When Tart, Pungent and Funky Mean It’s a Good Brew

By ERIC ASIMOVAUG. 18, 2016



Five years can be an eternity in the craft-beer business. What may begin as an experiment can accelerate into a fad, if not a furor. So it has seemed with American brewers and the range of styles collectively known as sour beers.

Back in 2011, when the beer panel first sampled sour beers, American versions seemed few and far between, though a few brewers had been playing around with this collection of disparate European styles. Some, with more than a little glee, were enhancing these styles with their own creative touches. Results were fascinating, if inconsistent. Hard-core beer fans were, of course, captivated.

Since then, interest in sour beers has spread wildly. Where you once had to seek out a tavern specializing in craft brews to try a sour beer, you now expect to see them in decent neighborhood bars, and not just one but a selection.

“It’s become a total sensation and craze,” said Matthew Pene, the maître d’hôtel and beer director at Eleven Madison Park, who’s not generally given to overstatement. He and Chase Rabenn, the hospitality manager at a forthcoming restaurant for the residents of 432 Park Avenue, recently joined Florence Fabricant and me for a tasting of 20 sour beers. This time, unlike in our 2011 tasting, we were easily able to fill the 20 glasses solely with American interpretations.

Almost all of these brews took their inspiration either from Belgian and German styles like oud bruin, an aged Belgian brown ale; Flanders red ale, another aged Belgian ale without the malty character of oud bruin; lambic, a Belgian ale in which fermentation occurs spontaneously through ambient yeasts and which is sometimes flavored with fruit; Berliner weisse, a tart wheat beer from Berlin, and gose, another tart wheat beer from eastern Germany flavored with spices and salt.

Serious beer taxonomists may cast a gimlet eye at our embrace of this variety of styles. But each of these beers, to greater or lesser degrees, may be called sour.

Now, sour, with its pejorative connotation, is perhaps not a wholly adequate description for these beers. Many are tart, pungent, profoundly bracing and deliciously refreshing, provided the brewing has been focused and precise. They can also be funky, which can be a welcome accent or completely over the top. The unifying trait is a far higher level of acidity compared with ordinary brews.


Many of these characteristics are a result of a brewing process seemingly derived as much from wine as from beer, in which the beers are aged in barrels after fermentation. As they rest, they undergo additional transformations as bacteria like lactobacillus and pediococcus interact with the beer, contributing lively acidity as well as tart flavors and increased complexity. Some are vintage dated.

Not to draw the wine parallel too finely, but some of these beers are packaged like wine, in 750-milliliter bottles with corks, and can cost as much as $30 a bottle.

My guess is that few commercial sour-beer brewers choose to allow the sort of spontaneous fermentations that shape Belgian lambics. More likely, they are inoculating their brews with selected yeast strains, including brettanomyces, anathema to winemakers as it can be the source of funky flavors great and small. If unwanted in wine, it can be great in beer styles like gueuze, a Belgian blend of young and old unflavored lambics.

Not surprisingly given the variety of styles in our tasting, the range of flavors was vast. The best brews were beautiful and absolutely delicious. Some were more complex than others, but the best were balanced and precise. Some showed clear American touches like dry-hopping, the act of adding hops to the beer after the fermentation process, as it rests or ages.

“It’s like putting an aromatic stamp on it,” Chase said.

We also noted that more than a few of these brews seemed to be still in an experimental phase, as if the brewers were not quite in control of the results. These beers tended to be unbalanced, piercing or otherwise flawed. It may also have been a product of inexperience or lack of resources.

Many Old World brewers of sour beer employ a blending system like the solera of sherry, in which new batches of beer are combined over time with older batches in ways that can result in a more consistent product as well as compensate for any noticeable flaws in a particular batch.

“Some of these brewers may not have taken the time to blend with a solera, or they may not have the experience,” Matthew said. “They may be brewers, but they’re not blenders yet.”

One brewer that has mastered consistency is Cascade of Portland, Ore. Its 2014 Kriek, flavored with cherries as it aged in barrels, was our No. 1 beer: bright, lively, distinctive and complex. We gave it four stars, our highest score, which is rarely achieved, except that Cascade’s 2010 Kriek also earned four stars in our 2011 tasting.

No. 2 was a completely different style, the Mission Gose from Evil Twin, funky, tart, complex and refreshing. Evil Twin, by the way, is a brewer without a home brewery. Gypsy brewers like Evil Twin borrow space in existing breweries. The Mission Gose came from Mount Pleasant, S.C., home of Westbrook Brewing, which itself happens to make one of the best American goses.


