If you’re new to beer, or you don’t branch out much beyond lagers and the like, you might not fully understand what a sour beer is. Don’t worry. As usual, we’re here to help. In order to do that, though, we have to start at the beginning. Take a moment to visualise a sour beer. What do you think it looks like? What do you imagine it smells like? Now how about the flavour? Well, chances are, your imagination is correct.
In the most basic terms, a sour beer is exactly as it seems. It’s a beer that has a tart, often sour flavour profile. It’s crafted to be acidic and sometimes has an earthy, funky flavour as well. While many contemporary beers are simply listed as “sour beers” or “sour ales”, traditional sours include Flanders red ales, Gose-style beers, Berliner weisses, lambics, and gueuzes.
We’ve brought together all our favourites here, so you don’t have to worry about sorting through the sour scene.
Related: Best Pale Ale Beers to Crack Open
The Best Sour Beers
- 1. Brooklyn Brewery’s Bel Air Sour
- 2. Hop Nation’s Summer Sour
- 3. Verhaeghe’s Duchesse de Bourgogne
- 4. The Grifter Brewing Co.’s Pink Galah Lemonade Sour
- 5. Bentspoke Brewing Co.’s How’s It Gosen?
- 6. Yulli’s Bloody Mary Sour
- 7. Batch Brewing’s Pash the Magic Dragon
- 8. Rodenbach’s Grand Cru
- 9. Aether Brewing’s Blackberry Sour
- What is a Sour Beer?
1. Brooklyn Brewery’s Bel Air Sour
- Size: 355ml
- ABV: 5.8%
- Origin: Brooklyn, New York
- Notes: Bright, Tart
A great ‘first timer’, Brooklyn Brewery’s Bel Air Sour is a crispy, but still tart entry point to the often overwhelming world of sours. There’s a ‘Key Lime Gose’ variant that adds a splash of lime to the already delicious flavours on display here, but for our money the original is best.
Compared to some of the others on the list, the Bel Air Sour retains the refreshing, dry characteristic we all love about beer due to the soft barley and wheat malts used in the brewing process, but adds the sharp, tart flavours that make sours… well – just that.
Adding tropical fruit flavours to the beer formula makes for a delicious treat on a hot day, and really can only be beaten if you’re in the mood for something specific, rather than something that ticks all of the boxes.
2. Hop Nation’s Summer Sour
- Size: 355ml
- ABV: 4%
- Origin: Footscray, Victoria
- Notes: Pomegranate, Cherry
Hop Nation are old hands at making sour beer at this point, having delivered a number of experimental batch releases over the past few years. It’s Zombie Pop series were particularly well received, but until they’re brought back from the dead (ha) your best bet in getting some deliciousness from them is to pick up their latest Summer Sour edition: this year bringing pomegranate and cherry together to deliver something akin to a fermented and bubbly fruit juice.
According to Hop Nation the beer is “soured twice for extra tang”, though I’m not entirely sure how that works. The brewery’s founder and general manager Sam Harbour told us the key to making such a delicious beer is quality ingredients, a tight process, a great team, and a touch of creativity.
“I think balance is key to a good sour, if there’s fruit in it, the quality of the fruit is key,” he said. “We make a couple styles of sour: more traditional barrel-aged sours that are more complex but can take years to make, then also kettle sours where the souring is conducted in a controlled environment at the brewhouse.”
Whatever Hop Nation did, it paid off.
3. Verhaeghe’s Duchesse de Bourgogne
- Size: 330ml
- ABV: 6.2%
- Origin: Belgium
- Notes: Passionfruit, chocolate, balsamic vinegar
Yes – the flavour profile above makes it seem like this is a bit of a busy taste, and it is, but it’s all balanced to perfection. It’s certainly not to everyone’s taste, but the Duchesse de Bourgogne is one of the most popular and well-loved beers on the planet for good reason: it’s unlike any other.
Technically a ‘Flemish red ale’, the Duchesse de Bourgogne is fermented twice before being matured in an oak barrel for 18 months. Then, the aged goodness is blended with a younger batch to create the mix that ends up on the shelf. A lot of love, care, and time goes into the process, and for brew lovers that are into their wilder flavours, the end result is a revelation.
