Opening Up to Sour Beers

I remember the first time I tried a sour beer.  I made a face that looked like this:

Yes, I was 8 years old with a bowl haircut when I had my first sour!!

When I was living in San Francisco, I received a number of sours in my beer of the month club from Plumpjack in Noe Valley.  I was always terrified of these beers and they ended up aging in my refrigerator for months until I worked up the courage to open one.  Since that time I've tried a number of sours and my, "OMG, that's gross" face has steadily declined but I had never reach the point of actually enjoying a sour until last week.

Last week I attended a home brew club meeting for the first time with The Mad Zymurgists in Livermore.  The topic of the night was sours and of course as any good home brew club would do there was a beer tasting.  According to the BJCP, the following styles are recognized as sours:

BJCP Category 17

17A. Berliner Weisse
17B. Flanders Red Ale
17C. Flanders Brown Ale/Oud Bruin
17D. Straight (Unblended) Lambic
17E. Gueuze
17F. Fruit Lambic

Now, two of these styles are beers that I've enjoyed in the past.  I've found Berliner Weisse and Gueuze to very enjoyable beers and would recommend that any beer drinker explore these style as an "entry drug" into sours.  I didn't even realize these were sour styles until last Thursday.

Similarly, a lambic may be a great way to convince some of your wine snob friends to begin enjoying the delightful-ness of beer.  A lambic will usually come in a fancy, corked bottle and can be sweet & sour.  Also, the color is usually not amber or golden like most beers.  Most of the lambics I've been exposed to are some variation of red in color.  Don't tell your friends its beer and they'll drink it straight down!

Finally, we come to the two styles that surprised me the most, the flanders red ale and the flanders brown ale (or oud bruin).  I did not expect to enjoy either one of these, but these really opened my eyes last week to how enjoyable sour ales can be.  The flanders red ale was a beer called Oude Tart from The Bruery (side note we also tasted an ale aged in bourdon barrels with wild yeast call Tart of Darkness also from the The Bruery).  I regret not being able to recall what the flanders brown ale was, but if it returns to my memory I will update this posting.

So in summary, if you're looking to start you're journey into sour beers perhaps begin with a nice Berliner Weisse or Gueuze, save the lambics for your wine snob friends, and then ease yourself into the flanders red.  I enjoyed the tasting so much that it got me thinking about brewing my own sours.  Perhaps I'll jump into those style someday when I'm ready to commit to aging one for about a year!