Sourfest: the results

A stand-out beer is picked

This time last weekend I was in Belfast judging at the Freshman year of Sourfest, a competition to find the best sour/wild ale both commercially and from amateur brewers for both the UK & Ireland.



The beers were judged blind by a panel (myself included), with the top three in each category qualifying for a reassessment for best overall and in category. We were given details on style & additional ingredients, but only after the initial tastings. Entrants remained anonymous until all prizes had been awarded and beers were all judged to the same standard, with feedback forms from all judges* being made available to entrants after the competition.

 

I'm getting sour, is this a sour?

 

Someone wasn't impressed...

There were some truly impressive beers and perhaps even more encouraging was that the overall standard was extremely high, with all beers deemed drinkable (except perhaps that berlinner weisse smelling of farts and an enteric (faecal) sour brown).The results were as follows:



 

 



 



Best UK amateur

Chris Lewis took this with a very impressive attempt at a true spontaneously fermented lambic called Teeth Grinder; with four year-old, three year old and one year old beers blended to produce a gueuze-alike. Of course we did not know what it was at the time, but the quality shone though. Honourable mention here went to Plum Smuggler from Dean Hollingworth.





Searching for words to describe

The aroma pleases Giacomo

Best Irish amateur

Awarded to Shane Smith for his Raspberry Turbo which also took overall best in the competition (and my personal favourite).

Highly commended went to another talented homebrewer, Roger Rotheroe for his American Sour Brown Currant Situation.

Both of these winners will have the opportunity to brew their beers on  commercial scale with Boundary brewing. I certainly look forward to trying both of these and fully intend to buy a few cases of each.



 

 



Matt takes an initial sip

Best UK Commercial

Elgoods Coolship Blonde took this one but it was close run thing with Ali Kocho Williams' (Seren) Rum barrel aged sour dark ale. Elgoods overthrew the impression of being a staid family brewer when they put a disused brewery coolship back into use after many years to turn out a beer very similar to Belgian lambics, though of course with a different microflora. You can read more about it in Roger Protz's piece here.

 

 

Best Irish Commercial

A recently released beer & one I'd already been lucky enough to try: Kinnegar & Brown Paper Bag Project Geuzberry (you can read more about it here). This was also deemed to be best commercial beer overall too.

Highly commended was another beer recently launched, the sour version of White Hag's Beann Gulban.

Congratulations to all of the winners, and well done to all of the entrants; the overall standard was very high and I hope you all enter again next year.  What is particularly encouraging is the high standard of the amateur beers; often indistinguishable than the commercial attempts and generally more adventurous. This bodes well for the next generation of breweries, I'd like to see more commercial entrants next year. Everyone who didn't enter: you have a year; so get cracking! I look forward to seeing what you all come up with.

 



Aromas redolent of red berries



Congratulations also must go to Shane for a flawless organisation of the competition, thank you for having me as a judge and congratulations again on managing to win your own event ;)

*If you get a feedback form from me and need help deciphering what I wrote, give me a shout!

Photos courtesy of Phil Harrison

 

What do you mean by sour beer?

My trip to Belgium for #EBBC15 has driven home how eclectic the styles termed "sour" truly are. Aside from the fact that not all non-pure-Saccharomyces fermented beers really are sour, the sour/wild characteristics can be imparted by different methods.

These beers fall in to the following broad style groupings

1. Spontaneously fermented (lambic, gueuze etc), e.g. Cantillon

2. Fermented with cultured "wild" strains e.g. Alvinne Morpheus 

3.  Refermented with cultured "wild" strain, e.g. Orval

4.a)Mixed fermentation including bacteria and matured e.g. Rodenbach

b) Mixed fementation using lactobacillus and released young, e.g. Berlinner Kindl Weisse, Ritterguts Gose

5. Pre-soured in the kettle by lactobacillus/lactic acid

6. Refermented/matured in wood

7. Unintentional!

We were fortunate to be able to visit a number of breweries courtesy of both Visit Flanders & the Belgian Family Brewers, plus chat to a lot of the family brewers themselves. I'll use some of these examples to outline the differences, remember if the beers are unpasteurised they can continue to develop over time and can get worse as well as improve! This is not supposed to be an in depth how-to guide on these beers, nor do I want to go too deeply into the science as its pretty complex!  (There are a number of better qualified writers than I on these topics, Including Lars Marius Garshol, with recent posts on yeast and bacteria being particularly informative.)

