Brewers Get Creative With Sours
By Mike Lerchenfeldt
Sours are a popular, year round rotational tap option to frequently share with friends. These amazing beers are unique, refreshingly tart and heavily fruit forward.
“In addition to a cherry sour collaboration with Great Baraboo Brewing Company, we have released a lot of different variants of sours with a Berliner Weisse base,” said Joe VanderMarliere, Baffin Brewing Company owner and chief executive officer. “Our most popular within our Splash Sour Series have been Rainbow Sherbet, Bomb Pop, Double Raspberry, and Passionfruit Peach.”
When initially creating a balanced sour ale, Vander-Marliere said they adjust the malted barley and hot water with brewers’ salts and lactic acid. After fermentation, they adjust it again with lactic acid, then add fresh seasonal fruit to create a specific sour ale.
Baffin Brewing Company creates its sour ales differently than Blake’s Brewing Company, which carefully introduces the bacterium lactobacillus directly into the kettle to sour the mash overnight.
“Once the desired pH level is reached, we fire up the kettle to kill off the bacteria in the solution,” said Eric Plata, Blake’s Brewing Company brewer and cider maker. “The brewing process then continues with the incorporation of hops, yeast and fresh seasonal fruit.”
Blake’s has a history of experimenting with fresh seasonal fruit and botanicals sourced directly from its orchard. Its taps have featured watermelon, winterberry, blackberry, and pina colada-inspired sours. Plata enjoys the fermentation process, creativity and chemistry behind the plethora of sour beer styles. He loves pairing sour beer with the fantastic salmon entrée available in Blake’s Brewing Company’s tasting room.
Sours are often enjoyed by more casual craft beer drinkers or by people who do not traditionally like most other beer styles. The bold flavor profile of a sour is different than other beers.
“They (sours) almost drink more like sparkling wine or hard seltzers and pair well with a nice charcuterie plate or spicy foods,” said Gary Marshall, Cadillac Straits Brewing Company owner and head brewer. “I always try to have one sour beer on tap at any given point and it always changes.”
Marshall uses Philly Sour, a state-of-the-art yeast, to create his sour beers. This gives him all the benefits of souring yeasts without risking a possible contamination from using a bacterium.
Loaded Dice Brewery runs a sour program called “All the Marbles.” The fresh seasonal fruit used is changed up regularly in order to offer a variety of flavors to customers.
“Our goal is to release a new, creative sour every four to six weeks,” said Jef Smith, owner and founder. “We always have at least one sour on tap.”
Its “Sugar Plum Fairies” sour features candied plums, figs and apricots. “The Donut King” sour is made with jelly doughnuts, vanilla, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries.
Smith said that guests love the creativity in these sours and often make suggestions for future fl avors. Once a regular customer made them several pound cakes that were used in the sour “Pound the Pot” which featured the pound cakes, cardamom and cinnamon.