Wild Ale(s)

Americans are famous for our sickly sweet tooths, but we also have a love for sourness as well--note the popularity of Sour Patch Kids at the cineplex. Which makes it bizarre no mass market breweries have adopted the sour beer styles of lambic, gueuze, Flanders red, and, less specifically, the American wild ale. Sure, these wild yeast beers are time-consuming to produce, usually involve barrel-aging, and would frequently lead to rubes taking a sip and exclaiming, “Ma’ bare’s spoil’t!” But, it can be done. In fact, it already is being accomplished by one mega-beer company. MillerCoors’ somewhat hush hush “brand incubator” AC Golden Brewing Company -- really just a small, former storage room in the massive Coors Brewery in Colorado -- has actually released several wild ales over the past year. Much better, these limited-releases have been well-regarded, even by beer geeks who knew their big business origins and would have liked any excuse to bash them. Let’s hope they one day become less limited.

Seek out: a lusted-after style for beer geeks, finding any can be tough: Russian River Consecration, New Belgium Lips of Faith - Le Terroir, Jolly Pumpkin La Roja.

Aaron Goldfarb (@aarongoldfarb) is the author of and .