1. The first "sour" that usually comes to mind are the Belgian lambics. These are brewed as a normal beer (except with the use of aged hops to reduce bitterness impact) then instead of being pitched with yeast are cooled overnight whilst exposed to native flora usually in a coolship with airflow controlled by vents. A number of breweries previously used coolships for cooling only but the lambic brewers specifically intend for wild yeasts and bacteria to inoculate the beer. A complex primary fermentation ensues, where different species including lactobacillus, Saccharomyces, pediococcus and Brettanomyces take the lead at different times. It is then matured in pre-used wooden casks that also contain a mixed culture and add further complexity to the beer. The beer may be released unblended (as jonge lambic <1yr and oude lambic >2yrs) or more often blended as a mixture of 1,2 & 3 year old lambics to produce gueuze. Lambic may also be aged on fruit to produce kriek (cherry), framboise/frambozen(raspberry) or other fruit lambics.

Coolship & open rafters at Cantillon

Recommended: Cantillon Lou Pepe Framboise, Boon Kriek Mariage Parfait, 3 Fonteinen Gueuze, Girardin Oude Lambiek

Sour ales maturing at Struise

2. Some brewers wish to produce beers with similar character to lambic beers but would like to be able to improve consistency/ repeatability of each batch. They may harvest or acquire a wild yeast(s)/ mixture with bacteria, then use this culture to ferment a beer. Often the cultures are not analysed, though in some cases they have been. They are capable of producing equally complex beers, though as they are not often matured/blended can taste quite different to spontaneously fermented beers.

Recommended: Alvinne Wild West, To Ol/ Mikkeller Ov-Ral

Orval mural at Bruges brewing museum

3. Similar to #2, these beers undergo a regular Saccharomyces fermentation then undergo a secondary refermentation either in bottle or conditioning tank. As with culturing wild yeast, these beers can gain complexity but in a more controlled way. That said, there is still variation in maturation "After three months people might say 'This beer is stinking' after 9 months however 'its fantastic'" of Hendrik Wild. 

Recommended: Orval, StraffeHendrik Wild, De Koninck Wild Jo

Forest of foeders at Rodenbach

4. a) Known as oud red/ oud bruin in Belgium, these beers obtain their sour character from a lactobacillus fermentation producing lactic acid. Rudi Ghequire at Rodenbach was a fount of knowledge about how their beer is produced. Undergoing initial fermentation it ends up at a pH around 5.5 whereupon it is aged in virgin (unused for other purposes) wood foeders for two years, reaching a pH of 3.2. The aged beer is then blended back with unaged beer to produce beers of different levels of sourness (regular rodenbach 3:1 new: old (pH 3.5) and grand cru 2:1 old:new (pH3.3)). Hops are not usually used as bitterness does not produce a good flavour profile with lactic acid; this can make the beers susceptible to acetobacter oxidation (producing acetic acid> vinegar) so care must be taken with the recipe design to scavenge (reduce) free oxygen and the beer is usually pasteurised prior to packaging. Like lambics, these beers can also be matured on fruit prior to packaging.

Recommended: Rodenbach foeder beer, Verhaeghe Duchesse de Bourgogne, Petrus Aged Pale, Rodenbach Caractere Rouge

b) Similar to the above beer styles are goses and berlinner weisses, though their pre-fermentation brewing process differs. Both include wheat in the mash, which is mashed at the higher acidity level conducive to the growth of lactobacillus in fermentation. The fermentation is often finished with other yeast strains and beer sare mor elikely to be drunk fersh rather than aged. Some details here.