4. The Grifter Brewing Co.’s Pink Galah Lemonade Sour
- Size: 375ml
- ABV: 4.5%
- Origin: Marrickville, Sydney
- Notes: Raspberry, dry
We love a frosty beer on a hot day and we also enjoy a glass of tart, refreshing lemonade. Who wouldn’t want to enjoy the two together, right? Well, the brewers at The Grifter Brewing Co. realised this and created their Pink Galah Lemonade Sour. It’s a pink lemonade sour that gets a secondary fermentation with raspberries and lemon juice. This results in a berry-filled, tart, citrus, acidic beer you’ll crave every sunny day.
It’s kind of like if a shandy were a bit more boozy, and filled with fruit. Plus, the drink pours in a colour close to Barbie pink, so you can use it to dazzle your drinking buddies. If you see someone drinking a bright pink beer at the pub, give them a knowing nod: they’re about to head to flavour town.
5. Bentspoke Brewing Co.’s How’s It Gosen?
- Size: 375ml
- ABV: 4%
- Origin: Braddon, ACT
- Notes: Cherry, salty, tangy
This humorously named Gose-style beer comes from the brewers at Bentspoke. This 4 per cent ABV, highly sessionable Gose was first brewed as a tropical Gose with mango and passionfruit, while the current version is made with cherries.
It’s not quite as bright pink as Grifter’s attempt, but the How’s It Gosen? makes up for it with that big hit of cherry flavour, which comes care of real Australian cherries turned concentrate and delivered via ‘hop cannon’.
In fact, what makes the How’s it Gosen? beer unique is Bentspoke’s homegrown bacteria, which is injected into the brew using ‘traditional souring techniques using lactic acid’, and keeps BentSpoke sour among the best on market.
It helps that they mix it up every year as well – who knows what deliciousness next year will bring!
6. Yulli’s Bloody Mary Sour
- Size: 375ml
- ABV: 4.5%
- Origin: Alexandria, Sydney
- Notes: Earthy, savoury, spiced
Probably the next best thing to the real deal, Yulli’s Brew Bloody Mary Sour delivers the perfect hangover cure. The hair of the dog, right?
Sure, the most common flavours associated with sour beers are a variety of fruits, but this beer is a sour take on the classic cocktail made even better by the addition of chillies, hot sauce, and tomato juice. It’s sour, sweet, and perfect for breakfast (if you’re into that sort of thing).
Anything with chilli seems to be a winner, honestly, but the push and pull between a sour flavouring with a sprinkling of spice is an absolute must try. It’d probably also make a pretty decent dessert beer, actually, depending on what you’re eating.
7. Batch Brewing’s Pash the Magic Dragon
- Size: 375ml
- ABV: 4.5%
- Origin: Marrickville, Sydney
- Notes: Fruity
We all know Puff the Magic Dragon, but who knows Pash the Magic Dragon? Well, everyone should. Flaked wheat, barley, and lactic acid-filled sour wort make this a tart, sweet, funky, acidic beer worthy of you or any gigantic, fire-breathing reptiles in your life.
“It’s a nice clean kettle sour with big passionfruit notes,” Batch Brewery co-founder Andrew Fineran told us.
“I like the tartness aspect of sours more than I like bitterness in beers like IPAs. I think that’s what the key standout is for people that don’t typically drink beer – they’re used to tartness from, say, white wine, but aren’t crazy about the bitterness.”
When it comes to Pash, fruit is infused with the beer to add to its taste, yes, but also its presentation.
“The spin is the dragonfruit, which doesn’t add much flavour, but adds a nice colour that you get in the beer. Plus, we couldn’t call it Pash the Magic Dragon without having dragonfruit.”
8. Rodenbach’s Grand Cru
- Size: 330ml
- ABV: 6%
- Origin: Belgium
- Notes: Malt, cherry, fig
No list of sour beers is complete without Rodenbach. Specifically, Rodenbach’s Grand Cru. This 6 per cent ABV Belgian classic is another blend of a Flemish red ale, where one-third of the beer is young and the other two-thirds was matured for a minimum of two years in large oak vats.
