Some of this country’s cheapest and least flavorful domestic beers make a lot of noise about water. There’s the iconic, grizzled drawl of actor Sam Elliott pronouncing that for Coors Brewing Company, “it’s rocky mountain water or nothing.” Hamm’s tells its drinkers that it is “born in the land of sky blue waters.” Olympia keeps things even simpler: “It’s the water” is their slogan.

Turns out it’s more than just marketing-speak.

“It’s one of the most underrated components of beer,” says Elliot Hoffman, assistant brewer at Camino Brewing. “Historically, it’s actually been one of the most defining factors for styles.”

Pilsners, which originated in the Czech Republic in the mid-1800s, were at first brewed with what we’d call “soft” water, low in free ions such as calcium and magnesium. This relatively soft water was instrumental in creating the signature flavor profile of a classic pilsner.

But that doesn’t mean ion-free water is ideal for all styles of beer. “The higher sulfate count you have in your water, the better the water will isomerize alpha acids, or create bitterness,” Hoffman explains, pointing to the English town of Burton-on-Trent, which is known among British IPA lovers for making some of the best bitter brew in the country. “They were making hoppy beers because they liked the way they tasted, but also because they were able to get flavors no one else could produce because their water was so high in sulfates.”

As for the water in Silicon Valley… well, Hoffman says, it leaves something to be desired from a brewing standpoint.

“Santa Clara County is absolutely notorious for having awful water for brewing beer,” he says. It’s a problem anyone without a water softener built into their home can understand. Brewing equipment is just as prone to calcification as the faucet or showerhead. But there’s more to it than that. The water is also rather alkaline, which negatively impacts yeast.

“The majority of successful brewers in the South Bay and Santa Clara County end up having to use reverse osmosis water filtration,” also known as a water softener, he explains.

In fact, the technology is also essential to maintaining the long-term health of espresso machines and in producing craft cocktails, as tainted ice can interfere with the delicate flavor balance mixologists seek to create.

Reverse osmosis filtration works by capturing the free calcium and magnesium ions floating in a given water supply. In fact, the highest-quality reverse osmosis systems should be able to bring any water to a near neutral pH of 7. Camino’s filter tends to spit out water that scores about 6.5 on the Carlsberg Laboratory-developed scale and manages to eliminate almost all of the calcium.

“Our city water, in terms of calcium hardness, can be upwards of 160 parts per million,” he says. “The reverse osmosis water is, like, five.”

However, as Hoffman noted in pointing out Burton-on-Trent’s famed IPAs, an entirely neutral water source isn’t always what he and his team are looking for. And so they blend their almost pure water with city water and other “brewing salts”—essentially isolated minerals and other components—to produce a water profile that is most conducive for the type of beer they are creating.

When brewing IPAs, they will add sulfates to aid in hop extraction. But with their pilsners, they add very little city water to the mix, as they are attempting to replicate the ultra-soft Czech water that first gave birth to the pils.

While water softening systems are nothing new, their importance in the modern craft beer movement cannot be overstated. Without the ability to strip water of its naturally occurring ions and then strategically add select elements back, no brewer anywhere would be able to produce the range of beers that modern beer makers can.

Without this filtration technology, which first came into mainstream use in the 1970s, “brewing in San Jose would be near impossible, unless you just made porters or stouts,” Hoffman says, noting that before reverse osmosis, brewers had to rely on the unique profile of the water in their municipal systems. Today, breweries all over Silicon Valley—and all over the world—are producing beers that are dark and malty, light and crisp, cloudy and hoppy.

We’ll drink to that.

Ask Felipe Bravo how he got into brewing, and he’ll tell you it’s really quite simple.

“Well, I studied electrical engineering,” he says matter-of-factly—the inflection of his voice suggesting that, at least to him, the answer is painfully obvious.

After Bravo earned his bachelor’s from Cal Poly he dilly-dallied for a few years, working on satellite technology at a Palo Alto company. But then he did the sensible thing.

