Sour Tasting

John Hayes and Dan Norton from Enki Brewing recently approached me with some questions about sour beers.  Like many even fairly well educated beer drinkers they both felt that their knowledge and ability to judge the sours was not quite where they would like it.  As a BJCP beer judge I really appreciate those who know their beer shortcomings and want to improve on them!  I know several ranked judges who specifically request not to judge these categories of beer simply because they don't like them...to me this is something they should work at and either learn to like them or at least recognize good from bad examples!

I had already been amassing a collection of sour beers after our recent Belgium trip, so this was a perfect time to break some of those out and see if I had the chops to teach others what I know of the sour styles.  I have been thinking of doing a BJCP prep class for the Western Suburbs in the next year or two and this would be a great way to test my skills.  And an excuse to have some great sour beers!

My friend (and sour beer aficionado) Andrew and his wife Janelle joined us for this and contributed some cool beers as well.  John, Dan, Dan's wife (who isn't a beer person at all) and Sj all showed up for the tasting.  We had a few cancellations, and luckily another friend, Jesse, was able to fill in at the last minute!

I tried to start with the more accessible beers, since those are often viewed as "gateway" beers for non-sour drinkers.  We would then move into the more extreme examples.

Flanders Red

We started the grouping with what many would consider the easiest sour beer to handle: Flanders Red.  This style is a mixed fermentation including traditional beer yeast, lactobacillus, pediococcus, acetobacter, and brettanomyces yeast, usually fermented or aged in wooden barrels or foedors.  Also known as the Bergundy of Belgium, these reddish hued ales combine cherry or other dark fruit flavors with a tart or sour bite.  Most of these beers use a blend of older/more sour beer with a younger/less sour beer to get the right balance.  One of the most commonly found examples of this style here in Minnesota is the Duchesse De Borgogne.  This one is very approachable since it's tartness is tempered by back-sweetening, resulting in a sweeter and easier to handle flavor.  I used to really like this beer, but now it seems way too sweet for my palate.  I still have plenty of friends who love the beer, and have no problem with that!

From there we went to a homebrewed example that I brewed up in 2009.  This one has continued to increase in tartness over time, and certainly has more than The Duchesse.  I've been brewing one of these each year since 2008, and my skills are slowly increasing.  With the need to age for such protracted time (a year or so) zeroing in on the right recipe and making changes can take a bit of time!  I haven't quite gotten to the point of blending myself but I'm starting to think this is the way to go!

The third beer we tried was New Glarus Enigma.  This one has aged several years and has more of a tart cherry pie flavor than I remember from when it was fresh.  Still nice, but overall people liked my version better (Eric pats own back here...)

The last beer was the Jolly Pumpkin La Roja that I brought back from our recent trip to Michigan.  This one is not entirely traditional for Belgium, but is very close in style for tasting.  The complexity in the beer is incredible compared to our previous two examples.  Initially most of the unseasoned sour drinkers in the group loved the Duchesse, but by the end of the tasting several liked the Jolly Pumpkin more.

Flanders Brown Ale/Oud Bruin

The Belgian sour brown is really an offshoot of the Flanders Red, but tends to be a bit more mellow and darker in color.  Often these will be back sweetened or blended to have just a touch of acidity or sourness to them.  These beers usually have more dark fruit, raisin, prune, and some caramel or toffee malt flavors to them than the Flanders Red.  These are also often aged for some time and may have a bit of oxidation or sherry character.  There are not many local examples of this style and it hasn't caught on as much with the American craft beer scene yet, though does often act as a base for fruit beers.  I discovered a paper wrapped bottle of Leifman's Goudenband at The Four Firkins that would do nicely here!  This one was a hit with its smoother sourness and I think everyone liked it well.  I have had the chance to try a 20 year old bottle of this beer when in Antwerp that was still amazing.

Gueuze

Gueuze is really usually a blend of three years worth of spontaneously fermented lambics.  I did get a chance to taste some of the young unblended lambic beers in Belgium, but trust me, they get much more complex when blended together with older and more tart beer.  Brussels is the epicenter for this style of beer, but they can be found elsewhere, and now American brewers like Allagash and Jolly Pumpkin are doing their own versions of these beers.  The hot wort is traditionally run into a large flat copper coolship where it cools overnight and gets inoculated with random brewery bacteria.  It is then added to used wooden barrels (where most of the real wild yeast and bacteria reside) and fermented for 1-3 years.

I started here with the Timmermans Oude Gueuze (also from The Firkins).  I had never had this beer before, and expected one that was fairly mellow, based on the sweetness and mediocre sourness levels of the Timmermans fruit lambics I've tried.  It came as a bit of a shock that this beer was incredibly tart, virtually bursting with lemon flavors that made it stand out as very unique amongst geuezes I've tried in the past.

We then tried Andrew's Girardin 1882 which is one of the better and more accessible examples of the style.  This one was more balanced and complex than the Timmermans and is one of my favorites (if I can't find a Cantillon!)  The group was a little more challenged by this style but several still enjoyed the lemon-crazy flavors of the Timmermans.

