Picks for the week

My pick is Sidebar downtown on Thursday before the Them Crooked Vultures show at The Tabernacle.  They usually have at least one or two interesting beers, and if nothing else always a good pour of Guinness.  I don't see anything unusual and interesting on anybody's lists right now (besides what I posted 2 days ago...BSP is now out of Interlude though).

I would be completely remiss to not point out that The Porter is having beer class on Flemish sours next Wednesday at 7:30.  I don't know yet which ones Molly will have to try, but if you've been reading about sours and want to jump in that would be a great opportunity.  It's usually $30 and includes samples of 6 beers.  I'll update if I find out what they are.  Make reservations at (404)233-0293.

Let me know if you've seen anything else of interest this week.  I've been busy and haven't really looked very hard.

Update 2/12: Them Crooked Vultures was awesome.  I saw them 3 times in October and this was by far the best show.  Sidebar, on the other hand, was lame.  Probably the smokiest bar in Atlanta and no seasonal beers, which they used to have.

Sour beers on tap

If you're interested in trying some sour beers now would be a great time to head over to The Porter.  They have a handful of well balanced sours that would be a good introduction without being overwhelmingly sour.


Hitachino Red Rice: I mentioned this one yesterday in my last sour beer post.  This is a great sour that mixes flavors from Japan and Belgium.

Smuttynose Brett & I: This is a little fruity and doesn't have as much Brett funk as I was hoping, but still delicious and refreshing.

Ommegang Hennepin: Nice example of a farmhouse saison that I previously wrote about here.

Then head over to The Brick Store for Allagash Interlude, a complex, fruity, fairly intense American wild ale and Kasteel Rouge, the beer that started the Flemish red style.  There's not much real difference between a Flemish red and brown except the color.  This one was seen as so beautifully red that it deserved a style of its own.

Update: Sorry, I just happened to re-read this and I realized I confused some sour beers.  Rodenbach is the original Flanders red and Kasteel Rouge is brewed with cherries.

Sour beers, part 2

Here are a couple of traditional lambics, a couple of Flemish sours, and a wildcard from Hitachino.

Vichtenaar: Flemish sour.  Balanced sour and malty sweetness, slight anise, caramel, medicinal, only
very mildly acetic.  Not quite as rich as Duchesse de Bourgogne, but also thankfully lacking the cloying syrupy sweetness.  I think this would be a good introduction to Flemish sours, partly because it's not the most sour and partly because you can get it in small, cheap bottles (around $3.50 at Green's).


Panil Barriquée: I had high hopes for this one.  I think that the greatest beer I've had was the Panil Bariquee Riserva, which starts the same as this but spends 15 months in a cognac barrel instead of the 3 that this one gets.  That led to an almost impossible rich and complex sour beer.  This one can't quite match, but is still good. Though it's Italian, Panil Barriquée is actually the only traditionally produced Flemish sour currently made.  Flavors were grape, almost red wine, faint apple, some sweetness and slight caramel without being cloying, lactic sourness, and unfortunately not nearly the amount of acetic sourness as the riserva.  It was a little thin but easy to drink.  This doesn't come close to the riserva, but I think it's quite a bit better than Duchesse. 


Cantillon 1900 Grand Cru: Just about everything that's called a lambic isn't.  They're either refermented with fruit to make a kriek (cherry), framboise (raspberry), peche (peach), etc., or a gueze, which is a blend of different aged lambics.  The Cantillon 1900 Grand Cru is the only pure, unblended lambic available in the US.  A pure lambic is flat.  This one is lemony and intensely sour.  There's a lot going on, but it's hard to pick out many distinct flavors.  Between the flatness and intense tartness I can't really recommend it to people who don't already drink sour beers, but I enjoyed it and any real beer drinker owes it to themself to drink the only real lambic available.  


Cantillon Gueze: A gueze is a blend of various age lambics that have become carbonated in the bottle.  This lambic tasted a little lemon, apple, apricot, and wet hay.  It was pretty sour but a decent Brett funk and slight vinegar.  This is cheaper than the Grand Cru, but much more balanced and the carbonation really adds to the drinkability.  It's clear why lambics are generally blended.  Tasty.


