Raspberry Sour Drops the Lactose and Keeps the Creamy Body

Boal City Brewing has its Raspberry Sour back on tap, and the recipe has lost an ingredient. This batch is lactose-free.

The souring happens in the kettle. Lactobacillus acidifies the wort before the boil, and the boil then kills the bacteria off before brewer's yeast goes in. It is a faster and more controllable route to tartness than a long mixed-culture fermentation, and it leaves the fruit character clean rather than funky. Raspberry puree supplies the fruit.

Lactose is the part worth noticing. The unfermentable milk sugar has become close to a default in fruited sours, where it adds sweetness and a rounder mouthfeel that keeps the acidity from reading as thin. Take it out and the texture has to come from the grain bill and from the puree itself. Boal City still describes the beer as having a little creamy body, so whatever is doing that work is doing it without help.

The brewery's own notes run to big fruit flavor up front and a bright, tart zing on the finish. Boal City lists the beer at 5.4 percent and 26 IBU.

The brewery's own photo shows the beer poured pale orange-pink in a stemmed glass, a good deal lighter than the name suggests.

Raspberry Sour is pouring now at the taproom on Old Boalsburg Road. The same newsletter puts the brewery's festbier back on September 17, so the raspberry has the tail end of the warm season more or less to itself.