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?

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.

At Allagash, we’re able to recycle or sidestream about 99.8% of our waste. That last .2% is something we’re trying to address with the Allagash Recycling Co-op that we launched in March of 2021. 

To answer the question technically, wort is a liquid solution of extracted grains, a sugar source which brewers create and then ultimately feed to beer yeasts. Non-technically, wort is sugary grain water.