Hitachino Red Rice:  This was on tap at The Porter.  This is brewed with malt and rice, which means that besides ale yeast, Hitachino also uses a sake yeast to process the rice.  It tastes like a mixture of sake, Flemish sour, and Belgian pale.  Some funk, lactic sour, doughy sake yeast, light citrus, maraschino cherry, a little sweet, and nice prickly carbonation.  Great, complex, refreshing beer.

I think that next time I'll be tasting some American sours.

Sour beers, part 1

I've been writing a bit about sour beers lately so I decided to do a series of write-ups on a variety of them to hopefully help you jump into these beautiful and misunderstood varieties.


Orval: This is probably the best place to start if you're new to sour beers.  This is the only Trappist beer purposefully brewed with Brettanomyces, a wild yeast that gives a funky sourness often described as horsey or barnyard.  Aging changes the character of any Brett beer quite a bit.  I just drank a relatively young one (just over a year old), so the slow acting Brett had only contributed a mild funkiness.  There were fairly strong tart apple esters, faint pineapple, and a pronounce hop bitterness, leading to a long, dry finish.  I'd like to age a few bottles of this.

Brouwerij Fonteinen Doesjel Old Lambic: A lambic is a beer brewed in a certain region of Belgium, spontaneously fermented with yeasts and bacteria in the open air.  Very few lambics are available straight.  Different aged lambics are usually blended to form gueze, which will carbonate in the bottle because the young lambic still has sugars.  Fruit can also be added, making kriek (cherries), framboise (rasberries), and several others.  Doesjel calls itself a lambic even though it is a blend of a 1 , 2, and 3 year old, which would normally make it a gueze.  I'm assuming that it is still called a lambic because the yeasts went dormant so it did not carbonate in the bottle, making a completely flat beer like an old, unblended lambic.

This is an intense beer, made more-so by the fact that it's completely flat.  Sour apple and Brett take center stage.  There's only minimal hop bitterness in a lambic (hops are primarily used in a lambic as a preservative, so they use old, dried hops that have lost most of their potency).  There was nice oakiness and light malt.  Lambics are generally considered sippers because of their sour intensity, but I found myself wanting to take huge gulps.  Very refreshing.

Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere: Jolly Pumpkin is a Michigan brewery that has been at the forefront of American sour beers, with virtually all of their beers boasting the touch of Brett.  Bam Biere is their flagship farmhouse saison.  This is hoppier than either of the above Belgians, but the overall flavor profile is similar, with tart apple at the front, surrounded by that Brett funk.  It's nice, but seems a little one dimensionally tart apple cider.  I think aging it longer to bring out more of the Brett would help a lot, but considering those Belgians cost 3-6 times as much this is a nice, easily available option.

De Proef/Bell's Brewing Van Twee: I thought this was pretty underwhelming.  It's a Belgian dark with some tart Michigan cherries and Brett.  The base of the beer was a pretty simple, mild chocolate Belgian dark, the cherries didn't provide nearly enough tartness to overcome the sweetness of the malt, and the Brett was barely there.   

Coming soon: the famous and rare Cantillon Grand Cru, a Lindemans traditional gueze, and two Flemish sours.  Stay tuned.

Trends and idle speculation

I had a Founders Red Rye at Steinbeck's a few days ago and couldn't help thinking that the overwhelming grapefruit hops that characterize so many American ales (Dogfish Head 60 probably being the most prevalent example) have run their course.  I felt like I had gone back in time.  Could just be wishful thinking on my part.

There's a trend that's much more exciting though: sour beers!

There seems to be a real trend towards sour beers.  It wasn't too long ago that the only lambic you saw was a sweetened Lindeman's (made by killing the wild yeasts so that a last addition of sugar would not get turned to alcohol).  Then, somehow, Duchesse de Bourgogne settled into steady rotation at BSP and The Porter.  It has some added candy sugar to make it more palatable to those not used to a traditional Flemish sour, but it will still shock your taste buds the first time you try it.  Since the arrival of Duchesse there has been a slow trickle of new sour beers, and though they don't all reach Atlanta taps yet, a lot of the best American brewers are starting to pay attention to sour.  For those not familiar with these wonderful beers I'll post more soon.