Our third beer was Progenitor from Crooked Stave in Denver, tart and modestly funky, with a telltale, well-integrated aroma that comes from dry hopping. No. 4 was K Is for Kriek, a complex, bright and bold cherry-flavored beer from Brooklyn Brewery.

At 10.1 percent alcohol, K Is for Kriek was the most powerful brew in the tasting. The Cascade Kriek was high as well, at 8.2 percent. By contrast, the gose style is much lower in alcohol, around 4 percent. These tend to come in six packs, as they are more suitable for long beer-drinking sessions, while brews like the two Krieks, in their big bottles, may be perfect for candlelight suppers.

Other beers well worth noting include Far West Vlaming from Logsdon in Hood River, Ore., a funky, malty brew that seemed to combine elements of both the oud bruin and Flanders red styles, and the 2015 Barrel-Select Gold from Captain Lawrence in Elmsford, N.Y., a tart, assertive, yet austere brew reminiscent of a gueuze.

The most pleasantly strange beer in the lineup was our No. 7, the Otra Vez Gose-Style ale from Sierra Nevada in Chico, Calif. It was mellow, controlled, tart and tangy yet with a complementary flavor a little like watermelon. It turns out Sierra Nevada flavored the beer with the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, a particularly regional augmentation that we thought worked well.

Our overall impression was that the sour beer category was “immature,” as Chase put it, but showed great promise. Our top beers were so good, and have clearly struck a chord with consumers, that we can afford to wait for the other brewers to catch up.

Tasting Sour Beers

★★★★ CASCADE KRIEK 2014, PORTLAND, ORE., 8.2 PERCENT ($29, 750 ml.)

Bright, lively, tart and distinctive, with beautifully balanced flavors of sour cherries and citrus.

★★★½ EVIL TWIN MISSION GOSE, MOUNTPLEASANT, S.C., 4PERCENT ($2.60, 12 oz.)

Tart, complex, funky, salty and herbal; delicious and refreshing.

★★★ CROOKED STAVE PROGENITOR DRY-HOPPED GOLDEN SOUR ALE, DENVER, 6.2 PERCENT ($12, 375 ml.)

Tart and lovely, not complex but very refreshing, with wool, citrus and herbal flavors.

★★★ BROOKLYN BREWERY K IS FOR KRIEK, BROOKLYN,10.1 PERCENT ($30, 750 ml.)

Bright, brisk and complex, with cherry and chocolate malt flavors; delicious, though the high alcohol shows a bit.

★★★ LOGSDON FAR WEST VLAMING, HOOD RIVER, ORE., 6.5 PERCENT ($24, 750 ml.)

Funky and tart, with pronounced flavor of roasted malt; well balanced and unusual.

★★½ CAPTAIN LAWRENCE BARREL-SELECT GOLD 2015, ELMSFORD, N.Y., 6.5 PERCENT ($17.50, 750 ml.)

Gueuze-style, bright and alive, with tart, tangy, floral and citrus flavors.

★★½ SIERRA NEVADA OTRA VEZ GOSE-STYLE ALE, CHICO, CALIF., 4.5 PERCENT ($2.25, 12 oz.)

Strange yet focused and delicious, with a flavor almost like tart watermelon; made with prickly pear fruit.

★★½ TRANSMITTER F7 SOUR FARMHOUSE ALE, LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS,5.2 PERCENT ($13, 750 ml.)

Very pleasant and refreshing, with malty flavors balanced by citrus acidity.

★★ WEYERBACHER TARTE NOUVEAU SESSION SOUR, EASTON, PA., 3.9 PERCENT ($2.25, 12 oz.)

Lively and lightly sour, with subtle, fresh flavors of cherries.

★★ OFF COLOR FIERCE BERLINER-STYLE WEISSE, CHICAGO, 3.8 PERCENT ($3, 12 oz.)

Bright, very tart, refreshing but somewhat simple.

What the Stars Mean Ratings, up to four stars, reflect the panel’s reaction to the beers, which were tasted with names concealed. The beers represent a selection generally available in good retail shops, restaurants and on the internet. Prices are those paid in the New York region. Tasting coordinator: Bernard Kirsch


Sour beers defy neat categorization. Some are fruity or spicy. Others, lip-smackingly tart, could dress a salad. Most do very nicely against foods rich with fat, and eggs do not derail them. With eggs in mind, I narrowed my focus to a brunch dish, like the North African shakshuka (eggs baked on a vegetable stew) now popular throughout the Middle East and a brunch staple in New York. Sour beer would have been fine alongside the traditional tomato-based version, but I turned from the sweetness of tomatoes to better complement the beers, making instead an earthy version with broccoli rabe, potatoes and peppers.