He went back to San Luis Obispo for his master’s, worked his way through most of his thesis project—designing the software and building the sensors for an automated home-brewing rig—and then dropped out to work at a brewery, where he earned his stripes washing kegs for $10 an hour.

Today the San Jose native is production manager of research and development for the Fort Point Beer Company in San Francisco. He spends much of his free time working on what he calls the “Fox Tale Fermentation Project”—in a garage just north of downtown San Jose. There, he and his fiancé, Wendy Neff, cook up their own beer recipes.

In 2018, the couple took first place in the Silicon Valley Homebrew Competition hosted by Hapa’s Brewing Company. Hapa’s rewarded them by producing a batch of their Sonic Bloom West Coast IPA and serving it at their taproom on Lincoln Avenue.

Looking back, Bravo says it really does make sense. “It’s funny,” he says. “I’ve been a brewer longer than I’ve been an engineer. But if it wasn’t for engineering, I would have never been a brewer.”

Bravo says he fell in love with brewing because it satisfied his creative needs while incorporating his scientific side. “It was something I could control,” he explains. “It was something that I could visualize and design and have a product that was truly mine.”

One could say that visualization is the cornerstone of Bravo’s job. It is his responsibility to ensure the consistency of Fort Point’s beer. Consumers may take it for granted, but it is no small feat for a brewery to reliably churn out a product that possesses the same flavor profile and alcohol content month after month, year after year. To accomplish this, Bravo puts his faith in the data.

On a recent afternoon, chatting over sandwiches near St. James Park, he whips out his phone and pulls up a series of spreadsheets he’s created. It looks a bit like a periodic table—a jigsaw puzzle of rectangular cells, each populated by numbers, decimal points, percentage symbols and terminology ripped from the glossary of a chemistry textbook.

It’s an English major’s worst nightmare.

Bravo uses this spreadsheet to track the four basic elements of beer: water, yeast, grain and hops. Taken at face value, this quartet of ingredients may seem simple enough. However, once they begin to interact, the potential outcomes multiply exponentially, splintering into a multiverse of possibility.

Take, for example, the most straightforward of the four: water. The Fort Point brewery is located in the Presidio in San Francisco. Like most of the city, Fort Point gets water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. However, in the Presidio, Lobos Creek is also a large source of potable water. And even if Fort Point could rely on 100 percent Hetch Hetchy water 100 percent of the time, there would still be fluctuations in minerality.

“Beer is mostly water, so it contributes to all the flavors down the line,” Bravo explains. “You don’t always know when the water is going to be changing on you.”

Fort Point uses a charcoal filtration system in order to ensure a certain level of consistency in the water it uses for brewing, but that can’t guarantee a completely neutral Ph of 7. For that, they would need a reverse osmosis filtration system, like the one used by Camino Brewing, Floodcraft Brewing Company and other breweries in San Jose (see page 22). However, since minerals add flavors and characteristics that are often desirable, those same breweries will frequently reintroduce the very elements they have first eliminated later in the brewing process.

Bravo and his crew are constantly testing the water’s Ph levels and plugging the readings they get into his formulas to make adjustments.

A similar process is applied to the yeast. “Even if it is technically the same yeast strain, yeast can degrade over time if you don’t keep it healthy,” Bravo says. “Understanding yeast health is a major factor.” It is also important to know how much yeast is in a given brew—that is to say how many individual cells of yeast are swimming around in the mash, eating sugars and producing alcohol.

There was a time, not long ago, when breweries would perform “live cell counts” of yeast—literally putting a single milliliter of dyed, yeast-filled solution onto a specialized microscope slide called a hemocytometer. The slide, first developed to count blood cells, allows the observer to count microscopic elements in a defined area in order to come away with a representative sample.

There are now specialized, software-powered sensors that can perform this task, so brewers don’t have to crane their necks over a microscope to get a yeast count. But reliable yeast counts are still essential to the process of calibrating each batch of beer.

“Brewing beers at scale is all about consistency,” he says. “When you’re brewing at the scale that we brew at, that’s pretty hard. You have to be a really fucking good scientist to be a brewer.”