Fruited Lambics

What most people think of when they hear the word Lambic is slightly tart fruit beers.  The quintessential and most available of these is Lindemans.  They have several flavors, but the Kriek (cherry) and Framboise (raspberry) are the most popular and most traditional.  These, like The Duchesse use a sour beer base, but back sweeten to the point of being nearly syrupy and cloyingly sweet.  The New Glarus Belgian Red and Raspberry Tart are very similar American examples.  I do like these, but after having the more traditional tart versions of these beers I have a harder time dealing with the sweetness.  All of our group (except us seasoned veterans) really enjoyed this beer.  Again--I don't judge!

We moved on to the Boon Marriage Parfait--a more classic Kriek with a much more sour and tart finish.  I really like this beer and find it to have a better balance of cherry flavor, but without the overwhelming sweetness.  This one wasn't as big a hit as I'd expected it to be.

Lastly we tried Andrew's Lindemans Kriek Cuvee Rene.  I had not heard of this beer before, though have tried the base Geueze Cuvee Rene which is quite good.  This is a Kriek that is amazingly different from their above-mentioned sugar-bomb.  I really enjoyed getting a chance to try this rare beer and it proved to me that Lindemans is certainly a good sour producer--even if they make most of their money on overly sweet versions of their beer.

American Sours

This is where it gets weird.  As with anything Americans like to do their own thing.  Follow traditional brewing methods that have been around for hundreds of years?  Nah!  Let's do something different!  Some of our sours are made like in Belgium, but many push the styles into new territory either by methods, ingredients or trying something completely new.  Unfortunately some of these experiments are either ill-conceived or brewing mistakes that are unintentionally sour--giving the rest a bad name.  I've had American sours that are as good or better than some in Belgium.  I've also had travesties that are amongst the worst beers I've ever put in my mouth.  Paint thinner and silage are NOT good flavors in a sour beer!

One of the best examples of great American sours is Cascade Brewing from Portland, OR.  I went to their barrel house tasting room last year and that place blew me away!  Instead of the more common brettanomyces fermentations, they focus on the lactic or acidic/tart styles.  They do various fruit beers like Strawberry, Blueberry, Cherry, but also some unusual strong ales like Vlad the Impaler.  For this event I cracked a two year old Cascade Blueberry that had changed quite a bit since I had it previously.  A lot of the blueberry had faded and a strong smoky phenol flavor had shown up.  I still liked the beer, but it was an entirely different experience for me.  Reviews on this one were positive, but not the overall winner of the day!


We had more to try, but at this point were losing folks.  The guys from Enki ordered us pizza and we had a great time with this event!  I hope that this brought everyone closer to enjoying sours as a broad style--or at least taught them what styles to focus on for their personal taste.  Andrew and I didn't get a chance to crack a few of our other beers so ended up doing that later in the week...perhaps I'll write those up as well.

NHC Day 3: 4 More Michigan Breweries!

Day 3 of our trip to Michigan for the 2014 NHC started way too early in the morning for me!  Sj and I had to grab coffee and head down to a different hotel lobby and meet up with our second bus tour group.  This group was a little bigger and was going to take us to four of the bigger breweries in Michigan.  No problem, we had done 6 breweries yesterday, we could handle four more!

Our first stop was to be at Jolly Pumpkin in Dexter, Michigan, about a 2 hour drive from Grand Rapids.  The brewery has only recently moved locations and does not currently have a tasting room at the brewery itself.  We were actually to be their first official tour and since they were still working on things they did not want us to take pictures.  As a result I have no visual proof I was there, but plenty of good memories!  Since they were not able to serve us beers, our tour guides poured us small samples (for a $5 fee) into plastic cups.  Anyone who has had Jolly Pumpkin beers before knows that they are quite effervescent and combined with a moving vehicle and small cups this process got messy!  We sampled some foamy cups of these great sour and wild ales as the bus continued the trek to the small town of Dexter.  When we arrived in town our bus suddenly slowed as it neared a low arched stone bridge.  Wait a second...there was no way we were getting the bus through that!  With images of our bus stuck under a bridge like Winnie the Pooh stuck in the honey tree, we waited to see what would happen.  At this point a huge line of cars was stuck behind us and there was no where to go.  One of our tour guides hopped off the bus to go under the bridge and scout out how far away the brewery was--if it was close we could all walk while the bus driver figured things out.  It wasn't that close!  Eventually one of our tour group jumped off to start directing traffic and give us room to reverse.  A kind stranger stopped his car and offered to lead us through some back roads (some unpaved dirt!) to the brewery.  This was shaping up to be an adventure!  But time was wasting and there were breweries to visit!

