[erockrph]

I spent a few years kinda taking a break from sours, but I recently started getting back into them and decided to restart my sour beer program. I went to round up my usual suspects of lambics and gueuzes to get my house culture started, but the selection at all my local stores has vanished. Stores that would carry 6 to 10 different quality lambics now have one or two Lindemans and maybe a limited release Boon. No Girardin, St Louis, Hansen's, Mikkeller, etc. Has anyone else noticed this in their area?

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[Descardeci]

Yes! In my country they just vanish, the only I can find is those like catarina sour, berliner weisse with fruit, some american wild ale but the belgian sour is a something rare to find now

[pete b]

Take a field trip to Yankee Spirits. The original in Sturbridge is pretty close to me but there is one in Norwood, MA that should be a pretty short trip for you. I have actually ordered online and had free deliveries during covid.

[narvin]

It might be a combination of increased shelf space for all the local craft beer and the fact that the good stuff gets snapped up instantly these days.  Gone are the days of Cantillon just sitting on a dusty shelf waiting for me!

[MDixon]

I think the production stayed flat and demand increased. I was at a large beer store the other day and spotted a couple of bottles of 3 Fonteinen and was actually surprised to see them. Recently a store in Belgium sold out quickly of Tilquin and they had been directed to not allow US orders. That tells me there is a thirsty audience in the rest of the world. So if production is level and demand is up worldwide, we are going to have a difficult time locating bottles.

[erockrph]

Take a field trip to Yankee Spirits. The original in Sturbridge is pretty close to me but there is one in Norwood, MA that should be a pretty short trip for you. I have actually ordered online and had free deliveries during covid.

I started at the one in North Attleboro and that's where I noticed the start of this trend. They had every flavor of Lindemans and a bottle of Tilquin (thank god), scattered among the other Belgian and continental imports. Everything else was wall to wall IPA. That set the stage for all the other stores I hit, which were pretty much the same story. I'm thinking that the sour beer trend is not as hot as it was a few years ago, and they ended up losing shelf space to the 50,000 new breweries that each have half a dozen IPAs on the shelf.

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