If you have no place in your life for geeky semantic quibbles, leave now. This piece is not for you. The rest of you, please continue not doing your jobs and listen: There is no such thing as sours — not if we are talking about beer.
I hear you in the bars. I read you on social media. Hell, I even see what you have named your latest special releases. Stop it. Because the word “sour” reduces a broad swath of the world’s most fascinating, deep, diverse, old-fashioned-and-newfangled drinks to one of the five simplest tastes that our tongues can detect. You lift sours, bro?
I suggest that the word causes more harm than good… and that maybe — we’re smart people, right? — we should all try to think a little harder.
We need to categorize. I get that. This age of fetishistic beer variety — walking into a taphouse with 50 seemingly different things on draft, exotically named and priced, and knowing that one but not those other ones and what if that one is brilliant, oh but it might be terrible — we’re overwhelmed. We need to make sense of it. The simpler the categories, the easier it is to distill the endless variety into something comprehensible.
We can do better.
Sour is relative and subjective. One person’s “sour” is another person’s “tart.” I have heard Americans refer to the Belgian Trappist ale Orval as “a sour.” Orval is not sour, and it has never been sour. It can develop a lightly acidic edge from its brettanomyces bottle conditioning. Tasting something sweet before drinking it would accentuate the acidity — but that is part of the problem. Our senses differ not only from others, but from ourselves 15 minutes ago. Our taste is utterly mutable.
There is risk of a sour arms race. The word “sour” conditions us to expect something really sour, and we might be disappointed if it’s only “sharp.” Bro it says sour but it’s not even sour yo! So imagine living — Don LaFontaine voice — in a world where brewers are making things as sour as they can, to hell with balance or other interesting flavors. Remember when those jerks were trying to see how many IBUs they could squeeze into one beer? Screw that. We grew up. None of that shit was drinkable. Let’s not go back there.
Hell, this is probably already happening anyway. I don’t want to know.
It’s not about “sour” and it never was. Great drinks are more interesting than that. An excellent gueuze is an amalgam of many different sensations, including dryness, lively bubbles, musty lemon or horse blanket aromas and flavors — and things that are stranger, more difficult to describe. Sometimes over a glass of gueuze I catch a whiff of the sea. Which makes no sense. Ah, but it’s just another sour, right?
An interesting exercise, if you can afford it, is to compare Rodenbach Vintage or Foederbier — the pure, unblended stuff — with Rodenbach Grand Cru, which is a blend of two-thirds oak-aged and one-third younger, sweeter stuff. Again this is subjective, but I find the Grand Cru far more interesting. The light sweetness gives you perspective on the acidity. It provides depth. It’s like the difference between looking at a mural close up or standing back to see the whole thing, or the difference between hearing one note and then three-chord punk rock. It’s the difference between noise and music.
So what to call these things? It depends on the beer. There is not just sour and not-sour, there is a wide range of acidity out there. More importantly, there is a whole range of backgrounds, contexts and processes that get lost when we lump too many things under simplistic words. Each beer has its story, I would like to know that story, and if that story is just “sour” then I’m not interested.
I am not alone. I was trying to scribble down thoughts like these when I saw a tweet from Boulevard’s ambassador brewer Jeremy Danner.
Some labels help us make sense of a complicated world. Others just make us dumber.
could not agree more
Interesting, since I just tasted my first “sour” on a brewery tour this past week. I also purchased a bottle of the stuff. Good to have this perspective.
So we should stop calling ‘Bitters’ a style too then.
nah.
All I read from this is WAAAAAAAAAAH. STOP WHINING. If somebody likes a beer, they can call it whatever they want to.
Here, here!
How is someone supposed to agree with your argument regarding semantics when you used “horse blanket” as a descriptor of something you would want to put in your mouth. Have you ever smelled a horse blanket?
Thanks for the term ‘Sour Arms Race,’ I’m truly worried about these sloppy newer brewers who are being celebrated as if they have some kind of God sour power when they only truly just lack technique/training/palate and are literally brewing carbonated vinegar lacking any form of real artistry.
[…] few days ago there was an article doing the rounds, to much applause from beer pundits, titled Stop calling beers ‘sours’. The pundits’ consensus was “hear hear, about belly time” and other expressions […]
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An awful read filled with awful logic. Should we not use the term ale anymore either since both IPA’s and stouts are ales but share no flavor similarities only yeast similarities? by your logic every beer brewed would be considered its own style.
I have to disagree. I think using the term ‘sour’ to describe the broad group of styles that have a lower than normal pH for beer, already in the acidic range, makes a lot of sense. It’s like having lager, ale, and sour – which allows you to broadly define beers based on fermentation characteristics.
And contrary to what many belief, Brett does no make sour beer. It can produce some acetic acid when exposed to oxygen, like when barrel aging, but it will not do this under normal circumstances. It will generally give you an ale with a different flavour profile, but that’s about it.
Wow, stupid article.
Sour is relative and subjective. One person’s “sour” is another person’s “tart.”
The definition of tart is sour.
sharp to the taste; sour or acid:
Tart apples are best for pie.
Synonyms: astringent, acrid, piquant.
Antonyms: sweet, sugary, bland, mellow.
Astringent and sour are not at all the same thing.
[…] quite the refreshing summer thirst-quencher. American wild ales, some of which are sour, and some of which are made with fruit, are an exception to the rule. The fruit feels warm-weather […]
[…] Stop calling beers ‘sours,’ Joe Stange, DRAFT Magazine, June 25, 2015. […]
pretentious rubbish
More aptly called “wild” ales… what’s funny is that this is even a category, we all previously called these beers infected and dumped them out. ; <)