I’m going to talk about sour beers. I promise. To get to the specific however, we first need to consider much broader issues.
Classification systems, as many philosophers, biologists, historians, Dungeon Masters, and various other types of nerds have noted many times, are not perfect. No matter how specific and arcane a classification system may get, there’s always something that defies being put into a neat and tidy box. Hell, the platypus made a career out of not fitting into various phylums, families or classes. As is so often the case, what is true of animals, must also be true of beers.
“Ahh.” That sound comes from the agape mouths of many of my besotted readers. They say to themselves after reading that opening graf, “but I can tell the difference between Midwestern and Pacific IPAs just by smelling them. Porters, stouts and brown ales, none of them can hide from my gaze.” With all apologies to my beloved barfly subscribers, they don’t know what the heck they are talking about. While various beers do taste different – just try and tell a Chicago sot that Fist City and Daisy Cutter are the same – delineating, describing, and demarking those boundaries is both metaphysically and regular-physically impossible.
So why then do people keep trying to categorize beers? Part of it is comes from ease of consumption. When a bar has ten or more beers on their menu, customers can get overwhelmed. Sorting by type is an easy way to reduce such customer unease. No need for someone to look at a list of fifty horribly punned beer names with no idea what they’ll taste like. But marketing plays even more of a role than making life easier for customers. Craft beer has only become more crowded field since its 21st Century renaissance and breweries need a way to make their beers stand out. Why make another IPA when you can make a Midwestern IPA? Or a Great Lakes IPA? Claiming a unique space can give you a bit of a marketing edge even if there isn’t any coherent set of unique attributes that makes your beer different from other ones.
For those of my readers who couldn’t pick out a milk stout from a farmhouse ale, think about it like this. Could you accurately explain the difference between a metal band and a hard rock band to someone? Or a backpack rapper from a Soundcloud rapper? Or high fantasy from epic fantasy if your tastes tend more toward fiction.
So, what does all this preamble have to do with sour beers? Not a lot I guess, except that you won’t get a solid definition of one from me. I just find the classification systems interesting, so I wanted to write a little about it. Now let’s get to sour beers.
My thesis for this newsletter is that sour beers rule. So, what are they? Well, sour beers, much like Justice Potter’s infamous ruling in Jacobellis v Ohio, require a “I know it when I see it” definition. That aside, I’ll try to provide at least a few guidelines despite the impossibility of doing so. Most importantly, as the name suggests, they are indeed sour. That sourness usually comes from wild yeast and/or bacteria. Sometimes it comes from fruit, sometimes it comes from the malt. Like I said, it’s hard to define. That’s about it, there’s no other real requirements for a sour. Often, they have a pretty low ABV – Alcohol by Volume – but not always. They’re usually lighter in color, but once again, not always. Any type of beer can have a sour variation. To bring it back around, they are the platypus of beers.
So now that we have a solid, useable definition of what I’m talking about, why in the hell do I like sour beers, and why do I feel the need to defend them? A couple of reasons, if you must know. For one, I think people shy away from sour beers based on their name alone. Which is entirely fair. Most people don’t want to drink something that is self-described as “sour.” It’s not often a positive adjective. Sour milk, sour bread, sour water. None of those things are worth consuming. Unlike all of those things however, sour beer is sour on purpose, not because it got left out too long and went bad. It’s not the sour of a lemon, or a piece of sour candy. It’s a sour that punches you in the face, but in a way that keeps you coming back. It engages every part of your tastebuds. It’s a symphony on the tongue. It also is hard to drink.
Most beers are easy to drink. They’re designed that way. Your American lagers, think Buds and Millers Light, are meant to be unobtrusive. A background beer, one that goes well with pizza, pretzels, playoffs and popcorn. Sours are the opposite of unobtrusive. When you are drinking a sour, you know you are drinking a sour. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to shotgun a sour beer. Maybe like drinking battery acid mixed with sodium bicarbonate and the bad kind of coke. They are by design a sipping beer. Something to enjoy over a period of hours, not minutes. The long drink time combined with the usually low ABV means that unless you are trying to, you’re not going to tipsy.
The challenge of the sour is probably part of the reason why I like it. Oftentimes it can be easy to ignore what I’m eating or drinking, imbibing something just I have some something to do. Whether it’s a LaCroix, a Fresca, or a whatever, I just drink it, instead of paying attention to it. Sours force you to pay attention to them. Making you realize what you’re drinking, puzzling over every flavor. This is a good thing. We need to pay more attention about what we eat and drink. Even our beers. Food isn’t just calories, drink isn’t just subsistence. Someone made that beer, worked hard on it, sweated over it. That labor should be respected.
Before I end this, I should note that I’m allergic to sours that use a specific type of wild yeast. If I have more than two of them within a few hours of each other my throat starts to close up. It’s pretty crazy. So maybe I just like them because I have a story to tell whenever I drink them. In any case, make sure you’re not allergic to sour beers before drinking too many of them.
It's weird that you didn't mention librarians as people who classify things. It makes me want to punch you in the face in a way that keeps you coming back.