The Thing About Sour Beer...

I know it's been a while since my last post, I apologize in advance. Let's chalk it up to I've been doing a lot of brewing, and very little writing. This year is going to be a year of experimentation and fine tuning old recipes. More info to come on results from National Homebrew Competition, other local competitions, and everyone's favorite homebrew festivals.

I was thinking of making this a Facebook post, but my ideas kept getting longer than a paragraph and a picture (That seems to be the social media limit for attention span). This weekend we brewed 10 gallons of Cat's Out the Bag Cream Ale with the intention of making two separate batches of beer, by pitching different yeast strains.

The first batch is the usual cream ale, which we will add mangos to in the keg. Our cream ale has always been a way to experiment with fruit and spices, because it is a light, crisp, and fruity beer to begin with, a blank canvas for experimentation. Other adjuncts added to our cream ale include peaches, vanilla and lactose, and a combination of lemon, basil, and thyme.

The second half of the batch is where things get interesting. We will be making a sour ale, and pitching fresh apples into the secondary fermentation. Now before I go any farther, let me give some background on the topic of sour beer. Sour ales have a long history in the brewing world, with as wide-ranging of style as IPAs, stouts, and bocks. When you hear sour beer, it could be Lambic, Berliner Weisse, Flanders Red, Oud Bruin, Gose, or any other wild ale.

I'd encourage you to try different styles of sours, IPAs, stouts, etc. before making a blanket about not liking sours, IPAs, stouts, etc. That's a conversation for another post. Feel free to contact me at itsgoodbeer@gmail.com if you ever have questions about beer styles, are looking for recommendations, or any other beer related information.

Quick crash course in microbiology... Typical beer yeast is "saccharomyces cerevisiae". Sour bacteria in beer is "brettanomyces", "lactobacillus", "pediococcus", "acetobacter", or others but I have run out of Latin gibberish.

Now for the fun stuff. What we are brewing is considered a Lambic, a Belgian beer historically fermented in open vats, allowing any bacteria floating around in the air to end up in the beer. It is this unusual process which gives the beer its distinctive flavor: dry, vinous, and cidery, usually with a sour aftertaste.
During fermentation, instead of producing foamy Krausen, sour bacteria produce pellicles, or a thin film, which traps the CO2 gas. Below is a picture of the pellicles formed on our lambic after 24 hours of fermentation.

I know it looks gross, but it's science!

There are many different types of Lambic ales. "Gueze" means to blend aged Lambic (typically dry) with younger Lambic (typically sweet from unfermented sugars), and is usually designated as such on the label. Fruit additions are common, and can include:

Cherry – Kriek
Raspberry – Framboise
Peach – Peche
Blackcurrant – Cassis
Grape – Druif
Strawberry – Aardbei
Apple – Pomme
Banana – Banane
Pineapple – Ananas
Apricot – Abricotier
Plum – Prunier
Cloudberry – Plaquebiere
Lemon – Citroon
Blueberry – Bleuet

Our Pomme Lambic will hopefully be the first of many fruit Lambic. One down, fourteen to go!

If you want to learn more about sour beers, or any other style for that matter, give us a shout. We are always glad to talk beer with people who love good beer.

PS. Spell check hates me after this article...