To sample the flavor of Bravo’s spreadsheet, head to the Fort Point on the Patio event—part of Silicon Valley Beer Week—on Jul. 23.

Fort Point on the Patio
Jul 23, 5pm-9pm
Steins Beer Garden, Cupertino
svbeerweek.com

Science has always made its greatest strides when spurred by powerful forces. Capitalism and global trade pushed the innovations of the Industrial Revolution. Global war efforts have led to advancements in food storage, aviation and communications systems. As it turns out, there are fewer forces greater than humanity’s thirst for beer.

By way of example, Danish brewing company Carlsberg first established a laboratory in 1876 in order to advance the science of beer. One of the lab’s first major breakthroughs came in the development of a purified yeast that is still used by many industrial brewers to this day. Another scientific breakthrough—the development of the pH scale—has found applications that stretch far beyond the brewing world.

Carlsberg continues its tradition of pairing science and brewing to this day. One of the most recent efforts of the Carlsberg Research Laboratory involves using Microsoft artificial intelligence software to predict the success of beers in development. They call it the Beer Fingerprinting Project.

The intent is not to take human expertise out of the brewing process. Rather, like many AI projects, the aim is to foster innovation. The sensors and software examine hundreds of micro samples of beer, looking at factors such as the viability of yeast strains and the types of flavors different combinations of ingredients would produce. The system can differentiate between pilsners and lagers, and predict with a great deal of accuracy how various fermentation scenarios would change the beers in question.

“The goal is to map a flavor fingerprint for each sample and reduce the time it takes to research taste combinations and processes by up to a third, to help the company get more distinct beers to market faster,” according to a post on “Transform,” an official Microsoft blog.

Of course, the Carlsberg Group is one of the world’s largest beer producers—with 140 brands distributed in 150 countries. But smaller breweries and taprooms are harnessing science and technology with the same focus and precision.

Silicon Valley’s rapidly expanding craft beer scene is propelled by an army of brainy brewers, early adopters and those who favor experimentation over the status quo. This year’s Silicon Valley Beer Week issue seeks to highlight the mad scientists of local beer.

Read on to learn about the math behind the malt, brewers’ obsession with water, a trio of tart entrepreneurs and the automated taprooms giving customers high-tech control over every pour.

The taproom at Lazy Duck Brewing is hard to find—it’s a small windowless space tucked in an otherwise unremarkable industrial area in north San Jose.

But the brewers here aren’t after any awards for ambiance. Local beer lovers seek out Lazy Duck because of their ever-changing, often experimental brew list heavy on fruity sour ales with an IPA or two thrown in for the sake of tradition.

During Silicon Valley Beer Week, the beer lovers behind Lazy Duck Brewing will participate in a Meet the Brewers event at Nom Burger in Sunnyvale on Wednesday, July 24. Four days later, they’ll play host at their garage-size taproom for the latest in the series Summer Sunday Sours.

Lazy Duck first opened its doors to the public in April 2018 after a soft launch for friends and family. The brewers—Jon Chin, Mike Rayzman and Nick Fodor—set out to explore the emerging world of sour ales, which depend largely on bacterial cultures to produce a distinctively tarty taste. Since then, Lazy Duck has established a handful of signature sours, each to highlight the flavor profiles of particular fruits: Raspberry Quack, Strawberry Quack and Blackberry Quack. In the competitive Bay Area market, Lazy Duck is looking at fruit-based sours as their lane to success.

“What we’re after is the essence of the fruit in beer form, basically,” said Rayzman, who characterizes himself and his partners as “beer nerds.”

Though fruity sours form the backbone of the new brand, Lazy Duck is also a kind of a lab for experimental flavors. In recent weeks, it has been offering such eye-opening brews as Cake For Breakfast (coconut, cacao nibs and vanilla) and an Horchata sour, based on the popular Mexican treat.

Sour ales aren’t new, but they are enjoying a moment of interest for both brewers and drinkers, partly because they represent a change-up from standard hoppy IPAs and because sours have proven to be adaptable and versatile enough to seduce the more adventurous beer lover.

