The lambic category is an entire lesson in beer in and of itself. Kind of puts the whole idea of ordering up cell cultures from a modern lab to brew a batch of beer into perspective. And it wasn’t even until the mid-19th century that Louis Pasteur could prove these cells existed, let alone isolated what they did.

Remember, it all started by absentmindedly dumping a bunch of beer into barrels that produced a (somewhat unintentional) sour result. After all, in many cases, these work in conjunction with one another (especially brettanomyces and pediococcus). And yes, there’s a whole textbook’s worth of microbiology and cell biology jammed into a paragraph there, but what’s most important to know is the basic flavors that each is responsible for. Sour beers come about by different microflora that are responsible for different sets of resulting tastes: lactobacillus bacteria (lovingly referred to as “lacto” in the beer world) creates lactic acid, which results in the relatively clean lemony-tart puckering sour you recognize in beers pediococcus bacteria (which also gets a cute nickname: pedio), similarly creates tart lactic acid but also brings funkier side notes acetobacter is the same bacteria that turns wine into vinegar and creates acetic acid, giving sour vinegar flavors and brettanomyces, a wild yeast known as “brett” for short that creates a drier, funkier set of flavors. Actually, here’s where things get a little tricky.

Sour beer oakland