Finally we arrived in an out of the way industrial park.  The brewery is not incredibly well marked at this point, but we figured it out!  Jolly Pumpkin actually shares a building with the North Peak Brewing, separated into separate halves to decrease the chance of cross contamination with wild bacteria.  Right away we were taken in two separate groups, ours led by owner/brewer Ron Jeffries, and the other by another of the brewers.  The large building is very industrial and utilitarian--not the most photogenic (even if I could take pics!) of breweries I've been to.  The number of wooden barrels and mish-mash of foedors, however, was amazing!  Ron was quiet and somewhat soft spoken, but was one of the most informative and educational tour guides I have ever had.  I learned a lot about his sour beer production techniques and history in a short period of time.  Having recently been to Belgium and The Night of Great Thirst sour beer festival, this was really a cool tour!  The brewery opened in 2004 and was the first brewery to use the "Artisan Ales" moniker.  It is the only brewery to use only all wood fermentation.  Our tour actually took longer than expected, but trust me, no one was going stop Ron from telling us all great stories of the early days of craft brewing!  He gathered several cool beers for us to sample on the bus and sent us on our merry way. 

Ron Jeffries telling us tales!

We tried several of the beers, including some from North Peak, on the longish trip to our next brewery.  My favorite by far was the La Roja which I haven't had in years since Jolly Pumpkin stopped distributing in Minnesota.  This is a very tart and complex version of a Flanders Red, that tastes more like the expensive and rare  Rodenbach Vintage ale than the sweeter Rodenbach Grand Cru.  One of our poor tour guides ended up getting "bus sick" from walking back and forth trying to pour us beer.  While on the bus our tour guide got word from Dark Horse that their power had just gone out--trouble just kept haunting this trip!

Eventually we arrived at Dark Horse Brewing in Marshall, MI.  I've been a fan of Dark Horse beers for years and was very excited to check out this brewery.  Luckily the power had returned and our quest for beer was not stymied!  Our tour was large and the tour had limited size, resulting in us splitting our group in half.  Sj and I, as well as Denise and Ron (a really nice couple from the Twin Cities) found ourselves in the brewpub first.  The space is small, with reclaimed doors as tables and tons of old posters on the walls.  Classic folk and rock music played over the loud speakers.  The entire low ceiling of the pub was lined with multicolored ceramic mugs, giving this place a close, but homey and rustic feel.  I wish I lived close and could have my own unique mug here!  While waiting for our tour I had some really good chili and sipped on the hoppy Smells Like a Safety Meeting.  I'm sure there is a good story behind the name for that beer!

Dark Horse is one of the more unusual breweries I've been to.  The pub itself is actually attached to a family owned store.  Outside there is a new outdoor biergarten, but it started raining the second we passed through that.  Next to the brewery are small buildings featuring a Harley shop and the General Store.  The General Store sold homebrew supplies, Dark Horse merchandise and skateboard supplies.  We eventually went on the tour for an extra $10.  There seemed to be a lot of unusual decorations (life sized Jack Skellington hanging over the bottling line, a fish tank table in the pub), and re purposed materials in use.  Everywhere there was something new to look at.

More than meets the eye!

We eventually ended up in a small but hot upstairs tasting room, where we had 6 samples included in our tour fee.  This was pretty cool since we were able to try some smaller batch stuff not on tap downstairs in the pub.  There was a disgusting cherry beer, but also an amazing maple aged brown ale and the bourbon barrel aged Plead the 5th Stout.  We chugged these down fast and headed back to our bus.  Overall this was probably my favorite brewery of the day, with a true independent spirit and vibe notable throughout everything these guys do!

Perfect timing!

Our next stop was back to Bells Eccentric Cafe.  This stop had been included on the previous day's tour so I'm glossing over it here!  Having had the two samplers yesterday we knew what beers we wanted right away.  I had one of experimental hop beers and Sj tried the Baroness--a Munich Dunkel.

As a finish to our tour we were dropped at Founders Brewing right in Grand Rapids.  With thousands of homebrewers converging on the city around now, the place was insane!  I was a bit disappointed that we didn't have any tour organized.  My thoughts on the tour for this day were less than perfect.  Now, while some of the issues (Winnie the Pooh) maybe couldn't have been foreseen, other things could.  I think that these tours would do well to include the price of the Dark Horse tour and the extra Jolly Pumpkin beer into the base price.  I don't mind paying, but I don't want to get nickel and dimed during the tour.  I also think that a longer stop midway for lunch would be ideal.  Trying to wolf down chili before our tour of Dark Horse was possible, but would not have been if I'd ordered something more complex.  Also I signed up for a tour of 4 places but could have walked to Founders from my hotel...Still a fun day and getting to hang with Ron, Denise, Wendy, Dave, and Mike Sutor was well worth it!

With the nutty crush of humanity and lack of seating at Founders, we decided to forgo the stress and just walked back to the hotel and had dinner across from our hotel at Z's.

Later we were invited to a small party upstairs at Founders by one of our friends and I did finally get to enjoy their great beers!  They actually had a special Juniper Rye ale brewed in collaboration with my friend Chris German on tap, and that was by far the best Juniper beer I've ever had.  I also really loved the smooth low gravity Oatmeal Stout and would love to buy some of that for drinking at home!  Founders is one of my favorite craft breweries and I really love what they do.  Thanks!

Super secret upstairs bar at Founders!

Up Next: NHC Day 4!