A buddy of mine has just started getting into sours and now he's hooked. I turned him onto the Anderson Valley Blood Orange and regular Gose in cans and also told him to look out for some of the NG releases (namely Wild Sour) but he's thirsty for more. Brought him some Destihl Flanders Red last time I went up there but I don't think they distro to WI. My question is what other wild ales are widely available in the Badger state (at Woodman's etc.)?
New Belgium La Folie and Le Terrior are both excellent and I believe both are still on some shelves. I haven't really tried much from them but Jolly Pumpkin sours are available as well. The Schell's berliner weiss series (don't remember it's name) is harder to find and sorta pricey but very tasty.
Awesome, thanks guys. Had some of these in mind already (New Belgium, JP...) but I'm never sure about distro. We're lucky here in Chicago to have a wide array of choices but every time I'm back in Madison, I'm amazed how different the selection is.
Really? I always used to see Thumbprint series beers sitting on shelves at Woody's. Has the demand for NG risen that much in the last year?
Yeah, my experience was that one could generally find at least two or three types of Thumbprint at Woodman's or Steve's in Madison at any given time, and that's as recent as Fall 2014.
They've been known to brew some of their Thumbprint series beers on multiple occasions so I was more just saying to look out for that one. I think Enigma is next if I'm not mistaken. But yeah, I clearly wasn't saying he'd find a beer from 2013 at Woodman's...
I think he was referring to Wild Sour Ale. That one was wiped off shelves across the entire state in the matter of a few weeks when it came out in 2013. Right now, you can still come across Oud Bruin and Cran-bic in many places. And as mentioned before, Enigma will be out in a week or two, so there will be quite a few solid sour options available from NG. The Bruery Rueuze is a really good sour. Goose Island Lolita, Juliet, and Madame Rose also aren't too hard to come by.
Rodenbach Grand Cru is consistently fantastic, and runs about $12 for a 750. It's not tough to find Tilquin, which is one of the tastiest gueuzes money can buy. Various Mikkeller sours can be found, which aren't cheap, but they're worth trying. Jolly Pumpkin is all over the place, along with Bruery. I'm sure I'm forgetting some that haven't been mentioned, but that should keep his mouth happy for a while.
Don't forget about Schell's Berliner series. Latest is Dawn of the Aura. O'so has Winds of Change and Restless Soul still on shelves.
While not maybe not "sour" per se, Perennial now distributes to Wisconsin and has a few Brett beers that should be still available. Aria should be easy to find and Stefon & Dual Artisanship can probably still be found at a few places.
