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SF Beer Week: Day 3: Sour Beer. We ended up going to the Sour Beer Festival at Triple Rock and the Sour Beer Tasting at the Jug Shop…not a bad way to spend a Sunday.

Dave and I headed over to Triple Rock and got there at around noon. There was still a line about a block long to get in. We waited about 20 minutes before we were in and handed a glass and 5 tasting tickets for $20 (additional tastes were $5 each!).

We immediately ran upstairs to get the last pour of Vertitas 08. Ah, the sweet taste of sour victory!

Then I managed to find Hanssens’ Experimental Raspberry. This was listed on the tasting notes as ‘on tap’ but it was actually out of the bottle. There were actually a lot of mistakes on the tasting notes including a category of RARE that basically meant if it wasn’t SOUR or BARREL AGED, then they just put it in the RARE category (since when is Saison Dupont a rare beer???) Hanssens’ Experimental Raspberry pours a beautiful orange florescent pink. Absolutely beautiful. Tastes like incredibly sour raspberries. I immediately went to savor every drop.

Hanssens Kriek: This beer is not that rare but I have actually never had it before. It pours a dark cherry red. It tastes a bit like sour pit stewed cherries. It is not as cherry forward as Cantillon or 3 Fonteinen but definately a contender.

Hanssens Strawberry: Super sour, incredibly fruity nose. It is incredibly sour, the most tart of all three. The only real hint of fruit is in the beautiful nose. I have had this beer many times and will hopefully continue to do so.

Thirsty Bear Sour Starve: This beer is a lot better than I would have expected from Thirsty Bear. It is fruity with a touch of barnyard funk and nice and tart.

After we were there for 4 hours and they kept telling us every 1/2 hour that they were going to put the keg of Cantillon on (and not doing so), we finally had to leave to get to the Jug Shop’s Sour Beer Tasting. $30 for 17 pours of awesome sour beer. That price seems a lot better than what you got at Triple Rock. Eric Cripe always gets his tastings right!

We tried: Lipseger’s Gose to start (which was special and very  rare). Then we tried a few that we have had before: Rodebach’s Grand Cru: a good go-to sour beer. We had Oud Beersel’s Geuze (which is another super tart geuze and reasonably priced at $13.99/750ml), Lindeman’s Cuvee Renee, Russian River’s Sanctification (which if you don’t have any bottles of yet, you should get some before they run out), Temptation, Supplication, Oud Beersel’s Kriek, Cascade Kriek Ale, and one of my absolute favorites: Hanssens’ Oudbeitje Lambic (ale brewed with strawberries that I also just had at Triple Rock).

And the beers I have not tasted before:

Liefman’s Goudenband- 8% abv: Slightly wheat-y, acidic, lots of oak, not too sour.

Bidre Trois Dames’ Grand Dame Oud Bruin- 7.2% abv: Raisins, dates, cereal, caramel, leather, barnyard funk.

Fantome’s Pissenlet by Dany (the offbeat brewer at fantome) – 8% abv: Pissenlit is the French word for dandelion and literally means “pee in bed”. Floral, herbal, grass, wheat, lemons, touch of hops  not too sour, but oh so rare! Made with dandelions that grow in the fields around the farmhouse brewery.

Fantome de Noel- 10% abv: Raisins, touch of spice, touch of roasted malt, dry, touch of honey and not too sour. Not a bad holiday beer at all.

L’Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien- 11% abv: Oak, spicy red wine, sour oak and tart. This beer is named and brewed in honor of the former brewery cat that disappeared.

Haandbryggeriet’s Haandbakk- 8.5% abv. This is a sour beer that uses Norwegian wild yeast and lactic bacteria for the first time in over a hundred years. This beer is also aged in Burgundy barrels. It tastes like sour oak, vanilla, tart and a large burgundy red wine character.

Oud Beersel Geuze Ale- 6% abv: Incredibly tart, funky, touch of fruit and super sour. Tart tart tart. This beer is a great go-to sour for the price of only $14. They claim it is the white sparkling wine of the ale world. This beer we have had before, but it is so good, I wanted to let you know about it.

Drie Fonteinen Oude Geuze- 6.5% abv: sour lemon complexity mixed with oak and more sour. Drie Fonteinen is the only remaining traditional geuze blender in Belgium, using only 100% spontaneously fermented lambic beer, aged in oak casks, with no artificial sweeteners or other additives.

The only bad thing about the tastings at the Jug Shop, is that they have to end.