Kettle Sour and Fruited Sour

ABV 4-6% typical · IBU 3-10 · SRM 2-6, more with fruit · Serve 40-45F · Glass Tulip or pint · Extras fruit, often lactose

Identify

Pale to bright pink, orange or purple depending on the fruit, and often quite opaque. A white or pink head that arrives fast and leaves fast. The colour is frequently the first thing you notice and it comes from fruit rather than from grain. Sour immediately, at the front and the sides of your tongue, and cleanly so. Fruit arrives next, often quite sweet. Almost no bitterness anywhere. The finish is short and your mouth is left watering and ready for more.

Place

The United States, from around 2010 onward, though the underlying trick is older. German brewers were acidifying wort in a controlled way by the early twentieth century. American craft breweries turned it into a production method and it spread through taprooms within a few years.

Cause

Start with one word you will need. Wort is the sweet liquid a brewer gets after soaking crushed grain in hot water and before the yeast goes in. It is beer before it has become beer. Every step below happens to the wort or to what the wort turns into.

Confused with

Gose, which is the same souring method with salt and coriander added. Berliner Weisse, which is the same acid at lower strength. Gueuze, which is sour from wild organisms and takes years. Flanders Red, which is sour and woody and also takes years.

Numbers

This is the only entry in the course named after a piece of equipment. A Pilsner is named after a town and a Saison after a season. A kettle sour is named after the vessel the souring happens in, because the method is the whole idea. The tap list will rarely use the words.

Will you like it and Try

Sour sweets. Sour Patch Kids, sour cherry drops, salted plums. This is the closest everyday match and it is not a joke, since fruited sours are built on the same balance of acid against sugar. Sharp lemonade, limeade, or an unsweetened cranberry juice. Kombucha, kefir, plain Greek yoghurt, or pickle juice.

Order and Pair

Ask how sweet it is. This is the single most useful question, because these beers run from bone dry to dessert and the tap list never says which. Ask whether it has lactose in it. Lactose is a sugar from milk, so a beer containing it is not vegan and not suitable if you avoid dairy.

Judge, Myth and Remember

The acid is clean and lemony rather than sharp and vinegary, and it arrives and leaves quickly. The fruit smells like the fruit it claims to be, not like a sweet or a syrup. Sweetness supports the acid instead of burying it. You should still want a second mouthful. Carbonation is high and the finish is dry enough to clear your mouth.