Top to bottom: Nancy’s Hudson Valley Camembert, Wensleydale, Crescenza

Sour Ales: Wild Ale, Lambic, Gueuze, Flanders Red Ale, and Flanders Brown Ale

STYLE NOTES: What’s so appealing about sour beer? The very idea makes some drinkers recoil, but tart, even vinegary ales have a long history and many fans. These controversial brews can skirt the edge of respectability, with aromas so funky that no cheese can tame them, or with gripping acidity that stops just shy of vinegar.

Modern Belgian brewers have refined the production of sour ales, but the style has ancient roots. Before commercial yeast strains made fermentations predictable, brewers were at the mercy of wild microflora. Yeasts and bacteria naturally proliferating in the air, on brewery walls, or in wooden casks would ferment the wort’s sugars, with often unpredictable results. These so-called “wild ales” might have earthy, horsey, or leathery aromas if Brettanomyces yeast played a role; or a rhubarb-like tartness if ambient bacteria converted the wort’s malt sugar to acid.

Over centuries, brewers devised techniques to make these ales more palatable—by blending casks, or softening the sourness with fruit, or mellowing the character by aging. Today, Belgian brewers and the American brewers inspired by them produce sour ales in a variety of traditional styles, including lambic, gueuze, and Flanders red and brown ales. These beverages are among the most complex, peculiar, and oddly compelling examples of the brewer’s craft.

True Belgian lambic, a dry, unblended beer made by spontaneous fermentation, is rare in the United States. Far more common is gueuze (pronounced, roughly, GER-zuh), a blend of young and old lambics. These beers range from golden to amber to peach-skin red, and they may be cloudy from bottle conditioning (intentional refermenting in the bottle) or clear. Don’t look for hop aromas or bitterness. The lambic procedure relies on aged hops, which no longer have much aromatic or bittering potential but do help preserve the beer. Lambics and gueuzes can age in barrel or bottle for years.

Gueuzes are moderate in alcohol but highly effervescent, with aromas that may startle the unprepared. Swirl a glass and expect to release scents of earth, barnyard, lemonade, green apple, cider vinegar, or even decaying apples. The flavor is likely to be brisk, bone dry, and mouth-puckering.

Adding fruit to a lambic gives this style another dimension. To make kriek (cherry lambic) or framboise (raspberry lambic), fresh fruit is added while the lambic is still in barrel, prompting a new fermentation. When fully dry, the ale is drained off the fruit pulp and may or may not be sweetened before bottling. Traditional Belgian kriek has a rosy hue; fruity aromas mingled with the typical lambic funk; teeth-rattling acidity; and a lively, Champagne-like mousse. Sweetened kriek can taste like cherry soda. If it’s the dry style you’re after, look for the word oude (old) or tradition on the label.

Flanders red ale and Flanders brown ale resemble lambics in their bone-jarring tartness, but don’t rely on spontaneous fermentation. Instead, brewers inoculate the wort with yeasts and bacteria selected to produce the desired acidity and wine-like notes. Sometimes called “the Burgundy of Belgium,” Flanders red ale typically has a dark copper or deep amber color, with aromas of plum, peach, dried cherry, raspberry, citrus, sherry vinegar, and caramel. These ales persist on the palate with a sour grip.

From Flanders brown ale expect a darker, reddish-brown hue and more malty toffee notes mingled with the scent of sour cherry, raisin, and balsamic vinegar.

Neither of these Flanders styles is heavy or high in alcohol, but they happily bring up the rear in a meal. More Madeira-like than Burgundian, they excel as an end-of-meal digestif.

BEERS TO TRY: Bacchus; Cantillon Lambic; Cuvée des Jacobins Rouge; Deschutes Brewing The Dissident; Duchesse de Bourgogne; Goose Island Lolita; Hanssen’s Artisanaal Oude Kriek; Jolly Pumpkin La Roja; Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René; Monk’s Café Flemish Sour Ale; New Belgium Brewing La Folie; Rodenbach Grand Cru; Russian River Brewing Consecration; Russian River Brewing Sanctification; Russian River Brewing Supplication; St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition.

CHEESE AFFINITIES: Their vigorous carbonation and palate-scrubbing acidity make sour ales like gueuze an appealing contrast with triple-cream cheeses. These beers can also balance the sweetness of cheeses with caramel notes, such as aged Gouda. Or pair them with young, rindless fresh chèvre to echo the beer’s acidity, or with moist, fresh cow’s milk cheeses, like Teleme, that have a sour-cream tang. Some tasters find harmony between the funky barnyard aromas in some wild ales and similar aromas in washed-rind cheeses, such as Epoisses, but that’s a risky pairing. The human nose is easily overwhelmed. As for fizzy, highly sweetened fruit lambics, think of them as refreshment, perhaps, but not as good partners for cheese.

Nancy’s Hudson Valley Camembert marries cow’s milk with sheep’s milk in a luscious cheese that can take the place of dessert. From New York’s Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, this bloomy-rind, double-cream disk may resemble a French Camembert on the outside, but the interior is far more plush and velvety. The cheese’s palate-coating richness appreciates the vigorous carbonation of sour ale, and its mild, salted-butter flavor lets the sour ale lead the dance.

From California’s Bellwether Farms, the cow’s-milk Crescenza looks like a soft, floppy disk of pizza dough. Like Italian Stracchino, its inspiration, Crescenza tastes best soon after it is made. The creamery releases this 2- to 3-pound square at less than a week old, when it smells like crème fraîche and has a soft, spreadable, yielding texture. An assertively malty or hoppy beer would overwhelm Crescenza’s fresh tartness and delicate, buttery flavor, but gueuze matches its lively acidity.

Traditional Wensleydale is a sophisticated and respectable British cheese made by a centuries-old Yorkshire creamery. Ignore the tricked-out variations laced with cranberries and pineapple—they are made by the same creamery but for a less discriminating audience—and look for Wensleydale with a natural rind, exported by the esteemed Neal’s Yard Dairy. These handsome 8- to 10-pound wheels, produced from pasteurized cow’s milk, spend three to four months in an aging cellar, developing aromas of cheesecake and caramel. The moist, semifirm interior has a smooth, creamy texture and a tart, cultured-milk tang that marries well with sour ale’s sprightly tartness.

MORE CHEESES TO TRY: Brillat-Savarin; Franklin’s Teleme; Jasper Hill Farm Constant Bliss; Epoisses; Leiden; Marieke Cumin Gouda; Mimolette; Nicasio Valley Foggy Morning; Murcia Curado (Naked Goat); Pierre Robert; Point Reyes Toma; Tumalo Farms Pondhopper; Tumalo Farms Rimrocker.