“Sour beer? You must be kidding,” so said a good friend when I told him about the most recent event hosted by Portland Culinary Alliance. While sour beer may not seem like an ideal beverage to many, to those of us who know and love it, this category is sipping nirvana.

On Thursday, May 26, those enamored with sour beer, and the simply curious, had an opportunity to try five different sour beers at the PCA event “Pucker Up for Sour Beers” held at KitchenCru (337 NW Broadway, Portland). Portland brewer Van Havig shared his absolute, hands-down passion for sour beers. His 16 years experience as former head brewer of Rock Bottom Brewery was the perfect background for Van to go deep into how sour beer is made. And it belies the fact that he was once a PhD candidate in Economics. Who hasn’t studied in one discipline only to find their true path in a completely different field?

Tasty morsels were paired with the beers, and kudos to former PCA Programming Chair, Sasha Kaplan, at KitchenCru for an outstanding job of matching the bites with the beers. Attendees were greeted with a glass of the first beer, a Cherry Kriek made by our own local Cascade Brewing. This is a wonderful example of red sour ale that uses fresh Northwest, whole Bing and sour cherries. Of the five beers, three were made on the West Coast:  Cascade Brewing’s Cherry Kriek, The Bruery’s (Orange County, CA) Hottenroth Berliner Weissbier (German-style wheat beer), and Russian River Brewing Company’s (Santa Rosa, CA) Supplication (brown ale aged in French oak Pinot Noir barrels with yeast, two bacteria strains, and cherries). The remaining two beers were from Belgium:  Lindemans Gueuze Cuvee Rene (fruit lambic) and Brouwerij Verhaeghe’s Duchesse De Bourgogne (red ale matured in oak casks).

Van encouraged us to think out of the box as we tasted the beers, digging deep into the flavors spilling across our palates. The taste and odor flavor wheel provided was a handy assist. And the shared process of tasting was even more helpful as many had that “aha” moment when someone else spoke up about a particular flavor profile. In addition, we learned about the history of beer, that it was actually a sour drink until specific yeasts were isolated by the Carlsberg Brewery in the early 1840s. We learned, as well, that many young women in Portland have taken a fancy to sour beers. Van was a terrific instructor, mixing facts and science equally. You might even call him the Alton Brown of the beer world.

It was certainly a successful event for by the end of the evening there were new converts to sour beer, and established sour beer aficionados reaffirmed their love and appreciation of this delicious beverage. Everyone seemed to have a tart and tangy favorite, but the top three were the Russian River Supplication, Lindemans Gueuze Cuvee Rene, and the Duchesse de Bourgogne. The last two make for particularly good sipping beers with dessert or a cheese course in the same manner as a fine port. All beers sampled can be purchased at Belmont Station (4500 SE Start Street) that has an excellent selection of sour beers. For great tap and bottle selections be sure to stop in at Victory Bar (37th and SE Division).

–Mora Chartrand