Are sours the new IPA

I’ve noticed alot of breweries have at least 1 sour on tap most progressive ones have more. If their not getting their feet we in sours I feel they may be missing the boat. There are so many good IPAs out there. We have OEC in town that exclusively does barrel aged sours and now Phil Makowski and 2 Roads brewing are doing a big expansion for barrel aged sours. When I check out a brewery that’s what I try. Just wondering what you guys are seeing in your areas

I’d wager most breweries around here have at least one kettle sour on tap.

Same here…most have at least one on the tap list.

I hear what you’re saying about sours. Yeah, they’re on the way up, but not anything like IPA, which still is king, and probably always will be.

Goses are an even bigger thing. The frustrating thing is, the new ones all have way too much salt. Should taste like a witbier, and very mildly accentuated by the tiniest amount of salt, but they’re not. As with all things American, they are severely overdone to the point of being tart seawater. Blecch.

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Exactly why I’ll try all the offerings to see if they know what their doing or at least if I enjoy them. I agree some are awful

Not the next IPA here. There’s a few floating around. I agree with @dmtaylo2. Not sure if anything will ever overtake the IPA.

We’ve a small brewery in Superior Wi. that has offered up, sometimes up to 6 different sours… You would walk into that pub and think, what a dingy little spot is this? I just love it, and many peeps do too! It always seems to be packed!
With that, they do separate Lacto’s from Brett’s… Sneezles61

Definitely not the new IPA, but a trend. Maybe comparable to NEIPA. Of course, I barf in my mouth every time I hear the word “juicy” used to describe a muddy IPA, as if you can’t talk about a NEIPA without using that term. I move to ban that word from the beer lexicon.

Far too many places are jumping on the sour bandwagon, though. Chasing trends. Some really nice ones, even kettle sours. Some really bad ones that people still rave about, because it’s a trend. Bad beer is bad beer, whether it’s a sour beer or poorly done JUICY NEIPA. Just don’t go charging mixed-fermentation prices for your poorly done kettle sour, that REALLY gets me going. And don’t go calling your brett beer a sour. 3 years ago you could get away with it, but I feel the beer drinking public is starting to get just enough knowledge on mixed fermentation to call bologna on you, eh!

Me not a real sour fan. Must say. But indeed ipa a trent. It will stay for sure. But do think the next thing indeed sour or porter. Are the next hype

I enjoy an ipa on occasion but I remember when some breweries didn’t even have a ipa. They had pales that would probably be called ipa by today standards. Alot of people were saying" ooh that’s to bitter" but once it became the cool beer they tried them again and enjoyed them. I find that happening with sours. More and more breweries around here have sour nights or events featureing a barrel opening. At first I was" ooh thats not right that’s sour" now I find myself trying them more and more. I just see a pattern maybe

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I figure Twin Cities, MN is maybe a year behind the California trends… hazy IPAs are everywhere this year. Sours are definitely a thing, but to be honest, I’m not a huge fan, so I don’t pay a lot of attention to them. I’m kind of waiting for cold weather season for all the stouts to show up, to be honest. I’d love a major Barleywine resurgence, or good porters without peanut butter.

Funny aside, I got my score sheets for my bourbon/oak barleywine from a competition recently. One of the comments was “As complex as I expect a barleywine to be- I would like to see another level of complexity.” Still scored me a 37, though, so I can’t complain too much.

Another level of… complexity? Is that a paradigm to buying a vineyard for a retirement hobby? It sounds as though you did well … Sneezles61

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A year ago, it was hard to find anything but an IPAs or APAs from the micros over here, but now they are starting to diversify. Sours are one of the more commonly seen items on tap #3 or 4, along with NEIPA, stouts, goses and surprisingly, lagers. Even the occasional sahti.
But the majority of the micros are still IPAs, and the sours are all kettle sours. The only real sours I’ve seen over here that are aged are the ones I’ve made.

There are alot of kettle sours out there for sure. Maybe it’s just east coast USA but it seems alot of breweries around here are getting into barrel aging. Makes me excited to visit breweries to check out these openings knowing that when it’s gone it’s gone unlike the marketing shortage crrated for some NEIPA.

Lots of sours on the tap lists around here too. Not really my thing.

One brewery, Adroit Theory, who is known for big complex beers does a LOT of barrel aging in all different kinds of woods. Their beers are very well crafted and their marketing is cool but again 10+ abv beers are not my thing on a regular basis.

As I say, I’m a simple guy. So simple well crafted beers appeal to me.

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I agree. I’d rather drink a regular hoppy pale ale than a curry ginger lemon raspberry vanilla saison aged in Chardonnay barrels and infused with mint and orange zest at serving. I probably just gave others my next brew idea… to each their own!

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I’m not interested in that beer unless you kettle sour it first and dry hop during fermentation. Sheesh! :laughing:

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Now you sound like that Budweiser commercial. You prefer a manly beer non of that fru fru beer.

Actually I’d leave out the mint but the rest sounds good

Well the thing about sours is that they tend to pretty self limiting. At a nice pub, it isn’t hard to put down 3 pints of a nice IPA, but after one sour I’m ready to move on to something else. They can be rough on the stomach, and people tend to sip them more. So they’ll never have the potential sales to a brewery compared to an IPA or hoppy pale.

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