Embrace The Funk

Hello all!

It has certainly been a while since I posted here. I never wanted to post, just to post. From the beginning, the blog has always been about helping people understand sour, funky, and wild beer, dispelling bad information, letting brewers tell their stories, and keeping the flame lit for these styles I enjoy.

The below is simply my observations, thoughts, and hopes relating to the past, present, and future of sour and wild beer. This is in no way meant to be an end-all answer, woe is me or a grievance list. Just some things I have noticed and wanted to put into words.

I probably left out some obvious things and didn’t word other parts right.  I absolutely love creating these styles, discussing them, traveling to enjoy what others are making and promoting them. I hold a lot of hope for the future of the funk! 2025 will continue to be a year of correction, change, and creativity for the beer world. I hope you know I am writing this from a good place and want nothing more than to see sour, funky, and wild beer succeed. I truly appreciate everyone’s support over the years and the folks who helped get me to this point in my life. I am excited to continue making the classic wild styles as well as new world takes in 2025.

-Brandon

**The Decline of American Sour and Wild Beer: We Were the Monsters**

In the late 1990’s and early 2000s, American craft beer was at the forefront of a revolution, pushing the boundaries of brewing and experimentation. Among the many genres that captured the imagination of beer drinkers, sour and wild ales took the spotlight for their unique flavors and complex profiles. Breweries embraced wild fermentation, barrel aging, and a vast array of techniques to create beers that were as unpredictable as they were exciting. But as quickly as the sour and wild beer movement rose, it fell, and in many ways, it is a shadow of its former self. How did we get here? What happened to this once-vibrant segment of the American beer scene? In short: we were the monsters we created.

Oversaturation: A Wild World Gone Wild

When the American craft beer community first embraced sours, it was revolutionary. A handful of breweries, including *New Belgium*, *Russian River*, *Jolly Pumpkin*  and *Allagash*, began experimenting with the wild, unpredictable flavors that came from mixed culture, spontaneous fermentation and barrel aging. At the time, these beers were something new and rare in America. They were prized for their complexity and the time they took to produce. But like all trends in the craft beer world, the explosion of interest led to oversaturation.

What was once a niche small-batch offering became a must-have for any self-respecting craft brewery. Every brewery, it seemed, wanted to make a sour or wild beer, regardless of whether they had the space, experience, or resources to do so. The result? A glut of poorly executed sours that lacked the depth and character of the original pioneers. Breweries rushed to create sour beers, but without the expertise and patience needed, many ended up with inconsistent, overly tart, or just plain bad beers that didn’t live up to the hype.

The oversaturation wasn’t just limited to breweries producing too many sour beers. It also extended to the market itself. Consumers, eager to try the latest wild concoction, began to view sour beers as a novelty rather than a truly refined art form. As these beers flooded the shelves, they lost their mystique and became another commodity, subject to the whims of fleeting trends. The excitement waned as the novelty of “something different” and “sour” became just another marketing buzzword.

Price Points: The Cost of Complexity

In the world of beer, pricing is always a delicate balance. For natural sour and wild beers,they often require long fermentation times and specialized techniques, a higher price tag made sense. Barrel aging and wild fermentation are time-consuming and can be expensive. Brewers rightfully priced their products accordingly. However, as the market became oversaturated with sour offerings, many breweries followed suit by pricing their beers higher, even when they weren’t necessarily worth the price.

Price inflation became a problem. The cost of entry for a bottle of barrel-aged sour beer began to creep into the $20–$40 range, sometimes higher. For many beer drinkers, the high price point simply wasn’t justified by the end product. The unique and complex flavors that once made these beers special were often overshadowed by a sharp acidity that made them difficult to enjoy for those not accustomed to the style. As prices rose and quality fluctuated, many drinkers were left questioning if they were paying for a product that was truly worth the premium price point or effort to obtain.

The high price points didn’t just alienate regular beer drinkers; they also helped reinforce the perception that sour and wild beers were exclusive and elitist, further detaching them from the general craft beer scene. What was once a bold experiment became a luxury item, priced out of reach for many who once helped elevate these beers to fame.

