It was about six years ago when I tried my first sour beer, and now, it’s the first thing I look for on any beer menu.
That first sip happened at Shotwell’s in San Francisco, a small, unassuming craft beer bar tucked away in the Mission District. I can’t remember the exact beer, just that it was Belgian, but I can distinctly recall its tartness and dry finish singing on my palate. It almost tasted healthy.
Since then the love affair has blossomed. Initially, I’d try whatever sours were rotating through the taps at Post No Bills in Sand City, and more recently, at Alvarado Street Brewery and Peter B’s Brewpub in Monterey or Farmers Union Pourhouse in Salinas, where last week they were pouring a dynamite Discretion Bramble Ramble blackberry kettle sour.
“People are really seeking [sours] out,” says Justin Rivard, head brewer at Peter B’s. “For the ones that like it, it’s almost like a holy grail.”
And it seems like their rise in the U.S. has only just begun.
“We’re going to see a lot more [sours] coming down the pipeline,” Rivard says. “People are waking up to it.”
Until the late 1800s, before brewing sanitation practices became more advanced, all beer was sour to a varying degree – microbes, created by contaminants, would create acid in the beer.
Now, making sours has evolved into a tricky craft that often yields unpredictable results. “It’s definitely the most complex of the styles out there – you don’t know what you’re going to get,” Rivard says. “Sometimes it really works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Sours can be made from any type of beer, and in late June, the one sour he has on tap – like Farmers Union, he usually has two – is a sour stout that is unusually refreshing and effervescent for a stout.
Rivard makes sours old-world-style, aging them in barrels for more than two years and inoculating them with yeast from the air – “What’s built up in the terroir,” he says.
A much quicker way of making a sour beer is by souring it in a boil kettle, a style that only takes days but requires more space.
J.C. Hill, head brewer at Alvarado Street Brewery, doesn’t think of kettle sours as proper sour beers – he thinks those should be barrel-aged – but his brewery makes both.
“What’s nice about kettle sours is they’re low in alcohol, they have bright acidity, they’re pleasantly tart and provide a good base to add fruit,” he says.
Case and point was a kettle sour Alvarado had on tap in June, Kettle Cooler, which was clean, crisp and had distinct notes of the pineapple it was finished with. Alvarado also does traditional barrel-aging to make sours – Hill says they are very early their program – and will be doing bottle releases six to 12 times annually.
The brewery just released its first bottles last month under the name Yeast of Eden.
They already sold out.
PETER B’S BREWPUB, 4pm-11pm Mon-Thu, 4pm-midnight Fri, 11am-midnight Sat, 11am-11pm Sun. 2 Portola Plaza, Monterey. 649-2699, portolahotel.com/peter-bs-brewpub.
Straight Form the Tap
“People flat-out say, ‘I don’t like beer.’ But we can find something without resorting to cider or wine. There’s something for everyone. A lot say, ‘I don’t like hoppy.’ Hoppy gets a bad rap. People think it’s only bitter. But there’s a spectrum – it can be sweet, floral, perfumy, piney, resiny. It’s always fun to match someone up with something that is something they think they don’t like.”