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When interest in so-called sour beers hit the United States earlier this decade many were those who made such grandiose pronouncements as sour is the new bitter and the next trend in craft beer is sour ale. As columnist at the time for the hospitality industry magazine Nations Restaurant News I was even asked by my editor to spend the better part of a page on the topic his logic being based largely upon their newfound popularity on either coast yet ignoring their near-invisibility in between. Personally I took a contrary position. Sour beers were simply too hard to do well and took too long to create I reasoned so their number will never be sufficient nor their volume large enough to rival conventionally brewed beers. Then came kettle souring. Although no one seems certain as to where and when kettle souring originated research suggests that its modern implementation may well be a made-in-America development with anecdotal evidence pointing to New England in the early years of this century as a possible starting point. Historically it rather surprisingly might have been a German creation with beer historian Ron Pattinson having discovered references to yoghurtbier which would have been created in a similar fashion dating from the early 1900s. It is also a practice not without its share of controversy. Mention kettle souring to an American brewer today and you are likely to elicit a response of vigorous approval or even stronger disapproval to the point of Death to Kettle Sours t-shirts having been printed. But love it or hate it it is indisputably a part of American beer culture today. As its name implies kettle souring is a short-cut to sourness in beer involving the inoculation of lactobacillus into the wort as it sits in the sterilized kettle prior to boil. By monitoring the pH of the wort as it drops the brewer waits until an optimal level is reached usually 3.2 3.6 but sometimes as high as 4.0 depending on the degree of sourness desired and then boils the wort to sterilize it and prevent further souring. Production then continues more-or-less as usual. While most brewers are content to use a commercial strain of lacto some like Gigantic Brewing and the Commons Brewery both of Portland Oregon prefer to employ ordinary yogurt. In an article published in Beer Advocate Magazine Gigantics Ben Love is quoted as praising yogurt-born lactobacillus as having just a really clean tartness. From a rather fringe practice which was in its early days the subject of some derision You put yogurt in your beer Dude kettle souring skyrocketed in popularity after Love the Commons Brewerys Sean Burke and Ben Edmunds of the Breakside Brewery also from Portland presented a panel discussion on it at the 2015 Craft Brewers Conference. Today one encounters kettle soured beers with much greater regularity than one does ales made tart in the traditional barrel-inoculating and time-consuming fashion. While the kettle process does certainly simplify the production of sour beers some commentators yours truly included bemoan the one note nature of the tartness that develops as a result comparing such characters unfavourably to the more complex and intricate webs and arcs of flavour found in traditionally inoculated beers. Others including Cicerone Certification Program Founder Director Ray Daniels argue that cleanliness and drinkability can be adequate trade-offs for a relative lack of complexity. And such advocates do have a point. In the early years of sour beers in North America it was not uncommon to encounter excessively sour and acidic beers some veering towards flavour profiles that more resembled vinegar than they did beer. Kettle souring for all its apparent shortcomings seems at least more likely to produce beers devoid of obvious flaws and defects. Having now dealt with process and results the last sticky issue attached to kettle souring remains price. As a general rule North American beer consumers have grown used to paying extra for sour beers recognizing as most do that the process of creating these beers is measured in months or years rather than days or weeks. Some kettle soured brews however have been offered at similar price points despite their relative ease of production and as awareness of the process grows some drinkers are beginning to take issue with this. In the end while kettle souring seems unlikely to disappear from the North American landscape anytime in the near future it also appears probable that without a drop in pricing and perhaps also a corresponding growth in the complexity of the resulting beers its future may not be quite as robust as those early sour beer proponents suggested. Stephen Beaumont 20 BREWING BEVERAGE INDUSTRIES BUSINESS Letter from North America THE WORLD OF KETTLE SOURS A professional beer writer for 25 years Stephen Beaumont is the author of ten books on beer including The World Atlas of Beer the second fully-revised edition of which will be published in the fall of 2016 and The Pocket Beer Guide 2015 both co-written with Tim Webb. Stephens latest solo book is the Beer Food Companion which was published to much critical and commercial acclaim in October of 2015. Stephen has also contributed to several other books and written innumerable features articles and columns for publications as varied at The Globe and Mail and Playboy Fine Cooking and Whisky Advocate. When not writing he travels the world extensively tracking down new breweries and hosting beer dinners and tastings from So Paulo Brazil to Helsinki Finland and Beijing China to Seattle Washington. 20_Layout 1 21042016 1332 Page 1