5. Another method for producing lactic acid sourness without the need for lengthy ageing process is to sour the mash prior to boiling. This is also known as kettle souring. This is often employed by breweries without the space to mature beer and prevent the risk of contaminating equipment with organisms that could cause contamination of non-soured beers (the soured beer is boiled which kills the bacteria). Some breweries may also use food grade lactic acid, which is frowned upon by some as a cost saving measure (but then so is kettle souring).

Recommended: Galway Bay Heathen, Kernel London Sour

Bush de nuits slumbering
in Dubuisson's cellar

6. The final category is a bit of a catch all, which depending on the previous contents of the wood may or may not have sour character (and may or may not have been intended). The beer may have been fully fermented by one of the above methods prior to entering the barrel or undergo a refermentation in the barrel. Often the beer takes on the character of the wood/ barrels previous contents to a greater or lesser extent dependent upon the length of time in the wood. The use of wood for maturation is a complex topic; which I'll not go in to here.

7. Beers can also become sour unintentionally and sometimes unscrupulous brewers will release these on the market as intentional sour brews! Usually the result of an infection prior to leaving the brewery, they can also be picked up by poor pub hygiene or improper packaging. I'll not give examples here but sometimes unintentional souring can produce interesting results!

The diversity in the world of "sour" beers is only just beginning to be (re)explored by British brewers, with the majority of those released to date being of types 5+6. As brewers begin to invest in separate brew-plants to keep potential contaminants separate from their core ranges we will see more sour and wild beers produced in the UK. Already Elgoods have released a range of lambics inoculated using their old rooftop coolship and Wild beer co have produced Somerset Wild, inoculated in the orchards of Somerset. These beers can have a true sense of place, being tied intimately to their environment by their fermentation flora. Burning Sky and Brodies have produced sour red/brown ales and Fullers occasionally continue to produce the wood-matured Gales Prize Old Ale. Recently Redchurch have begun experimenting and Brewdog hope to invest in separate kit after this round of share-selling to boost their wild credentials. Unlike Nate, I think there is still a long way to go and I'd like to see sour beers more widely available out of the craft beer "geek" bars...of course there should always be a variety available, it is possible to have too much of a good thing!  I look forward to seeing how these breweries and others develop in the coming years. 

Northern Ireland is hosting what (I think) is the first of probably many sour beer competitions in the UK: Sourfest is on Saturday 26th September at Boundary Brewing in Belfast. I will be amongst the judges assessing both commercial and home brew efforts.

Left handed giant in Bristol will be launching their taproom next Sundayat the start of Bristol beer week with a sour beer festival; which has some great beers available, including some one offs; so do head along and check it out.

Do you know of any other UK breweries producing sour/ wild beers? Let me know in the comments below.

The idea for this post was driven by De Brabandere's very good presentation on how they make their Petrus range. Many free samples were provided during the beer bloggers conference, but I also bought plenty of beers.There may be some errors; so please feel free to correct me!

CABPOM August: 3 Fonteinen Kriek & Le Chevrot

Logo kindly designed by Simon
of CAMRGB

Something a bit different this month. Fruit beer and white cheese work well together but add some goatiness to the mix and it becomes something special.

3 Fonteinen is one of the revered Belgian lambic brewers but they also make kriek. This one is just a bit special as it uses wild forraged schaerbeekse cherries, adding a different flavour than you'd normally expect froma  kriek. Schaerbeekse cherries used to be cultivated specifically for use in brewing, but with the fall in popularity of lambic the orchards fell derelict. 3 Fonteinen tracked down some of these wild orchards and turned the harvested fruit into a traditional kriek. This particular beer is a 35% blend of schaerbeekse and the remainder regular morello cherries. I picked it up at Brewdog Edinburgh in a 750ml bottle.

Here are my notes: Pours pale scarlet with slight fluffy head. Sweet cherry, raspberry, acrid hay, lemon, malt, barnyard. Dry tart cherry, lots of stone character (think almonds and bakewell tart), very sharp lactic, long cherry stone finish.

