Cascade Brewing – a Northwest Twist on Belgium Sour Beers

Getting sweet on local sour ales with Cascade Brewing’s Ron Gansberg

A few years ago, Gansberg began tinkering in the basement of the Raccoon Lodge with an assortment of new oak, used wine, used whiskey and all manner of oak barrels where he unleashed a menagerie of microscopic critters to take the general perception of “beer flavor” and stand it on its ear.

The results have been a continually evolving lineup of beers that have been slowly gaining notice from beer scribes, beer lovers and even the judges at the Great American Beer Festival, who awarded his Cascade Kriek a bronze medal for the Wood- and Barrel-Aged Sour Beers in his first trip to Denver’s annual organoleptic orgy.

At Tuesday’s tasting, he and his partner in grime Curtis Bain shared their Vlad the Imp-Aler, a hearty 10.3 percent alcohol blend of sour quadrupel and sour tripel, aged in a whiskey barrel then blended with sour spiced blonde. Now, sour may not be many beer drinkers’ idea of a desirable flavor descriptor, but a growing number of American beer drinkers are discovering what folks in Belgium have known for centuries: sourness from an assortment of wild, and or lactic fermentations can be as stimulating a balance to malt sweetness as hoppy bitterness.

I’ve said it before, and I’m sure I’ll say it again – if you love beer, Portland is THE place to be!