Getting beer from barrels into bottles isn’t as straightforward as you might imagine. One clear reality in barrel aging is that no two barrels are the same.

What we call wild beer, many other people call “sour” beer. This is purely a preference, and not any hard and fast rule. But we wanted to explain why we feel like “wild” works a bit harder than “sour,” and what wild beers are to us.

There are a variety of ways to get sour flavor into a beer—and an almost endless variety of beers that you can add sourness to. To be clear, we’re honestly not the hugest fans of the term “sour beer.” For us, sour is a flavor descriptor and not a beer style. Sour beers can be dark, fruity, light, heavy, anything really. But that doesn’t answer the question: how do you make a beer sour?

Long story short: because of our belief in the importance of clean water, we’re donating 10 cents from every barrel of beer we brew to Sebago Clean Waters, to help preserve clean water in our local community. In 2019, that’ll amount to around $10,000.