PNW Sours!

While most breweries are concerned with limited release Imperial Stouts and the hoppiness of their Ipas, there is a small brewery in Portland, Oregon that has adapted their own idea of how to run a unique and successful brewery. And for good reason, with 42 breweries in the Portland metropolitan area, you would have to focus on something that will set you apart from the crowd!

Cascade Brewing Barrel House is another example of how American brewers love to take a traditional style and run "wild" with it. Using only one type of bacteria; Lactobacollus provides the sour and acidic notes for the "base" beer that they brew. From there, the beer is then aged in wine barrels and/or infused with a seemingly liberal amount of local PNW fruits: cherries, apricots, grapes. The resulting beers are intense and complex with tons of tartness, fruit flavor, and a much higher alcohol content than tradition lambics.

While their distribution is much more extensive than I would have thought, making it all the way to the east coast, Spokane as usual gets shunned. So, a trip to Portland might be in the works. For sure the most intense "sour" I have had thus far. Tons of puckering cherry flavor, a solid acidic sourness, and a very fine, biting carbonation definitely made this a sipping beer.

Cascade Brewing: 09' Kriek Ale: 7.2%abv: Portland, OR.