Sours usually take a longer time to brew than standard beers. Those aged in oak barrels can take a year or more to mature. Lazy Duck sours take about a month from start to finish. “We do a quick sour method,” says Rayzman. “You make a brew just like with any beer, and instead of putting yeast in it, we put in a souring agent—a wild culture that we keep alive over time, kind of like a sourdough starter.”

The culture—made up of bacteria, mostly lactobacillus, brettanomyces, pediococcus or other organisms and wild yeasts—technically can change according to factors such as weather, time and location, which potentially adds an element of volatility to brewing. “Our starter is a wild starter,” says Rayzman, “open to the air and the elements a little bit. So, it’s a wild fermentation process. But we’re pretty consistent” from batch to batch.

Sour beers may be trendy today, but they harken back to a time when the scientific method had not so thoroughly integrated with the world of brewing. Before widespread pasteurization, almost all beer was sour beer, subject to fermentation by any number of microorganisms. In the late 19th century, pasteurization allowed brewers to exercise control over how their brews fermented, and the unpredictable nature of the effect of “wild” organisms in beer was all but eliminated. Belgians pioneered the modern sours with their method of using open fermenters, allowing whatever microorganisms that happen to be in the air to affect the fermentation. Ideally, this means that the taste of a particular sour beer is as unique as the place where it is brewed. Some breweries, like Yeast of Eden in Carmel, market their sours as a unique taste of a certain region—what vintners would call terroir.

At the Nom Burger event, the Lazy Duck brewers will bring many of their signature sours, some of which are bottled and sold at the Lazy Duck taproom. But at its July 28 Summer Sours party, the brewery will be more experimental, offering up some of their most adventurous ideas.

“We’ll have five brand-new sours that we’re piloting,” Rayzman says. “It’s how we do R&D. We make a big batch of beer, separate it into kegs of these pilot batches and see how they turn out.”

Some of the things they’ll be trying out have to do with tropical flavors: passionfruit, mango, guava, apricot, white peach, cherry lime. “We’re also working on a stout that we’re calling ‘Vanilla Cuppa Jose,'” Rayzman says. “It’s a coffee stout.”

After a year and a half in business, Lazy Duck is still very much a grassroots startup—three partners, no employees, selling their brews to a limited number of local bars and at their tiny taproom, and currently open to the public only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Rayzman sees a viable path to success in the Bay Area, which he says is not as brewer-centric as places like Portland, San Diego and Denver, despite the bigger population. “It’s getting more and more crowded, for sure. I think in San Jose, we’ve gotten 10 or 12 [new breweries] coming just recently. But there are still not as many as in other cities. There’s still room to expand. But right now, as a startup brewery, we’re going to focus on the beer. If that proves itself, then we’ll talk about expanding.”

Meet The Brewers: Lazy Duck
Jul 24, 5:30pm
Nom Burger
251 W Washington Ave, Sunnyvale

Summer Sunday Sours
Jul 28, 7pm
Lazy Duck Brewing Taproom
1723 Rogers Ave, San Jose
svbeerweek.com

For a certain kind of adventurous beer drinker, places like River Rock Taproom in Sunnyvale represent a great leap forward for humankind.

Finally, they can follow their curiosity up and down a beer menu, try something unusual, take a drinking buddy’s recommendation, even—if they’re willing to face the disapproval of the entire beer-nerd universe—mix a splash of triple IPA with, say, a swallow of chardonnay. There’s no waiting for a server or committing to a pint they might be uncertain about.

What came to gas stations and buffet restaurants decades ago has finally come to brewpubs: self-service.

River Rock, located on Murphy Avenue in downtown Sunnyvale, is part of the latest trend in beer-craft technology, allowing patrons to serve themselves from 40 taps displayed at eye level along one wall. With no bar or bartender, beer lovers pay by the ounce and may sample as much, or as little, as they want from a dizzying variety of brews—from light to dark, sour to porter. There’s a beer with more than 11 percent alcohol by volume, and another that comes in at about 4 percent. There’s even red and white wine, cider and a single tap of kombucha.

