In a late Friday press conference, executive director of the Independent Brewers Association admitted that the increasingly popular sour beer category was supposed to be nothing more than an April Fool’s joke, so everyone can go back to drinking regular beer now.
“We’re sorry and we never should have done this,” said the director, Rob Poundstone. “It’s well past time that everyone knows sour beer, while not hazardous to your health, was never intended for human consumption.”
The association claims the trend started about six years ago when a brewer contaminated a product with wild yeast and an outbreak of Lactobacillus and Pediococcus bacteria.
“Of course he should have dumped it out and started over, but it was April 1 and in an effort to be funny, he served it as a rotating tap called Belgian Style Farmhouse Saison,” Poundstone said. “He never intended harm, being sure drinkers would immediately notice something was wrong.”
Instead, Poundstone explained, customers only demanded more.
In what Poundstone termed “an increasingly desperate effort to get caught and end the lie,” over the years, the brewer introduced beers mixed with cherry, raspberry, and even sea salt and coriander. As other brewers followed suit and sales of sour beers quintupled between 2015 and 2016 alone, the culprit felt increasingly guilty, but stayed silent until his recent confession.
Asked what could have prevented the years-long fraud, Poundstone rubbed his temples and said, “If offering tasting notes describing beers as having a ‘yogurt tang’ or an ‘earthy barnyard smell’ didn’t tip people off, I don’t know that anything could have.”