The result is a funky, tart, slightly acidic, fruity, sparkling wine-like beer you’ll want to save for a special occasion, but you’ll likely crack open and drink with your mates instead. Just as with Verhaeghe’s Duchesse de Bourgogne, there is a sharp vinegar flavour, but here there is also a sweetness that helps to balance the overall profile, as well as the taste of the aged wood used in the drop’s two-year maturation.
Not for the faint of heart, but many things worth doing aren’t.
9. Aether Brewing’s Blackberry Sour
- Size: 375ml
- ABV: 3.9%
- Origin: Northgate, Brisbane
- Notes: Citrus, berry, malt
While Aether Brewing has made a lot of beers testing a lot of flavours, like Davidson Plums, biscuits, truffles, bone marrow, crème brulee, and hemp, it’s the good ol’ Tasmanian blackberry that brings this delicious sour to life.
“Nothing beats a can-do attitude, it also really helps when you’ve got a culture that promotes experimenting and constant learning,” Aether Brewing’s head brewer George MacGregor told us.
When it comes to sour, though, Aether really doesn’t see the point in subtlety (in case the purple hue of this beer didn’t make the point already)..
“You really can’t skimp on a good sour – if you’re going to make it sour, make it face-meltingly sour. If you’re going to add fruit, add triple what you think you should. For our sours, we want the glass to look more like juice than beer: make it vibrant, make it stand out,” he said.
Amen to that.
What is a Sour Beer?
You might think this doesn’t seem anything like the classic “beer” aroma and flavour of your favourite lager, pilsner, or even IPA and you’d be right. But how exactly do you go from the classic beer taste of a lager to a sour beer? It’s all about the souring process.
While many sour beers have fruit flavours like raspberry, cherry, lime, and even tropical fruit, the funk and acidity come from fermentation with acid-creating bacteria like lactobacillus. This creates the tart, acidic, mouth-puckering flavours and aromas drinkers expect in a great sour beer.
While that’s enough, many brewers also add various complimentary hops (many are even dry-hopped to add aroma and flavour without extra hop bitterness) as well as fruits like oranges, cherries, peaches, raspberries, blueberries, and tropical fruit flavours.
The best, most exciting aspect of sour beers is the varying flavour profiles. Depending on the yeast, hops, and fruits added they can range from funky, yeasty, and earthy to sour, tart, and fruity.
If that didn’t pique your interest, perhaps you’d like to know that sours are often lower in alcohol than many other beer styles. Also, the tart, acidic, sour, and sometimes (we’re looking at you Gose) salty flavour profile is well suited for hot, humid, sunny days. But, the complex, lactic flavour works well any time of year.
How is a Sour Made?
Obviously, with so many different styles and production methods, it’s difficult to pin down a specific way of brewing a sour beer. But generally, you can count on the process beginning with complimentary hops being added to the kettle boil. After cooling, the wort is ready for the secondary fermentation where yeast and live bacteria will be added. When and how the bacteria is added also depends on the style of sour beer. Some beer is now aged in wood barrels or vats.
Some are even fermented in open vessels to allow natural, wild yeasts and bacteria to add funk and flavour. Fermentation isn’t an overnight process. In order to gain the unique flavours and characteristics, brewers (and eventually drinkers) may have to wait months for the lactic acid, sour, and tart flavours to be created.
What Makes a Beer Sour?
As mentioned above, the sour flavour comes from various yeasts and wild bacteria. This is what creates the iconic sour, tart, acidic, biting flavour profile sour beer drinkers look forward to. The most common bacteria is Lactobacillus. This gives the beer the lactic acid taste. Other bacteria include (but aren’t limited to) Brettanomyces, Pediococcus, and Saccharomyces. The best part? These microbes might actually be good for your gut health. You can finally tell your doctor (and though they probably won’t believe you) that you’re drinking for your health.
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