Here’s how it works: Customers show a valid ID and credit card and get a wristband in return. The bracelet serves as a running tab. Each tap contains information about each particular beer. The customer can then wave the wrist band near the sensor beside every tap and then pour a pint, a half pint or just a taste. Drinkers are charged by however much they pour.

The concept lends itself to adventure, which means, at least at River Rock, there aren’t many familiar brand names. Those who love their Sierra Nevada or Blue Moon or Goose Island would probably be happier elsewhere.

“I don’t have those kinds of beers here,” says River Rock’s owner, Venkaiah C. Jetti. “They are available everywhere else. My customer wants something new, something different.”

River Rock’s tap list reads like a curated tour of small, indie brewers, many from the Bay Area and several from other spots across the U.S. They have San Jose’s Umunhum Brewing as well as beers from Dogfish Head Craft Brewery out of Milton, Delaware. The tap list is always subject to change, but on a recent visit, the offerings included a grapefruit shandy (a citrus-beer mixture), a sour designed to evoke a gin cocktail with cucumber and mint, a chocolatey porter named after a Hitchcock movie, and a stout that features milk sugar.

Jetti says that a drinking tab will run on average $8 to $10 per pint, though it could go higher. The taproom also serves food, including appetizers, burgers, sandwiches and salads. It opens mid-afternoon on weekdays and at noon to serve lunch on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

River Rock Taproom opened its doors in December 2017. At that point, it had a little educating to do about the concept and the technology. Today, Jetti says, the business has developed a clientele of regulars, but he is still occasionally called on to explain how self-pouring works. Self-serve taps are still rare in the Bay Area; others include the Hops & Sessions taproom in Livermore, the Brew Coop in San Francisco, Thirsty Bay Tap ‘n Pour in Dublin and the Pour Taproom in Santa Cruz.

Blast & Brew, located in North San Jose, also has a self-pouring system. There, customers are given a swipeable card instead of a wristband.

The technology gives the proprietor the ability to monitor a customer’s drinking via a dashboard, and allows businesses to engage in the traditional bartender’s duty of telling a customer when they’ve had too much. At a certain point, the customer will be prompted to check in with the house before they can continue pouring.

Even so, Jetti says, self-pouring is a technology with which millenials feel comfortable. “The older people,” he laughs, “they just never come in.” After a year and a half in business, he’s learned that people often come in after dinner for a light, maybe fruity brew or cider. With 40 taps, he said, there’s almost never any waiting. “I certainly can’t hire 40 people to serve beer.”

Jetti must also make every effort to keep up with trends in local brewing, including new products and seasonal brews. The tap list will require constant tinkering to reflect emerging beers and brewers. He can’t fall back on old dependable brands. His business plan is based on novelty and change. “People want to try everything,” he says. “That’s the beauty of this concept.”

River Rock Taproom
155 S. Murphy Ave, Sunnyvale
408.830.9837
riverrocktaproom.com

Blast & Brew
55 River Oaks Pl, San Jose
408.770.3090
blastandbrew.com

Untapped | Kick to Start | The Science of Sour Beer | KraftBrew Summer Fest

More than 100 events take place for the Fifth Annual Silicon Valley Beer Week, but the culmination—KraftBrew Summer Fest at Mexican Heritage Plaza—should not be missed.

Storied San Jose impresarios Chris Esparza and Omar Rodriguez team up to organize the annual gala, which features more than 25 American craft brews along with European and Mexican imports.

Esparza, who owns marketing firm Giant Creative, has a long history of hosting musical and culinary events and running destination restaurants in downtown. Rodriguez, co-owner of Kooltura Marketing, has elevated the profile of local cultural institutions, including the Multicultural Arts Leadership Institute, National Association of Latino Arts and Culture, School of Arts and Culture, Cashion Cultural Legacy and Eastside Art & History.

Esparza and Rodriguez channel their passion for local flavors and color into the KraftBrew Beer Festival, which boasts live entertainment and a host of local food and retail vendors.

The festivities run from 1-6pm July 30 at Mexican Heritage Plaza, 1700 Alum Rock Ave., in San Jose. For information, visit Facebook.com/kraftbrew.

