{"id":18444,"date":"2016-10-17T18:17:57","date_gmt":"2016-10-17T05:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=18444"},"modified":"2024-07-13T14:34:40","modified_gmt":"2024-07-13T02:34:40","slug":"sour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/10\/17\/sour\/","title":{"rendered":"“Sour”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"8<\/a>
Well, these’ll never sell.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’m a big fan of sour beers. I like what they do to my brain, in that they’re (often) delicious (to me). But I also like what they do to the brains of other people \u2014 speaking as a bartender, host-of-tastings, and general observer of the business. Nothing more efficiently upends a newbie’s na\u00efve understanding of “what beer is”,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and nothing seems so capable of making professionals spout nonsense. After\u00a0a few recent\u00a0articles and tasting\u00a0sessions,<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0I just want to take a moment to defend\u00a0sour<\/em> as a character and as a category.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Cantillon<\/a>
Souvenir of six sours<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People seem to\u00a0get squeamish about the word “sour” for one (or both!) of two reasons: a kind of tactical \/ cautionary concern about the word itself, and a sort of taxonomic \/ classificatory complaint about it not really denoting a “style” or “type” of beer at all. Local writer Neil Miller started a peculiar ‘trendspotting’ article in an industry rag<\/a> with a quote from the\u00a0Oxford Companion to Beer<\/em><\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> which included both, and lodged the topic in my brain for a while:<\/p>\n

While a certain level and quality of acidity is widely considered desirable in wine… acidity is usually considered a flavour fault in modern beers. When speaking of beer, the word ‘sour’ is usually pejorative. That said, there is a range of older beer styles that are traditionally acidic, and together with modern styles inspired by them, they have been termed, perhaps a bit rakishly, ‘sour beer’.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The first point was also wheeled out by the brewer at Moa (which has an extensive sour beer program underway)<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0who was quoted in an excellent little feature in the local paper<\/a> a few weeks ago:<\/p>\n

Moa’s [David] Nicholls has created two of New Zealand’s best-loved sour beers. Still, he is uneasy about the term. “For most people, it has a negative connotation: something sour, it’s unpleasant,” he says. “I think with ‘sour’, we’ve got off on the wrong foot.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Almanac<\/a>
Single sour of a second sextet<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To me, this just rings completely hollow. It’s not really a worry that I’ve run into in my life on the front line of selling this stuff. People just aren’t afraid of that word. Go ahead and ask ten friends\u00a0to name their favourite candy; at least one of them is going to say\u00a0sour<\/em> something \u2014 around here, they might even cite “sour worms” specifically, which is surely proof that people aren’t easily spooked by words that are gross in some contexts. They know the difference between sour milk and sour cream, and happily order sweet & sour sauce, or sourdough bread.<\/p>\n

(It really was a great introductory article, though. I’ve complained a lot about the pitfalls of ‘outsider’ writing<\/a> before, and they were avoided, here. Without coming across as touristy or breathless or clueless, it just lays out what these beers are, and why people are enjoying making them and drinking them. It certainly stood in admirably-stark contrast to the pile of nonsense published a day later in the\u00a0Guardian<\/em><\/a>, which included such howlers as “traditionally, all beers would have been sour (that is, naturally fermented)”, which is wrong on the history<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0and<\/em> the raw meaning of words, and “the interest in sour beers reflects a reaction against some oversweet, cloying craft brews we’ve seen in the last few years”, which is even-more-bananas trendwatching and almost exactly upside-down.)<\/p>\n

But the other worry is worse. It’s there in the\u00a0OCB<\/em>\u2019s “perhaps rakishly”, among other scattered appearances, and it flared up most famously last year with a much-vaunted “Stop calling beers ‘sours'” article in draft<\/span><\/a>,<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> which complained that:<\/p>\n

