To celebrate the launch of our brand-new beer Feet Up Thursday , we’re diving into all things Sour Beer!
With its refreshingly tart flavour and wide range of styles, a sour beer is the perfect pick for this season and heatwave. From how it's made to different styles and production, we’re serving up a quick, detailed guide to everything you need to know about this deliciously different beer style.
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What Is A Sour Beer?
A sour beer is, at its core, a beer that has a tart, acidic flavour profile, a result of fermentation by wild yeasts and bacteria.
This style of beer can be light and refreshing or complex and funky, and they often include fruit additions or are aged in barrels to enhance their depth and uniqueness.
Different Styles...
Taste-wise, a sour beer offers a wide spectrum—from bright and fruity to deeply funky and barnyard-like, with many showcasing bold fruit additions. They can also feature herbal or spicy aromas, depending on the style.
There are many varieties of a sour beer, each with unique origins and brewing techniques that shape their distinct flavour profiles.
Here are a few popular sour beer styles and what to expect:
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Berliner Weisse:
This German-style wheat beer is low in alcohol and known for its crisp, tart, and refreshing taste. Often served with flavoured syrups like raspberry or woodruff to balance the acidity, it's light-bodied, effervescent, and delightfully zesty.
- Gose:
Gose is a traditional German sour beer style that hails from the town of Goslar. Brewed with coriander and salt, it delivers a distinctive flavor that blends tartness with subtle spice and a touch of salinity. Typically unfiltered, Gose has a hazy look and offers a crisp, mildly tart, and refreshing drinking experience.
- Lambic:
Lambic beers are spontaneously fermented with wild yeasts native to Belgium’s Zenne Valley, creating complex, tart, and funky sour beer flavours often described as earthy or rustic. They can be enjoyed on their own or blended with fruits like cherries or raspberries.
Fruited Sours:
Fruited sours are a vibrant and flavorful sub-style that take the naturally tart character of this beer category and amplify it with the addition of real fruit. These fruits—whether fresh, puréed, or in juice form—are typically added during fermentation or conditioning, allowing their natural sugars, aromas, and colors to fully integrate into the final product.
Kettle Sours:
A kettle sour is made using a faster, more controlled souring process than traditional methods. The wort is soured in the brew kettle using lactobacillus before it's boiled. This technique gives brewers precise control over acidity while minimizing the risk of cross-contamination in the brewery. The result is a clean, vibrant sour beer that can range from subtly tart to boldly puckering—often enhanced with fresh fruit for added flavour and complexity.
Colour
The colour of a sour beer can vary widely, from pale straw-yellow to vibrant reds and deep, earthy browns. This variation largely depends on the specific style, the types of malts used, any fruit additions, and whether the beer has been barrel-aged. For example, a fruited variety made with raspberries might take on a rich pink hue, while a darker, aged version could develop deep amber or mahogany tones. Each colour hints at the flavous and ingredients used in the brewing process of a sour beer.
- Berliner Weisse – Pale yellow and cloudy
- Gose – Light golden or straw-colored
- Lambic – Pale to golden
- Kettle Sour - Golden (un-fruited) - Pink to Red (fruited)
- Fruited sours (e.g., with cherries, raspberries, blueberries) – Vivid pinks, reds, purples, or even deep ruby
How Do We Make Sour Beer At FCBC?
There are several traditional methods that use bacteria to sour and lower the pH in the beer, this could be with Lactobacillus and Pediococcus or a wild yeast like Brettanomyces. Some modern sours use lactic acid producing yeast that produces the acid alongside ethanol and co2, these can offer a quicker and lower risk sour beer due to its reduced contamination risk within a brewery.
At FCBC, we use philly sour lactic producing yeast to sour our beers, we have a barley and wheat grain bill, minimal hop additions and then some maltodextrin to help give the beer more body, and some dextrose to help encourage the lactic acid production during fermentation. A few days into the fermentation we add a secondary yeast to help drive the attenuation of the beer and then once the sour beer is nearly finished its fermentation, we add the fruit puree.
Our New Sour!
This week, we released a brand new sour beer of our own! Our first sour beer of the year is packed with tropical fruit, punching you in the face with bags of mango, papaya and pink guava. Finished with a subtle sourness just tingling the back of your gums to balance everything out. The perfect thing to drink when you still have a Friday to go. After all, everyone deserves to put their feet up on a Thursda'.
Want to try it for yourself? You can order a can—or a few—from our online shop and enjoy them from the comfort of your home. Prefer a freshly poured pint? Come visit us in our taproom,
What Is A Sour Beer?
A sour beer is, at its core, a beer that has a tart, acidic flavour profile, a result of fermentation by wild yeasts and bacteria.
What Makes A Sour Beer Sour?
Sour beers achieve their characteristic tartness through the action of lactic acid-producing bacteria and occasionally, wild yeast, during fermentation.These microorganisms metabolise sugars in the wort and produce lactic acid, which gives the beer its sour flavour.
What Does A Sour Beer Taste Like?
Taste-wise, a sour beer offers a wide spectrum—from bright and fruity to deeply funky and barnyard-like, with many showcasing bold fruit additions. They can also feature herbal or spicy aromas, depending on the style.
Where Can I Drink 'Feet Up Thursda'
You can get hold our our new sour 'Feet Up Thursda' via our web shop or in our taproom for a limited time!
So there you have it – a quick rundown of sour beer. Whether you're a seasoned beer drinker or just getting into craft brews, these tart, refreshing and fruity beers are definitely worth exploring.
If you’re looking to start your craft beer journey—or you're already a fan and just want to explore new styles such as sour beer—there’s no better place to begin than with the wide selection available in our online shop . From crisp lagers to hop-forward IPAs and bold, tart brews like our latest sour beer release, we’ve got something to suit every palate.
Not sure where to start? Try our Fridge Filler Pack —a curated collection of crowd-pleasing favourites and seasonal highlights designed to keep your fridge stocked and tasting great. It’s a perfect way to sample a little bit of everything without the guesswork.
For those who love discovering new flavours on a regular basis, why not join our Beer Club ? It’s our monthly subscription box packed with the freshest releases and a rotating selection of styles—all delivered right to your door at a discounted rate. Each month offers something new, and chances are, our latest sour will be tucked in there alongside other exciting brews from our lineup.