FOOD & DRINK BEVERAGES
Classic Styles of Sour Beer BY GAETANO MARANGELLI
Photo by AlexRaths/Getty Images.
T
aste in beer is subject to fashion, which is subject to where we are as a society. What was new yesterday is old today. What was old then is as new now as a classic style of sour beer. Before refrigerators, before Louis Pasteur, before biochemistry solved the enigma of fermentation, all beer was sour. Beer begins as barley or wheat, which is germinated into malt and soaked in warm water to derive a wort, which renders the carbohydrates of glucose and maltose. Yeast ferments those carbohydrates into alcohol. For the thousands of years before brewers knew what yeast was, they depended on wild yeasts to spontaneously ferment their beer. Brewers also depended on bacteria like lactobacillus, pediococcus, acetobacter, and brettanomyces for the aromas and flavors of their beer. These microorganisms were thriving in their fields of barley and wheat, in the oak trees they used for barrels to age their beer, and all around
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them in the air where they were. These microorganisms the brewers depended on were native to their geography. Where they were defined their styles of beer. After the discovery of yeast in the 19th century, a majority of brewers adopted single strains of proprietary, factory yeast to make as much identical beer as possible. The practice yields brewers mass market advantages but strips their beers of the complexity wild yeasts and bacteria provide. The minority of brewers who stuck with the practice of fermenting beers spontaneously saw their sours fade into shadows of factory ales and lagers. Now sour beers are new again. The famous classic styles are lambic and gueuze, Flanders Red Ale, Oud Bruin Ale, Gose and Berliner Weisse. They’re refreshing by themselves and ideal companions for food. They’re pleasing and mysterious, complex, dynamic, and engaging.
LAMBIC AND GEUZE Lambics are native to southwest Flanders, which is the Dutch region in the north of Belgium. The grain bill of lambics is made up of unmalted wheat and malted barley.
