The homebrewed beer which won Best of Show for the 2014 COHO Spring Fling in Bend, Oregon was a Gueuze, which was a very enjoyable sour ale: I finished my sample; given this, I had hoped that I could find a commercial sour ale which had similar deliciousness.
So, my lovely wife and I decided to try American Radler Swill by 10 Barrel Brewing Co.
ABV 4.5%, color: pale straw
Beautiful pour which displays a thick frothy head; it is a tad hazy.
The aroma is full of sweet, tart fruity smells like sour raisins, plums, cherries, and a little apple and banana.
The flavor is an overbearing, cloyingly sweet wreck! Very little sour flavor, no hop flavor or bitterness. The sweetness overtakes everything. I can not drink this!
The beer’s medium carbonation and big malt profile provide a full mouth feel, but again, the overbearing sweetness gets this beer poured on the lawn.
Great idea 10 Barrel, but poor execution. The time has come for an Oregon sour beer of some sort; let’s hope that 10 Barrel Brewing Co. puts its best resources to fixing this Swill.
Radlers definitely tend to be sweeter rather than sour. By most generally accepted definitions a radler is half lager/half lemonade. Cascade Brewing in Portland on SE Belmont makes some of the best sour beers available. If you like sours you owe it to yourself to hit up their barrel house. They always have between 8-10 sours on tap.
[quote]The time has come for an Oregon sour beer of some sort
[/quote]
Wait…what?
Oregon has lots of good sour beer options.
I think the problem you have is that you picked a radler, which is a blend of beer and lemonade. Not a sour beer.
Are you currently in or around Bend? If so, here are some suggestions for sour beer: 10 Barrel has a good berlinerweisse; Crux has several sours; Deschutes might have one of their sour beers at either the pub or production facility; Bend Brewing has a good berlinerweisse; and Ale Apothecary has fantastic sours but they are pricey and you’ll have to hunt them down in some of the shops. I’m sure there are others around town you could find.
This is good to know; this would have altered my expectations, not my thing either way: great lawn food! My zymology is all about Reinheitsgebot anyways, sour beers might squeek their way in, but it’s nothing we desire.
Here, found that Oregon sour beer for you…
http://www.cascadebrewingbarrelhouse.com/
Agree with all of the other previous posters.
Where I lived in Germany (Hesse) citronade was what we call lemonade. Lemonade wad a citrusy carbonated soft drink along the lines of 7-Up or Sprite. The Radler I tried tasted like Helles and Sprite.
The France paragraph is equivalent.
Old Horst calls it lemonade at first but if you read down he says lemon soda, and says you can make your own by mixing beer and lemon soda.
http://www.germanbeerinstitute.com/Radler.html
A British born woman down the street once talked about how she was confused when she had “cider” here for the first time. She was expecting an alcoholic drink, not fresh pressed apple juice.
I’m always heard shandy referring to beer/lemonade and radler referring to beer/lemon-lime soda. So that makes sense.
I learned about shandy from British and Australians and it was always lemon-lime soda and beer.
Aha. So maybe carbonation is irrelevant and it’s just two different origins.
Cascade is consistently the most sour of the American sours. They make great high gravity, barrel aged sour fruit beers. They do a secondary fermentation on fruit for several months with Lacto Brevis in various barrels. Good luck finding L. Brevis at the homebrew store.
A Radler should be as tart as a can of Squirt with a hint of malt and have a 2-3% abv. A Radler isn’t a sour beer. It’s a tart beer that tastes like soda pop. I’ve tried two German Radlers and they tasted great. Then I realized I paid $2.50 for a can of beer that tasted like lemon SanPelligrino soda and it would never get me drunk. :-\
I wonder if farmhouse in odell would do the trick. Seems like Logsdon would know how to do it.
I’m laughing because you didn’t think the SWILL was good enough. :o
Logsdon’s sours are excellent if you can find them.
I’ll be driving by the brewery saturday to grab the grandson. Hopefully the door will be open.