If you’d asked me a year ago if I liked sours, I’d have said no. However, I do my best to welcome change, and I’m open to trying new things. Victoria Beer Week’s Pucker Up event on Thursday, March 9 went the extra mile to change my opinion.
While sour beers are a relatively new style to North America, they are based on very old European flavours and recipes. In fact, until modern times, all beers were sour to a degree, after fermenting with wild yeast strains and bacteria. But after brewers began using sterilization techniques and strict controls, they were able to alter brews to taste less sour and more sweet or bitter. Today, infecting your beer with wild yeast or bacteria and aging beer for months longer than normal to bring out tart or sour flavours is becoming a hot area for brewers to experiment in.
What amazed me the most at this event was the variety of flavours available, from brews that tasted like regular ales with a hint of tartness to those that were mouth-puckering sour; from simple and fruity to deeply complex.
Fuggles & Warlock out of Richmond had two offerings, a fig and plum sour and a tart cherry and black currant sour that had people lined up as soon as the doors opened and disappeared very quickly. Bomber Brewing from east Vancouver brought an aged barley wine from 2014 that weighed in at 10.5% ABV and was amazingly complex. There were sours made with cranberries, gin, lavender, and hibiscus; the locals at Spinnakers handed out samples of a sour infused with tea that was bright, light, almost lemony, and very popular. Perhaps my favourite, though, was Langford’s Axe and Barrel, who managed to pack a whole lot of flavour into a 3.5% ABV dry-hopped Berliner weisse. Adding those hops brought a bitter dryness that was really puckering; think sucking on a lemon but in a very pleasant way. It’s a great summer beer.
The takeaway from this event is to not be afraid to try something new: it may please your taste buds or, in this case, pucker your lips.