Greetings all!

If you haven’t met me yet, I’m Zain, the resident beer nerd at Zipp’s Liquors. On thursday, February 12th, I’ll be doing a sour beer tasting right here at everyone’s favorite liquor store! I will be discussing the history, ins and outs, as well as my passion for boozy tasty treats! I have hand-picked five beers from across the globe that span the sour spectrum of kettle soured, mixed fermentation, and spontaneously fermented beers.

I want to start off with one of the most iconic sour beers of all time, Orval. At its core, it’s a Belgian-Style Pale Ale refermented with a yeast often referred to as “brett.” Seems unassuming enough right? There’s a bit more to the story. A little before 1070 A.D Matilda, the widowed Countess of Tuscany mistakenly dropped her ring into a spring.Distraught, she prayed that the ring would be found, and a few moments later a trout appeared with the missing ring in it’s mouth. She was so overcome with joy that she bought the land of the miracle for the Church and roughly 861 years later, a beer donning a trout with a ring in it’s mouth was born. Orval is one of very few breweries that are qualified to be official an Authentic Trappist Product which means, all products are made within the Abbey, they only produce enough beer to keep the monastery running or charity, and beers are made by monks or nuns or under the supervision of monks or nuns. The brettanomyces yeast used in this beer is subtle in most ways but is still considered the star of the show in Orval. Noted for its barnyard or horse blanket characteristic, brett is known to add a “funkiness” to beers that are brave enough to come into contact with it. And now on to the next!

Being from Colorado, Crooked Stave is probably my favorite brewery of all time. And one of my favorite beers they offer is the Sour Rose. Crooked Stave makes sour and non sour beer which means their brewery has to have strict rules to ensure that the clean beers don’t become infected. They run on a color coding system which is black for brett beer, green for clean, and red for sour. This is red. It’s got a punch of raspberries and blueberries that is rounded out with a touch of oak from being aged in oak foeders. It is the first canned mixed fermentation beer to hit the market. I believe the can describes it best, sour, bubbly, elegant.

Third on the list is when we finally get into spontaneous fermentation. Hof ten Doormal makes an excellent kriek which is a good thing because that’s next on the list! Hof ten Dormaal makes all of their ingredients on the farm where the brewery is. It’s also completely family run. They make this delish drink by putting their wort into a koelschip and letting it cool overnight and letting the natural yeast that is in the air and has built up over time in the brewing facility latch on and create the beverage before you. After about two years and some blending of course. They blend the different iterations of these beers in order to get the perfect balance given the very hard to predict process.

The Harmony of Spheres by August Schell is our next adventure! August Schell has THE most interesting story of any brewery I’ve researched. (sorry Orval). They are one of America’s only pre-prohibition breweries. They survived prohibition by selling candy and near beer but that wasn’t even their toughest challenge. In the late 70’s a lot of craft brewers shut their doors due to the domination of the market by macro beer. So they got creative and sold a massive black walnut tree from the property to ride out the storm and emerge better than ever. Now for the beer! It’s a traditionally brewed berliner weisse which is a kettle soured wheat beer with lactobacillus yeast added. Lacto is the same thing that makes your Gogurt tangy! Berliners are typically served with syrups for flavor, however this one is already plenty flavorful with the addition of gooseberries.

Last but not least we have a unique flanders red! Think Duchesse de Bourgogne but for grown ups. (sorry not sorry). Cuvee des Jacobins Rouge is a stable in the flanders category which is (surprise!0 from east Flanders in Belgium. It’s another spontaneous fermentation beer but you’ll notice is completely different than the Hof ten Dormaal. This beer is one of the few with the distinctive Belgian Family Brewers label.This means that it’s an independant family brewery that has been around for at least fifty years, is an original beer and no copies are sold under a different name or label, and is a genuine Belgian beer brewed in Belgium on the brewery site recognized by the Belgian Family Brewers. There are dark fruit notes, acidic sharpness, acetic undertones, and a malty backbone to balance it all out.

Thanks for reading and I’m looking forward to meeting you! Come have a sour with me.

Party!

Zain