We’re heading into fall and before we launch our Oktoberfest in a week or so, we’re celebrating the official end of summer with sours! These beers are suddenly all the trend, but we’ve been curating a menu replete with great sour brews for years.Of course, sour beers make for great food pairings, but we wonder if some of their popularity of late may stem from wine drinkers discovering craft beer. And if you aren’t into hoppy IPAs, the line of sours we carry are a nice break from the bitter!
This past summer, NY Times food editor Eric Asimov wrote that Peekskill’s Simple Sour was his top beer of the summer. It’s a Berliner Weisse style that we have carried regularly.
In fact, we’re so psyched for sours that we’re doing a special guided tasting tomorrow afternoon (tickets here). We’re trying to cover a broader spectrum of sour styles, including Belgian Grand Cru and Flemish reds, German goses, and the best of Belgium (Lambics, Guezes, etc.).
Here are some of Jimmy Carbone’s notes on the sour beers he loves, including some that will be at tomorrow’s tasting:
- *Off Color Troublesome Gose (from Chicago) – “To me it’s a wheat-gose hybrid; it’s refreshing, not so sour as a pure gose.
- *”Bayrisher Bahnhof (from Leipzig, Germany) – “They revived the Leipziger gose style after the wall came down in eastern Germany. I really like their Berliner Weisse, in particular the buckwheat Berliner Weisse. It has more malt body than typical Berliner Weisses.”
- *Sour in the Rye by The Bruery (California) – “A great sour rye aged in barrels.”
- *Rodenbach Grand Cru Flemish Red (Belgium) – “Each year at BBQ events like NYC’s Pig Island, I pair the Rodenbach with head cheese for breakfast!”
- *Surette Provisional Saison by Crooked Stave (Colorado) – “A barrel-aged lambic-style sour that is very popular right now.”
We hope you’ll come down this weekend and get your tart fix at Jimmy’s No. 43 (regular bar and restaurant service is available).