The cheese is one I picked up from Tesco (they have a much better range in Scotland than here!) not knowing much. Its called Le Chevrot and is quite similar to Crottin apparently. To me its dry and chalky, with a goaty richness and perhaps the tiniest hint of lemon.  A bit dull perhaps.

Works nicely with poppy-seed crackers

When paired with the beer however it comes alive with creaminess and accentuated by the funk to transport you to the dairy at milking time. That light lemon note plays well with the tart cherries and the beers carbonation is more than a match for the slightly clacky texture. I'd like to try this cheese aged as it should be even better.

More Vintage Ales

Extreme cellaring alert! My friend Alan (of Neill & Ross Brewery) is a Belgian beer nut and has amassed a sizable collection of aged beers, including some no longer brewed. This weekend we cracked open a number of them. Here are some thoughts:

First up were a couple of 1970s rarieties from Bass, the 1977 Jubilee Strong Ale & Bass Princess ale 1978. 

Both of these were well past their prime, with oxidation, wet cardboard, sod all carbonation and just not generally very nice. The Princess Ale did have an interesting touch of red fruit and toothpaste to differentiate from the former, but both drain pours unfortunately.

La Choulette Biere Des Sans Culottes 1990 is a dark biere de garde and not one I was too keen on either.

Straffe Hendrik 1990 was well past it and was a straight drain pour.

The Chimay Premier was also past its prime. I preferred the fresh version (which is so far one of the only doubles I've actively enjoyed).

So far, not so good but the better beers were to come in the form of a Felix Kriek from 1972 and Belle Vue Selection Lambic 1989. The kriek had held up fantastically and paired well with Stilton as suggested in the Vinken and Van Tricht book. A nose and taste reminiscent of rodenbach with cherries still lingering in the background. A surprising amount of condition for its age too. This beer is still produced today albeit in a much diminished form.

The Belle Vue lambic, today well known for being overly-sweetened was also a good beer. Obviously it started off sour and fairly dry, so there wasn't much more it could do to develop. Very dry, funky nose and lots of citric acid, just how I like them.

 Another interesting comparison was fresh Rodenbach to a bottle ~50 years old. Undisputably the same beer, the older bottle had lost some of the vinegar tartness and become more rounded. This worked well with mimolette, another win for the cheese and beer guide.

Another highlight for me was the 1960s Rochefort 10. Just as good as the fresh stuff and fantastic with Fourme d'Ambert.

 

A Westmalle Tripel of similar age was also sampled, but having neglected to make notes I don't recall how it had held up! A 2011 Westvletern 12 did nothing to shine, reinforcing the view that this beer is very over-hyped due to its rarity.

The big surprise of the evening for all of us was that Weston's Cider from 1985 tastes pretty much indistinguishable from fresh stuff. This makes sense as the wild yeast used to ferment it already succeeded in outcompeting any other wee beasties in 1985, so not much scope for infection and all the sugar had fermented out in any case.

A mixed batch then, as you would perhaps expect but a fun evening nonetheless.Thanks Alan and Olly for supplying most of the bottles.

Session 61: Lambic in the UK?!

The start of the 6th year of #TheSession is in the capable hands of Hoosier Beer Geek. He asks us to talk about why local beer is important, specifically what makes it better?

Did anyone ever imagine there would be a lambic blender operating within the UK? Well sour-head Alan Ross and friend Olly Neill have become those people, organising almost single-handedly a trip to Belgium to source some lambic, some wine barrels and ordering the rest of the paraphernalia required to bottle your wares.

Alan investigates the remaining aroma

I was given a tour of "the cellar" this weekend. This first trial batch was made in the garage of Alan's very understanding parents. The barrel itself takes up a fair amount of space, not to mention a third of a pallet of champagne bottles!

Beery explosion!

The lambic he sourced was a jonge Giradin, a coup for him as lambic producers are notoriously secretive; "They were extremely helpful when they realised what it was we were wanting to do, that is to create what a lot of the pubs were doing back in the 1920's and blending their own." They decided to make "Shot in the Dark" a fruit lambic not unlike a kriek, with the twist being that he used locally grown blackberries! Why the evocative name? The picture to the left should explain all! For some demonstration videos and another great write-up see here.

