I read this on Instagram, just the other day, from a brewer I really admire and follow closely. As fate blessed me, one of the nation’s best sour/wild ale breweries, E9 Brewing, is the closest maker of beer to my house, here in Tacoma, Washington. 1.77 miles down McKinley Avenue and I pull up to a tiny universe of authentic, rustic, inspired, and blessedly uncontrived sours and wilds and barrel-aged ales and some jaw-dropping lagers. I love those styles of beer and have watched their growth or sometimes lack thereof, for most of two decades now and I have Some Thoughts.
But first, let’s hear from the estimable Jeffrey Stuffings, owner and guiding light of Austin, Texas’ brilliant Jester King Brewing…
Jeffrey Stuffings is a Thinker. He is kind of a measure-twice-cut-once brewer, or so I am told. And here, he’s clearly thought about what his and Jester’s place is in the circus that is American Craft Beer. I have never met him but I know him the way we all know a LOT of folks in today’s tech-driven society: I read nearly ALL of what he writes online. (Not emails. I haven’t become that creepy…I hope)
And my own conclusion to the questions and complaints he raises here is not a product of immersion, as his is. I’m SO not a brewer but my background is in business and two pivotal economics courses I took back on the early Pleistocene, when I was in college. I brush up on the economics, from time to time and have for fifty+ years now and here is what that has told me about those niche beers that are sour and/or funky…
Popularity and sustainability of anything in our frenetic, lately-twisted, culture is based on finding and growing a Niche. Adolphus Busch, for all his many and well-established crimes against the art/craft of brewing, was an all-time master at carving out a niche. Far back in the pre-history of American brewing, ales were made routinely. They were easier and faster to brew and those early American beer drinkers were not that hard to please, so they swilled ’em down and asked for refills. The ale train got run completely off the tracks when Adolphus paired up with the deep pockets of Eberhard Anheuser, (who was also, conveniently, his father-in-law) and launched Anheuser Busch, which soon became the nation’s largest (and very nearly ONLY) brewery, achieved by marrying mediocre beer to an uber-aggressive marketing scheme that involved bribes, paying taverns to kick out other brands, and burying America with a tsunami of images of their products and name. Insipid, piss-water lager became, for about 100 years, most Americans’ only option, differentiated only by brand.
But that Niche was well and truly carved and the continued market dominance of those debased, dishwater lagers ALL grew out of Adolphus’ bank account and a relentless will to own American brewing. Like him or not – and I REALLY do NOT – A. Busch cemented all American beer drinkers as lager addicts and it stayed that way until craft beer came along.
So this doesn’t run to book-length, let me elide a bit: Early Craft beer was dedicated to making ALES, almost exclusively. The craft brewers ceded lagers to the BudMillerPabstSchlitz hordes and made what they didn’t make. Craft started in the mid-70s, very slowly, and boomed in the 80s and then continued to BOOM, loudly, and is now about 10K breweries strong. And along that path are the preeminence of Pale Ales, ESBs, and other English styles, culminating in the market dominance of the American-style IPA, which accounts for a LARGE percentage of craft beer sold in this country. Every other ale style in the extensive canon of world brewing lags far behind the IPA in US acceptance. And therein lies ONE of the Rubs…
IPA had made so much noise in the craft culture, for so freakishly long, now, that it has literally shoved most other types of ale far into the background. The demand for those others is cyclical – Brown ales nearly disappeared in the 00s, ESBs ditto, and Scottish/Scotch ales are still pretty far off most craft fans’ radar. In the mid-to-late 90s, those secondary styles’ branches started to bud and grow a bit, in fits and starts: Belgian ales have now done a sputtery resurgence for two decades. Imperial Stouts and various permutations of the fringe IPAs cropped up – the Triple and Quad IPAs, Brut, Cold, New England hazy, and several more have taken root. But the oddest one and the one least suited to American tastes, is Sour and Wild ales, Brett ales, and Spontaneously Fermented ales…a tiny niche to start and one that has not yet found a grip. The most visible, in fact, is New Belgium Brewing’s Sour Brown “La Folie”, which doesn’t sell even enough to qualify in the top 100-selling IPA lists.
