While sour and “wild” beers are unlikely to ever dominate our beer landscape, they’ve emerged from the shadowy backwaters and taken their rightful place on the shelves alongside so-called “normal” beers.
Sour beer can be a lot of things, brewed and fermented in countless ways. Rather than run through those countless ways all in text, I thought it would be easier to diagram their relationships. Broadly, they break into three large groups: Brett beers, which aren’t generally sour; cultured sour beers of various types; and spontaneously fermented beers.
Since we’re mainly focused on flavor and aroma here, we’ll not dive into these beers’ history, fascinating as it is. We’ll stay focused on the nuances of mouthfeel and the particular differences in sour taste that different microbes contribute along with the huge range of aromas, microbial and otherwise.