Beer · Light & sessionable

Fruited Sour

Tart, vivid, and fruit-loaded — beer that moonlights as sorbet.

How to order it: Kettle sours with raspberry, passion fruit, or guava. Gateway beer for wine people.

The story

The fruited sour's pedigree is older than it looks: Belgian lambic brewers have refermented spontaneously soured beer on cherries and raspberries for centuries — kriek and framboise — while Berliners cut their tart weisse with syrup at the table. The American version arrived via shortcut. Kettle souring, which acidifies wort quickly with lactobacillus before a clean fermentation, made tartness fast, safe, and affordable, and in the 2010s craft brewers began loading the results with fruit purée by the drum. Smoothie sours, pastry sours, cans that look like juice boxes: traditionalists despair on schedule, and the lines form anyway. Beneath the neon, the idea is medieval — fruit and sour beer were always meant to flirt.

Adjacent pours