tart as well. I was trying to be inclusive for OP's benefit.

 

ok, sorry for chewing on your nipple

 

Agreed. I feel like saisons that I consider "sour" are more funky than truly sour in the lactobacillus sense of the word.