Quote:
Originally Posted by phisherman
Last night was my first exposure to a sour stout. Jolly Pumpkin's Madrugada Obscura. Bizarre stuff and it was delicious.
To continue on Reaper's line of information about sours, Jolly Pumpkin uses wild yeasts in all of their beers, so they end up with sour versions of a lot of typically non-sour beers. Hence, the sour stout I referenced. They also had a witbier, a brown ale, a pumpkin beer, a christmas ale, and a saison. All were tart at the least, some were full on sours.
|
To continue from your post... There are plenty of American beers that don't conform to rigid style guidelines, so the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program), which judges beer competitions, created a couple of catch-all categories. These are American Strong Ale (higher gravity ales that aren't noticeably similar to other styles. Stone's Arrogant Bastard is the most notable example), and American Wild Ale (which accounts for like every sour beer that isn't from Belgium or Germany).
So nearly all of Jolly Pumpkins beers get classified as American Wild Ales in competitions.