Why sour beer is proving sweet for brewer Elgood's

Mention the term “sour beer” to most brewers and their faces will wrinkle in horror as they say “pour it down the drain”. Every effort is made in commercial breweries to keep the beer scrupulously clean to avoid bugs and infection.

But a few beer-makers are breaking with tradition and deliberately brewing infected beer. The inspiration comes from Belgium, a country with many weird and wonderful beer styles, including lambic and gueuze — beers made by “wild” or spontaneous fermentation.

You may expect such beers brewed in Britain to come from the ranks of ground-breaking young craft brewers. But the pace-setter is one of its oldest family breweries: Elgood’s in the small market town of Wisbech on the edge of the Cambridgeshire Fens.

Traditional​

Elgood’s is the country’s last Georgian brewery, its handsome frontage leading to a traditional brewhouse and fermenting room where equally traditional milds and bitters are produced. Standing idle for years in the brewhouse are two shallow copper pans known as “cool ships”. The term comes from the Flemish word “koelschip” — a key vessel in making wild Belgian beer.

Until late in the 20th century, the cool ships at Elgood’s were used to allow the “hopped wort” to cool naturally in order to reach a temperature suitable for fermentation: hopped wort is the liquid created by mixing or mashing malt with hot water and then boiling it with hops for aroma and bitterness.

Elgood’s has extensive gardens – open to visitors – and there was an evident risk of infection from wild yeasts as the wort stayed in the cool ships.

But as wild yeasts and infection are at the heart of lambic brewing, Belinda, Claire and Jennifer, the three Elgood sisters running the brewery, along with head brewer Alan Pateman, decided to take the plunge and brew a lambic-style beer. They had a keen eye on the American market, where sour beer is all the rage.

Spontaneous​

The first batch was brewed in April 2013, with more produced in October, and then March, when I  was present. It will be the last until the autumn, as spring and summer temperatures are too high, and the wrong types of airborne yeast are active.

At 1.30pm, Alan Pateman gave the order to empty the copper. Within seconds the large, airy brewhouse was filled with steam as boiling liquid was sprayed into the cool ships from taps linked to the copper. The liquid eddied and foamed, and the room was filled with the rich biscuit and toffee aroma of unfermented beer.

Some 20 minutes later, the cool ships were full, with the hopped wort, dark but topped with white foam, lapping at the rims. As the steam subsided, Pateman appeared through the mist and gave another order: “Close the taps!” The wort would stay in the cool ships overnight and Pateman reminded his colleagues to open all the brewhouse windows when they left that evening to encourage yeast spores to enter and attack the sugars in the wort.

Once spontaneous fermentation was under way, the liquid would be transferred to the fermentation room where it is left in tanks packed with oak chips. After a period of conditioning in the tanks, it will be moved yet again, this time to oak casks bought from the French wine industry. It will stay in the cask for three months where it will be attacked by more wild organisms trapped in the wood.

New breed​

In Pateman’s sample room I tasted the first cool ship from April 2013. It had an acidic, oak and vanilla aroma with a musty yeast note. It’s tart and tangy in the mouth and finish, with creamy malt, oak, vanilla and lactic sourness. Most of that has been sold in the US by Artisanal Imports, which is clamouring for more.

Elgood’s is not alone in producing sour beer.

Thornbridge in Derbyshire, one of the best-known craft breweries, brews a Sour Brown. Burning Sky brewery in Sussex is ageing beer in French oak casks and both Moor Brewing and Wild Beer Co in Somerset also mature beer in wood. Unlike Elgood’s, none of these breweries has a cool ship but they can inoculate the beer with a commercially available culture of the main wild yeast used in Belgium, known by its Latin name of Brettanomyces.

In London, several of the new breed of small craft breweries are also ageing beer in wood and deliberately allowing it to gain a lactic tang.

Lambic is an ancient style that predates by many centuries the use of refrigeration and scientifically produced yeast cultures. Once again the past is encouraging brewers to develop new, challenging flavours that will meet the restless demands of modern drinkers.