Beer Radar for WBM Nov 2012
(First published in Wine Business Magazine in 2012)
By John Krüger
Sour beer is here!
Hey hop jerks and beer hipsters, your out-of-balance hop heavy day in the sun is over. Over hopped beers are so passé. Prepare to have your senses blown away by a new beer sensation and it’s a favourite of mine; sour beers!
I’ll preface with a note; I love acidity. I love fresh Watervale and Eden Valley Rieslings. I love the way it sizzles on the tongue and almost feels like a light carbonation even though there isn’t any. A commercial brewer I know says “I’ve tried heaps of sour beers, they’re called home brews!” but in this instance, I’m talking deliberately soured, refreshing beers. I’m still yet to brew my sour beer collection, which will involve quarantining an outside bathroom for the soul purpose of brewing funky beers. Inoculating them (deliberately) with a blend of yeast, lactic bacteria and Brettanomyces. One brewer said to me “Don’t bring of that shit anywhere near my brewery. I wouldn’t be comfortable with someone drinking one of those in the car park!” another said “Bloody hell, you’d want to wash your hands with petrol before you touch anything else.”
Even though I’ve been researching sour and turbid mashing techniques, I still tried a few experiments adding increasing amounts of food grade lactic acid into my own wheat beers just to get a feel for ideal acid levels. Not surprisingly, the textbooks are right; the broad range of flavours in a real sour beer are soft and complex, not just sharp and one-dimensional from just adding lactic acid.
My most memorable commercial sour beer moment was in a little pub, in the middle of the day. It was almost empty and quiet. I asked the bartender for a bottle of Cantillon Geuze. He leaned forward and looked around the room asking, “Is it just for you?” as if I needed help in drinking the 375ml bottle.
“Bloody hell, how strong is it?” I asked.
He smiled and in a very thick accent explained, “Ah it’s not strong in alcohol but in flavour. It’s…. different.”
The Geuze smelled faintly of a blend of white vinegar and sour milk. It was intense, amazing and enjoyable, but the barman was right, it was a bottle for two people. It was more intense with each sip and I struggled to finish the bottle. This was no entry level sour beer, this was hard work but worth every bizarre sip. It was a thing of beauty and complexity.
My Australian made sour beer epiphany was the Watermelon Warhead from Feral brewing. I wanted a Berliner Weisse but was disappointed that it had fruit in it until I tasted it. It’s my 2012 beer of the year. Sensational. Can’t wait for a revisit. Bring me a keg of that over summer & I’ll be a happy man. It’s low alcohol, full of flavour and amazingly refreshing.
Another Aussie offering is Tasmania’s Van Dieman Brewing 2012 Hedgerow Autumn Ale. The beer has been matured for 6 weeks on a blend of rose hips, hawthorn and sloe berries with some of the blend having been aged in old Pinot barrels. It’s only got a hint of sourness on the nose and isn’t offensive. There’s a smell of oak and the first taste is earthy, spicy and dry. That’s the beauty of sours, the residual sugar that the yeast has missed is consumed by the bacteria. They tend to be sharp, very dry and refreshing.
There’s plenty of other Aussie offerings out there being brewed all the time so expect to see more. These beers need more time for the bacteria to do its work and sometimes involves blending soured and non-soured beers to achieve the right acidity levels, so don’t expect every brewery to knock one out in a hurry. For the artisan brewers, there’s an opportunity to show off unique regional yeasts and bacteria with the scary world of spontaneous ferments. When they’re bad, they’re really bad, but when they’re great, they’re absolutely wonderful.
