Beer Radar for WBM Nov 2012<\/p>\n
(First published in Wine Business Magazine in 2012)<\/p>\n
By John Kr\u00fcger<\/p>\n
Sour beer is here!<\/p>\n
Hey hop jerks and beer hipsters, your out-of-balance hop heavy day in the sun is over. Over hopped beers are so pass\u00e9. Prepare to have your senses blown away by a new beer sensation and it\u2019s a favourite of mine; sour beers!<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll 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\u2019t any. A commercial brewer I know says \u201cI\u2019ve tried heaps of sour beers, they\u2019re called home brews!\u201d but in this instance, I\u2019m talking deliberately soured, refreshing beers. I\u2019m 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<\/a>. One brewer said to me \u201cDon\u2019t bring of that shit anywhere near my brewery. I wouldn\u2019t be comfortable with someone drinking one of those in the car park!\u201d another said \u201cBloody hell, you\u2019d want to wash your hands with petrol before you touch anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n Even though I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n 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, \u201cIs it just for you?\u201d as if I needed help in drinking the 375ml bottle.<\/p>\n \u201cBloody hell, how strong is it?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n He smiled and in a very thick accent explained, \u201cAh it\u2019s not strong in alcohol but in flavour. It\u2019s\u2026. different.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s my 2012 beer of the year. Sensational. Can\u2019t wait for a revisit. Bring me a keg of that over summer & I\u2019ll be a happy man. It\u2019s low alcohol, full of flavour and amazingly refreshing.<\/p>\n Another Aussie offering is Tasmania\u2019s 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\u2019s only got a hint of sourness on the nose and isn\u2019t offensive. There\u2019s a smell of oak and the first taste is earthy, spicy and dry. That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n There\u2019s 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\u2019t expect every brewery to knock one out in a hurry. For the artisan brewers, there\u2019s an opportunity to show off unique regional yeasts and bacteria with the scary world of spontaneous ferments. When they\u2019re bad, they\u2019re really bad, but when they\u2019re great, they\u2019re absolutely wonderful.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beer Radar for WBM Nov 2012 (First published in Wine Business Magazine in 2012) By John Kr\u00fcger 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 pass\u00e9. Prepare to have your senses blown away by a new beer sensation … Continue reading Sour Beer is Here!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-craft-beer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}