Bottle conditioned as taken by Alan

The beer was put on 60kg fruit in September and I was lucky enough to taste it in November, then again 6 weeks later against the base beer ."There will only be about 50 bottles sold from this batch, but that's because I plan to drink the rest!" It's a lovely pink-purple number with a fresh lemony and lactic horse blanket nose. Sweet blackberry start (subtle fruit) mouth. Sour and bretty finish begs you to take another sip and all too soon your glass is empty. Forgive the abrupt notes but this is a beer for enjoying not analysing.

In comparison the Giradin jonge lambic is bright orange and much more highly funky on the nose. I think its perhaps my first straight lambic and wasn't expecting it to be so still. The hay and brett flavours I'm expecting are there and a slightly tart finish from the beginnings of time spent in the wood. I can see why gueuze producers have to blend a few vintages to get the beer they desire.

Not one to rest on his laurels Alan has sourced warehouse space to make multiple beers at the same time and avoid the mishaps of exploding beer in the house again. He will obtain a brewing licence and register the company officially when the council has declared the premises fit.

Just a few of the many bottles lying about

Plans are already afoot for all manner of other blends, hoping to focus on showcasing local fruits if possible. "I'm able to source green goosberries, red gooseberries and white goosberries so that could be interesting. I'd love to make a lychee lambic too, though of course they'd be impossible to source in the UK!" A gueuze could also be in the offing, though this requires much more forward planning and potentially visiting three suppliers.

However it's not just lambic that Alan and Oli have their sights set on. Alan plans to brew some saisons as a cuckoo brewer on local brewery Clanconnel's new brew plant (more on this in a later post I hope!) They'll be based on iterations of that classic saison dupont, with a Bretty twist. Initially three different versions to see which works best. I'm hoping I can go along to help out on brew day as it sounds like it'll be great fun (as will be the tasting!)

So to answer the question posed at the beginning, this local beer is better as it involves cross-country collaborations, cuckoo brewing, local fruit producers and a whole host of other people and ain't too shabby either.

C is for...

My second review for Ben's Beer Alphabet.

I'm a fan of sour beers. Lambic and aged beers respectively. But some commercial examples are just not good. And Chapeau Gueuze is one of those. Mistakenly ordered from Drink Store (it was advertised as the Cuvee).

It certainly looks the part, thick green glass bottle with cork and crowned it could pass as one of the greats. Pouring a hazy brown, with thin white head with acetic redcurrant aroma. In the mouth it was cloyingly sweet, made my teeth stand on edge. Vinegar sour, no lactic character at all and just a hint of Brett. hay and manure its only redeeming feature. 

Its just about tolerable, but that's only because I'm reluctant to pour money down the drain.I think without fruit even those of sweet tooth would find this a struggle. Avoid!


Edit: I had to tip away the last third...

Some like it sour

A brewer never far from many beer geek's lips is mikkeller, that Danish crazy chap who likes to mash up beer styles for fun. A range I had been interested to try was his spontanale series, spontaneously fermented fruit beers, made authentically in Belgium. When they came into stock on the Brewdog online store I had to get some to try for myself.

The lineup.

 Starting off with the baby of the series at 5% and presumably the base beer, spontanale. It is a hazy blonde in colour with lactic acid and citrus on the nose with a hint of brettanomyces mustiness. Initially sweet the middle is long and sour with a brief flourish of bitterness from the hops in the long finish.

The kriek was sampled next. A gorgeous deep pink-red on colour with a candisugar nose with hints of cobwebs and cheerystones. Sourness muted by cheery flavours in this though it has a longer finish than the ale., perhaps due to the increased ABV (7.7%)

The highlight of the series for me was the framboos. Hazy mid-pink with rasberries prevalent throughout, the fruit balances the lactic sourness beautifully building to a lengthy sweet and sour finish.

