Why Everyone Is Suddenly Obsessed With Sour Beer

Sour beer is the hottest cold drink of 2017. The funky brew is the latest niche offering to take off in a market obsessed with finding ever more obscure and complex beers. In recent years, craft beers have soared in popularity, with particular varieties, such as extremely hoppy IPAs, gaining a strong following among a cadre of beer drinkers, who increasingly view beer with the discernment, vocabulary and sophistication once reserved for wine. Portland’s Ecliptic Brewing introduced a peach sour beer last year and saw sales of the brew double this year, spurring the brewmaster John Harris to make a new batch every week rather than every other week. The soft flavor of peach found such a large following that the brewery decided to make the sour beer — typically seen as a summer drink — all year round. “Thirty years ago we would have thrown these brews away, saying they were bad,” Harris says. “Now, we are purposely putting tanks in our breweries to sour beer. It’s the evolution of craft brewing now.” And it’s not just Portland. Sour beer has become a go-to for craft breweries across the country, as sales have spiked. Just 45,000 cases of sour beer were sold in the U.S. in 2015, a figure that more than quintupled to over 245,000 cases in 2016 and is set to rise an additional 9% this year, according to Bart Watson, chief economist at Brewers Association, which supports the American craft beer industry. Sour beer is still dwarf...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Food onetime Source Type: news