The word “sour” reduces a broad swath of the world’s most fascinating, deep, diverse, old-fashioned-and-newfangled drinks to one of the five simplest tastes that our tongues can detect. […] Some labels help us make sense of a complicated world. Others just make us dumber.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Liefmans<\/a>
Spectral sour<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There’s\u00a0something<\/em> to this; “sour” is a broad church \u2014 in terms of the making of beer (oversimplifying, there’s quick, front-end, kettle-souring and there’s slow, back-end, barrel-souring), the origins of various styles (in various regions and\/or historical periods), and the overall balance of flavours (you can have\u00a0relatively austere ‘pure’ sour, or it might be one note among a balance of malt or fruit or hops or all three). But the undercurrent is just such snobbish bullshit that it’s\u00a0hardly worth dignifying. People shouldn’t be obligated to study the fine-grained technicalities before they’re allowed to use a generally-useful word. “Sour” is a perfectly good starting point for someone seeking to find \u2014\u00a0or to avoid<\/em> \u2014 a beer to drink; the details can come after and are precisely what bartenders and beer labels are for.<\/em><\/p>\n

And the\u00a0nonsense<\/em> of it. As if “sour” fails as a category because it’s too broad and there are different kinds underneath it. Really?<\/em>\u00a0Fuck off. “Red wine” and “white wine” seem to get along just fine as ways to organise your menu or your bottle store shelves. And I don’t recall much of a similar campaign against “lager”<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 or “ale” or “wheat beer” or any other useful-enough\u00a0terms that can form\u00a0some<\/em> part of our understanding and communication. If you push this line hard enough, if “sour” is somehow an empty term, then “beer” is too. Just try and write out an all-encompassing definition \u2014 especially if you’re guilty of previously cheering or sharing that draft<\/span> article \u2014 which doesn’t lead to absurdity at the edges. I wager you’ll fail.<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Because this is how language works. And yet we survive.\u00a0“I feel like a sour beer” is\u00a0a valid\u00a0sentence. Context and implicature \u2014 e.g.<\/em>,\u00a0“Netflix and chill”<\/a> \u2014 and basic human sympathy help drag meaning out of noise. Snobbery helps no one.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a big fan of sour beers. I like what they do to my brain, in that they’re (often) delicious (to me). But I also like what they do to the brains of other people \u2014 speaking as a bartender, host-of-tastings, and general observer of the business. Nothing more efficiently upends a newbie’s na\u00efve understanding … Continue reading “Sour”<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[55,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interesting-finds","category-taxonomy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":20386,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2023\/07\/21\/nyt-crossword-mainstreaming\/","url_meta":{"origin":18444,"position":0},"title":"The New York Times crossword as a measure of mainstreaming","author":"Phil","date":"July 21, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"Like any New Zealander excited when the country is mentioned out loud in overseas media or just actually included on a map, I'm always interested when beer pops up in unexpected places. Last Friday's NYT crossword had\u00a0ipa among its solutions, which itself isn't uncommon \u2014 the crowded design of American\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mediawatch"","block_context":{"text":"Mediawatch","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/interesting-finds\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Excerpt of the New York Times Crossword, featuring \"sour beers\" as an answer","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sour-beer-in-the-NYT-crossword-slight-grey.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sour-beer-in-the-NYT-crossword-slight-grey.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sour-beer-in-the-NYT-crossword-slight-grey.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Sour-beer-in-the-NYT-crossword-slight-grey.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":18987,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/03\/21\/not-guinness\/","url_meta":{"origin":18444,"position":1},"title":"Anything-but-Guinness Day, 2017","author":"Phil","date":"March 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been a while since I've had the usual pint on Saint Patrick's Day. Aside from a\u00a0general indifference to tradition and a specific aversion to the way that holiday's been borrowed and bastardised and bent into an excuse for problematic daydrinking \u2014 I've also got a particular gripe against Guinness\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Garage Project 'Aro Noir' at Shepherd (17 March 2017)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-Aro-Noir-on-Nitro-on-17-March.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-Aro-Noir-on-Nitro-on-17-March.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-Aro-Noir-on-Nitro-on-17-March.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-Aro-Noir-on-Nitro-on-17-March.jpg?resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Garage-Project-Aro-Noir-on-Nitro-on-17-March.jpg?resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6901,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2014\/01\/20\/beer-diary-podcast-s03e07\/","url_meta":{"origin":18444,"position":2},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast s03e07: Jono Galuszka","author":"Phil","date":"January 20, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Just before the holidays \u2014 so apologies for the delay but, you know, holidays \u2014 George and I sat down for a ramble with Jono Galuszka, journalist, beer-and-music nerd, former bartender and barista, and occasional drummer. 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