Americans, for all our bluster, have very narrow-gauge tastes. We like salty and sweet and meaty and rich and have never even developed a hint of the sort of fondness for acidic and sour foods that the Germans and Greeks and middle Europeans find on their tables every day. Belgian/Flanders ales are All About That Tart and some of Europe’s truly iconic ales – example, Duchesse de Bourgogne – fall squarely into the SOUR category and Europeans think nothing of it, just drink ’em and smile. Americans do NOT. We equate sour with vinegar and vinegar ain’t that popular here. So, sour-wild ales have no real everyday point of contact with most US consumers. I watch people new to the styles taste sours at least once, twice a month and 99% of ’em say, “Whoa!” and not in a happy way. “Too SOUR!” most of them exclaim, to even some of the mildest sours…and, of course, a lot of brewers of sours and wilds were caught up in the craft and didn’t really bother to try to make those ales approachable for the masses. I can say this now, because they’re out of business, but Cascade Barrelhouse in Portland, despite making some of my all-time favorite sours, (Bourbonic Plague, Sang Noir, Noyaux, and Figaro just made me weak) made some sours that even I found unapproachable. Almost painfully sour. Needless to say, sour/wild newbies rejected many of their beers. and finally, they closed for good.
I’m not going to claim to know how this niche-carving can happen. But I do know that Jester King stands as one of the top two or three makers of these nichey beers in all of Western civilization and, even though they are in Texas – arguably not as fertile ground for the growth of beer styles much outside the domestic mass-produced lager and IPA strata – Jester King has managed to evolve a following…just not enough of one. Do we promote these beers as accompaniment to food? I’ve tried dozens with various meals and found ten to twelve that are every bit as classic for pairings as raw oysters and Stout or Belgian Abbey ales with Thai food. But the hurdle to crafting a niche for sour/wilds as food beers has an enormous roadblock: restaurateurs have to stock the beers. Which, so far, is a VERY hard sale. Also, Jeff’s point about price factors in. Sour and Wild are expensive beers to make. The barrel costs alone drive prices into the $20+ per bottle range and if no one is willing or (financially) able to turn out a mild, approachable Sour that an average drinker can taste and enjoy and then AFFORD, this may NEVER change.
Tough Love Time: the main reason Jester King and Almanac and even my own local E9 struggle and eventually find themselves forced to deviate from a total focus on their signature styles – as in the case of Denver’s exceptional Crooked Stave Brewing – and wind up churning out IPAs and lagers, just to keep the doors open, is The American Craft Beer Fan. More Tough Love: Americans LOVE us some Ruts. Put something in our glass that we like and we will get married to that one beer or one style and call ourselves craft beer fans and quit even thinking of trying something else. We are the Sad Sack Dead-Asses of the beverage world and not just in beer. Wine? Chardonnay and Cabernet, the largest-selling wines by MILES, for decades, now. Whiskey? Here’s your 2024 top ten: Maker’s Mark, Bulleit, Michter’s, Woodford Reserve, Buffalo Trace, Wild Turkey, Jim Beam, Jack Daniel’s, Rittenhouse, Four Roses. Nothing against any of ’em but find me ONE American artisan whiskey on the list, in a country crawlin’ with fine small distillers. The all-time champ? Jack Daniel’s, which has topped this list for a solid century.
RUT. We love it. Now, our beer rut, for all but the determined mouth-breathin’ Bud chuggers, is the IPA, and that style has its own challenges. Bitterness? Yep. Predictable flavors? Nope. No one walks into a bar and just says, “Gimme an IPA” and drinks whatever the bartender gives them. One bar a mile from my house tried that, egged on by a bar manager who was overdosed with Bogart movies. They had to stop. (The manager got fired) People want one that tastes the way THEY like. And MANY don’t. PUT DOWN, for five fucking minutes, the IPA glass and at least try something that you have assumed, on no evidence, you wouldn’t like. Because you MIGHT. And it MIGHT change the way you look at a LOT of what’s overlooked in this country.
If we can’t Give Peace a Chance, at least give Sour/Wild ales one.
The Pour Fool 