“For these, you either add bacteria right at the beginning or let the mash sour by letting it steep,” says Alex Wallash, co-founder of The Rare Barrel, an all-sour brewery in Oakland, California. Yes, they’re sour, but that’s about the only flavor you’ll get.Ī better option is a kettle or quick sour. Beers that have food-grade lactic acid mixed in tend to have a very one-dimensional sour flavor. “It’s really cutting corners,” she says, and the results generally show it. While Limbach is loath to call any sours unworthy, these she does despise. The cheater’s method is simply to spike a brew with lactic acid. There are a few ways a brewer can add tang to their concoctions. The guild is in its infancy, but since you need to be able to choose a good bottle of beer tonight, we asked several soon-to-be SWAG members to elaborate on the “fake” sours to avoid and the best “real” sours to drink. Limbach wants to alleviate some of this confusion, so she and several colleagues from breweries specializing in fermented sours are forming the Sour and Wild Ale Guild (SWAG). This spectrum of sour beer–producing techniques also leads to a range of prices that can be mystifying for the uneducated consumer. But it’s worlds away in taste and nuance from barrel-aged, bacterially fermented sours, which take months to produce and have more in common with a fine white wine than a fruit-shocked wheat beer. Limbach explains the problem like this: If a brewer adds passionfruit to an ale, the result may make your lips pucker. She’s worked on New Belgium’s sour program for 20 years and knows the genre better than almost anyone else. It’s not a style or a process,” says Lauren Limbach, wood cellar director and blender at New Belgium Brewery. Craft beer drinkers generally like to know what they’re drinking-just ask the guy who won’t rest until he learns exactly where the malt for his nut brown came from.īut if you’re into sours, there’s a pretty good chance you actually don’t know what you’re drinking.
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