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?

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.

One of beer’s most remarkable aspects is its versatility. On top of the fundamental ingredients of water, grain, yeast, and hops, a brewer can add almost any extra ingredients (unless you’re in Germany, where there are literal brewing laws about what you can put into beer). Ingredients found in beer today include fruit, chocolate, coffee, nuts, waffles, cookies, spices, cocoa, marshmallows, breakfast cereal, toffee, and so much more. This is not to say that WE use all of these ingredients, just that brewers, mainly in the United States, have really been pushing the limits of what can be added to beer.

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.