I’m reading American Sour Beers (excellent book so far) and following the author’s recommendation to keep a tasting log of commercial sours.
Fortunately, my local liquor store has a wide selection of at least 40 different sours. Unfortunately, they are all pretty expensive.
Yesterday, I picked up these:
Below are my tasting notes on the Citra Sour. The second beer is a sour ale aged in Bourbon barrels with cherries. I’ll try that one later this week.
Disclaimer: I’m pretty sure my palette kind of sucks.
Almanac Brewing – Citra Sour (10.25.15)
Description: American blonde ale fermented with house sour culture, racked into used oak wine barrels for several months and then dry hopped with Citra; abv 7%
Appearance: Hazy, dark straw/golden color, effervescent, minimal head
Aroma: Slightly sour, light malt, and citrus (lemon and grapefruit)
Taste: moderate sourness with no funk; fizzy grapefruit, lemony (slight mouth puckering); perhaps light vinegar; light malt; light hop bitterness (not really noticeable); hint of light berries?; dry finish
Impression: Enjoyable, would buy again, definitely sour but not overpoweringly so
The Citra Sour sounds tasty, thanks for the review. I’ll try to track it down.
I recommend adding Almanac Dogpatch Sour to your list. It’s sort of a Flanders Red, cherries, wine barrels, wild yeasts (including SF sourdough!!) and pretty damn tart. I really enjoyed it.
Description: Sour ale aged in bourbon barrels (for 9 months) with cherries; house Brett for secondary fermentation and house pedio and lacto for souring; abv 9.7%
Appearance: Hazy, medium dark brown, effervescent, minimal head with lacing
Aroma: moderate sourness, slight dark fruit, slight woodiness?, slight sulfur?
Taste: strong sourness with sharp edge (tartness from cherries?), slight alcohol sweetness, minimal funk, something unpleasant that I don’t know how to describe (maybe vinegar, bile and over ripened cheese?), slight malt flavor, no noticeable hop flavor, dry finish
Impression: the sourness is ok, but there’s something going on that I do not care for, would not buy again
Description: brewed with 2-row, midnight wheat, raw wheat and rye malt; hopped with blend of Perle, Glacier and Simcoe; fermented with house strain of brett in stainless tanks; bottle noted it was filled on June 16, 2014; 7.3% abv
Appearance: black in color with dark ruby at the edges, extremely effervescent, pours with an enormous head that does not dissipate quickly, heavy lacing
Aroma: very mild sourness, coca-cola, very mild dark fruit, light alcohol
Taste: light and soft sourness, no funk, coca-cola (pleasant but wonder where it is coming from), light hop bitterness no real hop flavor, hint of roast, light to moderate berries (raspberry and cherry?), dry but refreshing and soft (round?) finish that leaves a touch of sour
Impression: really like this one (unfortunately very expensive), wonder what strain(s) of brett they are using
Description: unfiltered saison fermented with brett and bottle conditioned with pear juice; 8% abv; 35 IBU
Appearance: hazy straw/burnished gold, effervescent, enormous and rocky head that drops to a large head fairly quickly; heavy lacing; quite a bit of sediment in bottle (could be good candidate for harvesting dregs)
Aroma: very mild sourness, light spice and alcohol, touch of noble hops?
Taste: mild and rounded sourness, no funk, background hop bitterness and flavor, light butterscotch?, pleasing rustic character; light fruitiness (almost starfruit and green grape?); light citrus; slight grassiness/hay (in a good way); touch of black pepper?; full finish that fades quickly to dry and lightly tart
Impression: great beer; would buy again (and well-priced)
Side note: this is a very interesting and small farmhouse brewery in Oregon, which I have never heard of before, brewing mostly Belgian inspired sours; would like to seek out more of their offerings
Allagash’s Brett beers are great, but I often wish there was more Brett character to them. I think it may have something to do with being a 100% Brett beer without a Sacc primary - less fermentation byproducts for the Brett to work on. Still, I have a hard time walking past a bottle of Confluence (their dry-hopped sour) without feeling extreme temptation to throw it in my cart.
I get a lot of pineapple/cherry pie in Confluence - reminds me a bit of Orval. I wonder if it’s a similar strain.
The “farmhouse” actually needs no quotation marks. It is literally brewed in a barn on a farm just outside of Mt. Hood. It’s owned by Logsdon who was formerly an owner in Full Sail and started up Wyeast in the same barn in which the Logsdon beers are brewed. Some of that may change with the shakeup in Logsdon Farm Brewery.
It’s inaccurate to say they brewing mostly sours. They only have one sour beer (to my knowledge) while the entire lineup is certainly Belgian inspired (saisons, tripel, wit, Flemmish red).
Of the 11 beers listed on their website, 7 of them include either brett or lactic acid bacteria. Hopefully, I’ll be able to find some more. It looks like there are a couple of stores in LA that carry it.
How are we using the word sour? Is Lindemans raspberry lambic a sour beer?
Is Logsdon Peche n Bret a sour beer, i say Yes. It’s not a puckering acetic type sour, but its a sour beer.
I think some discernible sourness is required to call a beer sour. Those Lindemans beers were sour at one point but are backsweetened to a point that they may be technically lambic but they are no longer sour.
By what standard are you defining Peche n Brett as a sour beer?
Look im not trying to pick a fight or prove someone wrong, if you arent able to detect any acid in that beer thats fine by me. If you want it declared not sour thats OK by me.
It seems to me that Sour Beer is a class of beers that use mixed fermentations of sac yeast with lacto and/or pedio and/or bret, and sometimes no sac yeast at all. Generally, the ph of the final beer will be lower than that of normal beer, so probably sub 4.0 ph. I have not measured the ph of Peche n Brett, but it tastes more acidic to me than a normal beer. I agree its not as acidic as most commercial sour beers.
Awesome. I haven’t had one since about June, so foggy memory, but ive had a few bottles. We used to enjoy stopping in on the bike and shooting the breeze with Seaberg. He’s a super nice and very interesting guy. I suppose if I was forced to declare a sourness level I would say tart. There may be more acid coming from the fruit than the fermentation, who knows. From my perspective its a great example of what a BJCP '15 28C American Wild Ale - Specialty. Terminology-wise, I put all of cat23 and cat28 under “Sour Beer”. If sour means 3.2 pH or less, then not all Sour Beer is sour.
I didn’t realize that New Belgium had such a large and dedicated sour program. After reading about it in American Sour Beers, I really wanted to pick up some La Folie.
Also, I remembered I had a bottle of Lindemans Framboise in my basement, leftover from a mixed 12 pack someone sent me for my birthday a year or two ago.
I’ve been picking up an extra bomber of La Folie for several years now in hopes of doing a 10 year vertical tasting. I’m not a connoisseur of sours to any extent but I do like that one quite a bit.
Description: sour brown ale aged one to three years is large oak barrels known as foeders; 7% abv
Appearance: lightly hazy, deep reddish-brown color, minimal effervescence, minimal head
Aroma: medium sourness, light stale/wood? , medium sweetness of red berries / almost of concentrated fruit juice (cranberry, cherry and raspberry?), maybe lemongrass?, light alcohol, no discernable hops
Taste: moderate sourness, no funk, heavy fruit juice like tartness (cranberry, raspberry and apple; maybe some lemon?), finish is sweet and sour at the same time (and dry), possible light woodiness
Impression: less sour than expected, easy drinking; surprised at the heavy fruit flavor (amazing there actually isn’t any fruit in this beer); very enjoyable
