Erin Donovan started home brewing while she was still in grad school in Colorado, but back then she wasn’t sold on sour beer, even after trying some at that state’s Great American Beer Festival. “Your mouth was puckering; your eyes were watering,” she recalls.
A few more tastes and visits to Belgium later, sour beer’s “unique flavors” hooked Donovan, and she and her husband, Matt Baumgart, began brewing it, too. Eventually the pair moved to Belgium for two years, where they tasted scores of gueuzes and lambics and became even more enamored of the style.
Now back in Vermont, Donovan and Baumgart — with the help of Donovan’s dad, John Donovan — have taken their crush to a new level. For the past three years, they’ve been socking away wort — or unfermented beer— in oak barrels inside their Weston barn. There, they added wild yeasts, let the mixture ferment and planned to blend a commercial sour ale once their first batch tasted ready.
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