Of all the things I love to do with beer, of course drinking
it is number one. Selling it isn’t bad,
either. But hoarding it is in close
competition with both of those. The
collector in me loves keeping a good stash, & sometimes I have to check my
tendency to squirrel away things, lest the goal turn into keeping the shiny,
pretty bottles to look at & never actually imbibe. Organizing events gives me an outlet to
sublimate this urge (vice?), & temper it by “curating” a good tasting. The monthly Top Shelf Thursdays are one such
example, but so far none trumps The Sour & the Funky festival. Now in its third year, this mini-festival of
sour & bretty beers gives me an excuse to hoard away, picking beers from
our shelves & stock room to add to the ever-growing collection. Ooh, we just got in a bretted IPA from Evil
Twin – into the box, up on a shelf. My
pretties…
Okay, I promised myself it wouldn’t get weird. Anyway, doing this for the third time has
made me notice some subtle changes in the collection. We’ve been lucky enough to get in a lot of
new faces each year, & this year’s no exception. In organizing the list, though, there have
been some snafus around categorization – it turns out that sour & funky
beers do not always fit neatly into stylistic boxes. In 2012, the question was largely around
distinguishing the Flanders reds from the oud bruins, which tend to have a lot
of overlap. This one calls itself a red but
is listed as a brown by other sources.
This one is described as a brown but is barrel-aged. It’s an on-going dilemma for me. Many were fairly easy: Berliner Weiss, fruit
lambic, gueuze. But then there was the
“catch-all” category, which we just ended up calling “Bretted & Wild Beers”
– couldn’t even say “ales”, because one (Stillwater Premium) was technically a
lager. About a quarter of the brews fell
into this overflow section.
Last year ran into even more hazy area, with many entrants
straddling multiple styles or just eschewing classification altogether. Take Draai Laag’s Goedenacht: part Belgian
golden ale, part mead, part cider, with brett.
Or Jolly Pumpkin’s Madrugada Obscura, a stout aged in oak barrels with
house “bugs”. Rather than jam things
into categories where they didn’t really fit, & that might not capture the
nuance of ingredients & process anyway, each brew was listed with its own
individual description. There’s an
on-going debate in the beer world about how valid style categories really
are. A BJCP judge might say very important. A rural Ardennes brewer, not so much. The debate rages on.
This family of beers has proven especially challenging to
pin down. Fans often call them “sours”,
encompassing lambic, Berliner Weiss, Flemish reds & browns, gose, & the
newer catch-all “wild ale”. That’s
problematic, though, because sour is a flavor, not a style; it’s analogous to
calling a family of beers “bitters” & including in that IPAs, ambers,
American barleywine, pilsners, etc.
“Wild ale” as a term has emerged to snatch up the outliers, but that net
has its share of snags, too, compromised of beers that employ any combination
of brettanomyces AND/OR souring bacteria.
A lot of bretted beers aren’t actually sour, as they don’t have any
acid-producing bugs in them. In many
cases, it’s also a stretch to call brettanomyces a “wild” yeast when it’s
intentionally introduced & carefully monitored & controlled. Many conceptualize yeast & bacteria as
“wild” only if they inhabit the natural environment & are incorporated
through “spontaneous” fermentation. And
as if I don’t sound anal retentive enough already, I ran into the dilemma of
whether to include in this year’s fest a beer that actually is sour, but achieved it through the
addition of acidified malt & lactic acid, rather than through fermentation
within the beer (ended up siding against its inclusion).
Quite the existential crisis, right? As much fun as it is to bat around these sort
of theoretical questions, the beer doesn’t care. It is what it is. The brewers probably only care a pinch more,
if at all. If it’s good, it’s good. We tend to cling to these intellectual
distinctions when overwhelmed, I guess, but damn if this class isn’t a murky
one, with plenty of blurred lines. Gotta
say, this year’s line-up is looking even murkier: a lot of bretted brews, a lot
of “wild” ales, less & less clear definition. I DO know this: if you like sour & funk,
you will not be disappointed.
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