Picture the can rack at your local bottle shop, rows of straightforward names doing their straightforward job, and then one can shows up wearing a wizard's staff and full cosmic-purple art like it wandered in from a completely different aisle. That is POG Juice Wizard, and Confluence Brewing clearly decided that if you are going to sour a beer with passionfruit, orange, and guava, you might as well commit to the bit all the way through the label.
Confluence leans into the old idea that early brewing, before anyone understood fermentation, probably felt a little like magic - wild microbes souring a batch with no one quite sure why. This one culls lactobacillus on purpose to get that same citrus-forward tartness, then piles guava, passionfruit, and orange on top for what Confluence calls a tropical wave. Sour ale is a crowded category these days, so the fruit combination doing more of the talking than the souring process is probably the right call.
It starts pouring in the Des Moines taproom this Friday, with four-packs to take home and wider distribution across Iowa arriving the following Monday. Whether or not the wizardry checks out is a matter of taste, but a can willing to have this much fun with its own concept is worth grabbing at least once.