My guess is that few commercial sour-beer brewers choose to allow the sort of spontaneous fermentations that shape Belgian lambics. More likely, they are inoculating their brews with selected yeast strains, including brettanomyces, anathema to winemakers as it can be the source of funky flavors great and small. If unwanted in wine, it can be great in beer styles like gueuze, a Belgian blend of young and old unflavored lambics.

Not surprisingly given the variety of styles in our tasting, the range of flavors was vast. The best brews were beautiful and absolutely delicious. Some were more complex than others, but the best were balanced and precise. Some showed clear American touches like dry-hopping, the act of adding hops to the beer after the fermentation process, as it rests or ages.

“It’s like putting an aromatic stamp on it,” Chase said.

We also noted that more than a few of these brews seemed to be still in an experimental phase, as if the brewers were not quite in control of the results. These beers tended to be unbalanced, piercing or otherwise flawed. It may also have been a product of inexperience or lack of resources.

Many Old World brewers of sour beer employ a blending system like the solera of sherry, in which new batches of beer are combined over time with older batches in ways that can result in a more consistent product as well as compensate for any noticeable flaws in a particular batch.

“Some of these brewers may not have taken the time to blend with a solera, or they may not have the experience,” Matthew said. “They may be brewers, but they’re not blenders yet.”

One brewer that has mastered consistency is Cascade of Portland, Ore. Its 2014 Kriek, flavored with cherries as it aged in barrels, was our No. 1 beer: bright, lively, distinctive and complex. We gave it four stars, our highest score, which is rarely achieved, except that Cascade’s 2010 Kriek also earned four stars in our 2011 tasting.