Untapped | Kick to Start | The Science of Sour Beer | KraftBrew Summer Fest

Heinz Jones enjoys the simple things in life, or so it would seem. Maybe it’s his red, foot-long beard. One gets the impression the former techie has found the keys to eternal contentment. And yet, as he discusses the genesis of Forager Tasting Room + Eatery, his eyes light up with a glint of ambition. He isn’t so content after all. Forager is on a mission to revolutionize the local culinary and sips scene.

Compared to other major metropolitan areas like Portland, Seattle and San Diego, San Jose and surrounding cities have relatively few options to find a locally brewed beer. Despite the fact that over a million people live here, San Jose is home to less than 10 of the 120 plus breweries in the Bay Area. And people are thirsty.

A handful of ale-loving entrepreneurs have started to take it upon themselves to quench the valley. Hapa’s Brewing Co. opened its doors in January in an industrial Midtown taproom, and Uproar Brewing made its long-anticipated debut last month across the street from Forager in downtown’s SoFA District. On Friday, July 21, Forager will kick off the fifth annual Silicon Valley Beer Week with 16 taps of locally crafted cold ones in constant rotation.

“I had been thinking about it and really wanted to do something big, something for the local brewers,” Jones says.

Highlighting local brews is just one way Forager is redefining downtown’s sips scene. The tap room, which officially opened five months ago, is equal parts beer, coffee, food and arts—the staples of urban culture.

Jones came to San Jose five years ago as a health care IT worker, and he began searching for restaurants and after-hours spots on par with the world-class offerings in San Francisco and Berkeley. “I wondered, where is that happening in San Jose, is that happening in San Jose?”

Along with friends and co-owners Dave Johnson and Brian Chen, Jones developed a blueprint for an enterprise that would eventually expand its vision. The initial idea called for a triad of handcrafted beers, hand-carved meats and handmade breads. But when the team came across the vast venue that formerly housed South First Billiards, the project’s ambitions expanded to match the building’s 14,400 square feet of untapped potential.

“When we first stepped in here,” Jones says, “it was kind of like a lightbulb realization of what we could do.”

In developing a project pitch for the seed accelerator Y Combinator, which helps incubate startups by giving them financial support and mentorship, Jones learned what it takes to turn an idea into a business. In the process, he discovered a new angle for his own budding business.

“When I walked into this space, I was like, ‘We should be incubating food, we should be an incubator for startup chefs,'” Jones says. “That’s really how it happened. This space was inspirational and definitely pivotal in coming to that conclusion.”

This “aha!” moment will encompass Forager’s final phase: becoming a launching pad for entrepreneurs in the food, beer and arts industry. The plan is to build out six kitchens and a microbrewery, which will be leased to local chefs and brewers as a testing grounds for proving new concepts and menus, with a long-term goal of assisting them to venture out into the wilderness and create brick-and-mortar establishments of their own.

“Our mission is really to create opportunity,” Jones explains. “It’s a lot about investing in the community and in the local neighborhood because, first of all, that’s where all the fun is, that’s where all the magic happens.”

Forager is currently in phase one. The brick walls and vaulted ceilings create an airy expanse that presently shelters a bar with speciality roasts from Devout Coffee, Bay Area beers and Napa wines, in addition to fusion cuisine served up by chef Lee Hernandez. The space also serves as a venue for monthly residencies, where musicians and artists perform and showcase their work.

True to its minimalistic, rustic interior, the name “Forager” is reminiscent of an older, simpler way of life—a time when people gathered around the fire each night to eat, drink, share stories and celebrate.

“That’s something that’s core to our nature as humans,” Jones says. “We wanted to play on that and create a space that is really all about bringing people together, sharing great food, sharing great drinks and experiencing local culture.”

A unique vision is brewing in the heart of SoFA. At Forager, anyone with an appetite—whether it be for art, food, beer or innovation—is welcome.

continue to Kick to Start: Forager Hosts Silicon Valley Beer Week Kickoff Party

Untapped | Kick to Start | The Science of Sour Beer | KraftBrew Summer Fest

On Friday, July 21, Forager will do what it does best—highlight local craft culture by serving up live music and the best beers in the valley. The tasting room and eatery is kicking off Beer Week with a beer garden featuring specialty offerings exclusively from San Jose breweries.