### Too Acidic: The Sour Becomes a Chore

In the early days of American sours, the acidity was part of the allure. The tartness and funkiness were balanced by complexity and nuanced flavors. But over time, this delicate balance became harder to maintain. As more breweries jumped into the sour game, a worrying trend emerged: the overuse of acidity. Some brewers, eager to assert their wild side, pushed the sourness to extreme levels, resulting in beers that were acetic and harsher than pleasantly tart. The subtlety and nuance that once made these beers enjoyable gave way to a one-note sour bomb.

The resulting beers often felt more like a chore to consume than a fun celebration of flavor. Instead of offering a refreshing zing or a pleasant pucker, the excessive acidity dominated the experience, overwhelming the palate. For those unfamiliar with the complexities of sour beers, this intense acidity often felt more like a punishment than a pleasure. As a result, sour and wild beers began to turn away a lot of casual drinkers who once found the style intriguing but couldn’t stomach the sharp acidity.

The rise of quick sour and kettle sour techniques led to some confusion among consumers, particularly when compared to traditional long fermentation methods. Quick and kettle sours, which use controlled methods like adding lactobacillus to un-hopped wort to speed up the souring process, often result in a beer that is more one-dimensional and heavily fruited. These offerings tend to focus on an intense, sharp tartness alone or lactose-sweetened massively fruited technique and can mask the nuanced complexity of flavors that long fermentation naturally develops. In contrast, naturally soured beers often achieve a more rounded, multifaceted sourness with subtle layers of flavor that evolve. For consumers unfamiliar with these differences, the immediate fruit-forward and simplistic nature of quick sours might have lead to confusion, as they may not recognize the depth that long fermentation brings to traditional sour beers.

Poor Quality: The Brewing Monster We Created

Perhaps the most tragic part of the sour beer decline is how the market was hit with low-quality offerings. As the desire for sour and wild beers grew, so too did the number of breweries making them. But not all of these breweries were equipped to handle the unique challenges of brewing with wild yeast and bacteria. The risk of contamination, the need for special equipment, and the patience required for proper aging and blending meant that brewing quality sours was a craft in itself.

Too many breweries entered the market without truly understanding the complexities involved. In the rush to cash in on the trend, corners were cut, processes were rushed, and the final product suffered. Many of these beers lacked the proper balance of flavor and were plagued by off-flavors, packaging issues, or simply a lack of depth. What had once been a carefully crafted art form began to feel like a cheap imitation. In an increasing world of mediocre, poorly executed sours, the original pioneers who had invested years of trial and error into perfecting their craft were overshadowed by the sheer volume of subpar products flooding the market.

###Tick them all: The Badge Beast

On paper, ratings or tracking sites is a fun, and social way to enjoy a hobby. App, bottle cap and website ratings have increasingly influenced the store purchaser, perception of beer rarity over quality, with users often prioritizing limited edition or highly sought-after brews over the natural qualities of the beer itself. Beer enthusiasts rushed to rate rare or exclusive releases, the platform’s rating system can create an inflated sense of value around certain beers, even if their taste or craftsmanship isn’t objectively superior. This skewing effect helped lead to a focus on acquiring rare beers for the sake of status or collectability, rather than opening bottles to enjoy the diverse flavors of sour beers. This artificially propped up beer releases. The bottles never being opened and simply shuffled around in closets or shipped from state to state/ The result is a marketplace where rarity became a proxy for quality.

Conclusion: The Monster We Created

As the sour and wild beer movement has declined, we can see how the industry’s rapid growth and expansion led to a bloated and often disappointing marketplace. The oversaturation, high price points, excessive acidity, and poor quality were self-inflicted wounds. We were the monsters who created this Frankenstein’s monster of situation. The early innovators gave us something exciting, but the rush to capitalize on that excitement turned sour. 

Can American sour beer ever make a comeback? Will the lessons learned from its rapid rise and fall lead to a more thoughtful, refined approach? 

Only time will tell. But for now, I look forward to the future. We have many talented brewers in this wild world and sour, funky & wild beer most certainly has a place in the scene. As we head into the future I invite you to open that beer, enjoy what YOU enjoy, and remember how fun this beer stuff is!