Nobody likes a sourpuss, isn’t that what your parents used to tell you? Turns out they were wrong: I sure do love Sourpuss Sour Wheat Ale from the Coastal Extreme Brewing Company aka Newport Storm Brewery of Newport, Rhode Island. It’s been ages since I’ve actually visited the brewery, but I did pick up a few bottles of their beer while in Rhode Island last September. One of them was the Sourpuss.

Sourpuss Sour Wheat Ale is a limited release beer that is sold in 4-packs. My bottle is notched as best by August of 2015, though I bought it at Haxton’s Liquors on Bald Hill Road in September. Not much risk of a beer with a lactobacillic fermentation going bad that quickly, though.

The brewery says of this beer on their website:

This not quite Berliner Weisse, not quite Belgian Sour is our way of taking the unique flavors from a soured ferment and balancing them with real cherries. it should be obvious why we put “sour” in the name…..The brewers challenged themselves with this sour wheat ale when they decided to play with multiple strains of lactobacillus (a wild yeast strain) instead of just one, and they were rewarded with this lip-puckering brew…… The real icing, or should we say cherry on the top, comes from 450 pounds of Oregon dark cherries added to sweeten up this brew while remaining true to the sour ale style.

Ingredients:

MALTS: North American Pale, North American Wheat

HOPS: Warrior

YEAST: American Ale, after souring

Newport Storm Sourpuss Sour Wheat Ale has an alcohol content of 5.6% by volume with just 5 IBUs. I paid $2.99 for a single bottle but 4-packs were running $9.99.

Newport Storm Sourpuss Sour Wheat Ale pours to a ruddy reddish color with a thick but short-lived head of rocky foam and a tart sour cherry nose. Taking a sip, the beer is a bit wheaty up front and quickly becomes puckering sour with strong tart cherry notes underneath all the way into the very tart, bone dry finish. I found this beer to be refreshing and wonderful, and I wish they had had more for me to buy. At the very least, I’m glad I got this bottle.

The sourness of this beer made it a great pairing with a bowl of hearty French Onion Soup on a cold winter’s night. And I do mean great: the tartness of the beer against the richness of the soup was a perfect marriage, and I think this beer would go very well with many other dishes to boot.

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