Get Your Sour On

They’ve spent a year-and-a-half in the making, and now we’re welcoming back three of our favorite Belgian-style Lambics: Kiwi, Persimmon, and Raspberry.

How do you get your hands on them?

Reservations for our sour ales can be made online at uplandbeer.com beginning at noon on Wednesday, July 20^th. Once all the bottles have been reserved, reservations will close. This has taken around one day for past reservations, so we would suggest you get on it.

Bottles will be available for pickup at the Indy Tasting and Bloomington Brew Pub from August 3^rd- 17^th.

Each bottle is $20 plus tax.

A friend can pick up your bottle for you, but they must show a photocopy of your ID.

About Our Sours

The inspiration behind our sour ales are the Belgian lambics developed in the Senne Valley over five hundred years ago. Sadly, many sour ales available today are sweeter than their ancestors were, with less emphasis on the sour profile that makes these styles unique. In 2006, head brewer Caleb Staton obtained four white oak barrels formerly used to store red wine and decided to experiment to see if he could make a sour ale more like what he imagined the lambics of centuries past to be, while at the same adding his own unique twists to the style.

Upland currently produces eight styles of fruited sour ale in the lambic tradition, along with an experimental sour ale we call Dantalion Dark Wild Ale. To our lambics we add whole fruits, sourced locally whenever possible, that impart rich flavors and aromas. Strawberry, Raspberry, Peach, Cherry, Blackberry, and Blueberry are traditional, time tested additions to lambic, while, as far as we know, we’re the only brewers to have ever fruited lambic-style ale with Kiwi and Persimmon.

Rather than adding fruit to Dantalion, we add a special blend of spices that complement the beer’s natural tartness and acidity.

How We Make Sours

Upland follows traditional lambic brewing practices. A turbid mash of boiled, unmalted wheat is conducted before mashing in with a balance of pilsner and pale malts.  Unlike the common infusion mashing technique used to produce most lagers and ales, this method allows the yeast, primarily Brettanomyces, and lactic bacteria to feed on a more diverse sugar and dextrin (low-weight carbohydrates) content.  After a long kettle boil, the mixture is hopped with 3 year old Hallertauer that has lost most of its alpha acid content, creating a beer with minimal bitterness that also retains the preservative qualities of the hops.

Batches of Upland sours are fermented with a combination of yeast and bacteria selected to create a strong, pleasant tartness aged in white oak casks for over a year while the sour and acidic qualities slowly develop. Then in the case of our lambics, we add fruit, which prompts a second fermentation and adds another layer to the already complex flavors and aromas of the beer. To our Dantalion, we add a blend of spices rather than fruit, which complements the sourness developed during fermentation. After aging for several more months in the barrel, we bottle condition the beer for several weeks to achieve a fresh, zesty carbonation.

To learn more about the process of making sours, check out Caleb’s article in The New Brewer. Don’t have a subscription? You can order an issue here.