The $20 general admission fee covers a tasting flight of seven 3-ounce pours, as well as four hours of live music and tipsy mingling in the warm, rustic ambiance of the vast venue. There will also be a VIP lounge for those who want to support local nonprofits, and the $40 admission grants early-bird entry to the beer garden and exclusive access to the Brewers’ Lounge, where guests can pick the brains of local brewmasters. VIP members will also get a taste of Chef Lee Hernandez’s seasonal selection of small plates.

Forager has worked with more than two dozen local breweries since it opened this February. With 16 taps in rotation, the cafe/bar/arts venue is on a mission to bring unique, regional flavors to the heart of Silicon Valley.

Each ticket purchased helps support the Metro C2SV Community Fund, which is administered by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. Over the years, the Metro C2SV Community Fund has donated more than $50,000 to local nonprofits that include: ArtSPARK, Bill Wilson Center, Black Girls CODE, Children’s Discovery Museum, Cinequest, East Palo Alto Kids Foundation and many other causes that benefit the local community.

continue to The Science of Sour Beer

Untapped | Kick to Start | The Science of Sour Beer | KraftBrew Summer Fest

A few years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for patrons of Original Gravity to come in asking for the hoppiest, heaviest IPA on tap. So says Rob Monroe, general manager at the downtown San Jose suds and sausage house.

That was amid the peak of the IPA craze. It seemed like every microbrewer was producing double- and triple-IPAs with high alcohol content and even higher international bittering unit scores. It got so crazy that Guinness even got in on the game, producing its own Nitro IPA—an exceedingly weird, cash-grabbing mash-up.

But everything goes in cycles, and there is nothing new under the sun. Even as the high alcohol content and bitterness of overly hopped brew has given way to more balanced beers, including session IPAs and microbrew lagers, a new tongue twister has risen in popularity: the sour.

Sour beers are not a recent invention. In fact, the first beers ever stumbled upon by our ancient ancestors were likely quite tangy—and probably not that palatable, according to Tony Jwanouskos, operations manager at OG. In recent years, however, the now-scientifically calibrated tart brew has moved from a delicacy appreciated mostly by beer aficionados to an in-demand commodity. So much so that Anheuser-Busch InBev moved to purchase Wicked Weed Brewing earlier this year. The North Carolina-based microbrewery was known for its acclaimed sour and funky beers, according to Monroe and Jwanouskos.

But just because Wicked Weed sold out doesn’t mean you should. The Original Gravity managers advise those seeking the most complex sours to look for authenticity. It’s possible to create acidic ales artificially via a process known as “kettle souring,” but the best brews with bite come naturally, they say. That means rolling the dice with wild yeasts—specifically the strain known as Brettanomyces, or Brett—and unruly bacteria, like Lactobacillus and Pediococcus.

As Monroe and Jwanouskos discuss the artisanal process, they throw around words like “funky,” “barnyard,” “straw-flavored,” “fruity” and “sharp.” It’s reminiscent of the way a sommelier might discuss a rarefied vintage.

“It’s an incredible side of beer,” Jwanouskos says of the sour brewing. “I think it rivals the complexities and nuance of wine.”

That’s because producing a palatable sour is no easy task. Unlike with IPAs—where finding the right taste profile comes from adding or subtracting different varieties of hops—crafting a great sour involves an understanding of how a particular strain of bacteria or yeast is going to operate. It is the intersection of brewing and biology.

Neither Monroe or Jwanouskos are hating on IPAs, and they don’t think the India pale ale style is going anywhere. But it’s clear that beer heads now hold a certain reverence for sours. “They offer a complexity that I don’t think any other beverage does,” Monroe says.

continue to KraftBrew Summer Fest Caps off SV Beer Week

For the better part of two decades, Lagunitas Brewing Co. has relied on its signature India Pale Ale for the bulk of its sales. The hopped-up vim that triggered an IPA craze still driving the craft beer market bears a distinctive, widely recognized trademark. “Lagunitas IPA,” the label boasts—its acronym a bold, black, frayed-at-the-edges serif font.