The next beer, cassis, was unfortunately all flashy upfront but with little by way of fruit presence to back it up. Purple-red with a pink head and earthy brett nose. Fairly dull and muted sourness with a harsh finish.

The spontangrape was a similar colour to the base ale. Bretty nose with a hint of grape must, tasting like an oxidised wine or white wine winegar with a lactic finish. It was pretty refreshing and perhaps the most successful out of the non-traditional fruit usages.

Spontancranberry was red-amber and poured very lively with melon-rind, dry berries and least compost on the nose. Its sour, mouth-puckeringly sour especially in the finish; so decided to blend it with some homebrew woodforde's wherry which helped balance it out a bit.



An interesting range but probably the only one I'd drink again would be the spontanframboos and I'll sttick to the Belgian sours in the future. Has anyone else tried any of these beers?

The Session #54: Sour Beer

 

I’d been meaning to work out how the session works for a while, so when I got an idea for a session topic I Googled it and found the necessary details (see here). It’s a monthly beer blogging event held on the first Friday of the month blogging about a topic “hosted” by one of the participants. I decided it’s high time I got involved and this month’s entry is as good as any, “sour beer”. This month it's hosted by John at the Brew Site.

Lee from Hoptopia recently tweeted “What was your first sour beer” and I replied Boon Oude Gueuze at the Boon Brewery November 2009. Though, on reflection, this wasn’t strictly true now I come to think about it. No, for my first experience of sour beer would have been a few years earlier than that in the form of a kriek or framboise from the excellent Southampton bottle shop Bitter Virtue. I tried a few different fruit lambic beers but nothing that made me want to go back for a second one and I ended up largely sticking to British bottled beers.

The beer festival is in the spectacular Belfort Van Bruge

I decided I needed more of an education in the Belgian beer styles and my chance arose in November 2009 when a group of us visited Bruges for the beer festival. It was an eye-opening event to say the least. So many different beers that I didn’t know where to start. In my excitement I forgot to keep notes, so other than a few ticks in the program I’m not sure what I tried and what I thought of them.

What have we here?

One of the highlights of the trip; however was a visit the Boon brewery. We boarded a coach to the small town of Lembeek and scurried out through the rain into a courtyard where we were met by our tour guide. We could see what was definitely an industrial site, but it could have been making anything. There was however a clue to its contents in the shape of the letterbox outside. We were met by the jovial guide who led us through the gates and onwards into the brewery.

A clue to what lay within

 Once inside we were given an interesting and intriguing tour of the brewery including of the mash tun, the fermenting tanks and the barnlike maturing room filled with massive Brandy barrels filled with beers of varying ages. Much better accounts are available elsewhere and this post isn’t about the brewery but the beer.

 The gigantic aging barrels at Boon Brewery

After the tour we all sauntered up the road to a beer cafe where we could choose between Boon Oude Gueuze and Boon Kriek. I picked the former and this was certainly the biggest eye opener of the whole trip. I’d been told what to expect beforehand, that the beer would be sour, that it “isn’t for everyone”, but this still gave me no idea of what was in store for me!  A tongue tingling lemon with sour and still more sour and a whole mix of other new and exciting flavours besides. I loved it. I also tried the kriek which I much preferred to the sweetened versions I'd tried so far.

Shortly afterwards I moved to Northern Ireland and had no chance to further my sour beer experience. Through talking on rate beer I found someone locally who is a sourhead and he recommended The Vineyard in Belfast as the place to try and I picked up some Mort Subite beers from there. He has a sour beer project of his own which I may get a chance to blog about later in the year. My realisation is that I’ve merely scratched the surface with lambic beers and other sour styles and need to rectify that urgently!

I am making this post go live whilst working at the Great British Beer Festival and yes, I’ve had a chance to try some other sour beers here too. We have some crazy beers by revelation cat on draught. Three year old Boon lambic taken from Belgium and aged in laphroaig whisky/ marsala wine casks. There's also a superb Fruity kriek

I’m hopefully going to visit the Cantillon brewery when in Belgium next year too so plenty more sour beer ahead of me.