When Chico-based Sierra Nevada Brewing slapped a similar-looking arrangement of those same three letters onto a new brew called Hop Hunter IPA this past January, Lagunitas founder Tony Magee couldn’t help but feel territorial. The Petaluma brewer filed a federal complaint alleging trademark infringement to defend his turf—not over the acronym, which is almost universal at this point, but the way it looked.

Though Magee dropped the lawsuit a day later after social media backlash over the volley, the case marked one of the first times that two major craft brewers fought each other in court. It also signaled a growing trend of bouts between brewers over branding and naming rights.

“It can feel like we’ve run out of clever wordplay,” Gordon Biersch co-founder and San Jose native Dan Gordon said in an interview about a drink he’s dubbed No Name Cider until its release this fall. “We’re not, of course, but it’s much more competitive to come up with something original.”

Hops-related puns seem all but played out: Hop Drop ‘n Roll, Rye of the Tiger, Hopportunity Knocks, Hopscotch, Hoptical Illusion. Bock, a type of strong dark beer, has inspired its own forever-long list of ciphers: Pandora’s Bock, Men in Bock, Bock to the Future. Lagers, pilsners, ales, sours and all else between hold a wealth of branding possibilities. But with an ever-increasing number of brewers drawing from a similar well of letters and phrases, overlap becomes inevitable.

“Everyone thinks they’re really creative,” said Candace Moon, a bartender-turned-sought-after craft beer attorney who works with clients up and down the West Coast. “But, not to knock them or anything, they don’t realize how many other people are out there playing with the same words and similar phrasing.”

Complicating the matter is the breakneck growth of the industry, Moon said. California has reached a clip that spawns a new brewery every 16 hours, according to industry groups, bringing the statewide total to upward of 600. Nationwide, that number has topped 3,000, according to the Craft Beverage Association. And when it comes to branding, brewers compete with wineries and distilleries for trademarks.

Tom Clark, who founded Santa Clara Valley Brewing Company after a West Coast microbrewery tour a few years back, has sidestepped litigation by opting for hyper-local names. The company’s signature beer, Electric Tower IPA, takes its name from a former San Jose landmark. New Almaden Red, one of his year-round ales, pays homage to the quicksilver-rich cinnabar once mined in the South Bay hills. Even with trademarked names particular to the region, Clark has resigned himself to the likelihood of a legal dust-up.

“We’re just waiting for our first cease and desist letter,” he said with a laugh during a tour of his just-opened San Jose taproom in May.

San Jose’s Strike Brewing Co. took the tack of sticking to a theme meaningful to the founders, but not necessarily dependent on run-of-the-mill puns. “All the normal things you can think of to name a beer have been taken,” Strike co-founder Jenny Lewis said. “Even if it’s a tiny little brewery in Rhode Island that will never sell anything over here, you have to go back to the drawing board.”

As a nod to fellow co-founder Drew Ehrlich’s stint in minor league baseball, they named the brewery Strike. Initially, they kept things simple by eschewing individual beer names, christening early beers only by type: Strike IPA, Strike Lager, and so on.

“But we wanted to have a little more fun with it, so we started riffing off of baseball slang terms,” Lewis said. “We like that it tells more of a story, that we’re the underdog, we’re the little guy trying to make it in the big leagues.”

The resulting monikers resonated with Strike’s overall theme. Lumber Busters American Brown, Screwball Blonde and, her favorite, Horn Rounder IPA. Strike trademarked scores more they have yet to use.

A good name, Lewis noted, has to tell a story.

“Ours do,” she said. “It has to be simple, it has to get people talking.”

Ultimately, of course, it has to be original. As Strike found, that may require dispensing with worn-out puns in favor of something more authentic. Or, as Moon advises, resisting the urge to name every single beer.

“That’s what I would do if I had a brewery,” she said. “One name, one trademark.”

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