Lambic, or sour, beers like Geuze, Rodenbach and Kriek are suddenly hip Kriek lambic beer is available in Australia, but be warned: it's an acquired taste. Picture: Wikipedia/Adrian Scottow Source: News Limited IF you are as well read as my colleague Gideon Haigh you will have heard of Auguste Joesph Francois de Bavay. And if you are as smart as Mike Selvey you won't need to know who he is. Some years ago I was in cafe in Gertrude St Fitzroy where the hip young barmaid explained to me that the beer they had available was lovely. She didn't like beer but this one had a lemony flavour that appealed to her. I should have cottoned on then and there, but maybe I think I was too busy deciphering her tattoos to listen to what she said. Contemplating the leopard leaping out of her hipster jeans, it's paw rising toward a breast where one imagines was a tattoo of its cowering prey, I took a distracted sip of the beer and felt my mouth pucker. The brew had a lactic infection and was sour. And it wasn't by design. I pushed it back toward her and pushed out the door just as she mumbled something about yoghurt but I wasn't listening. There was a time when beers were routinely subject to infection because of the open fermentation styles used. In open fermentation (no lid on the tank, basically), your brew is subject to wild yeasts that can do all sorts of bad things to your beer. These days, however, thanks to the work of Louis Pasteur, brewers know that a pure yeast culture is needed to make good beer and breweries need to be kept sterile. Now our mate de Bavay was a trained surveyor, brewer, chemist and member of the Pasteur clan. He hailed from Belgium but left the muddy fields to become a plantation manager in Ceylon before arriving in Australia in 1884. Haigh, who came across him in Geoff Blainey's great mining history The Rush the Never Ended, put me onto his story during the English surrender at the Sydney cricket Test. When de Bavay arrived in Australia, the spoilage rate for beer was extraordinarily high. The visiting Belgian knew what was wrong and was hired by a local brewery to get its beer right. Apart from a regular wage, he was slung a shilling for each good hogshead the brewery produced. By 1888 de Bavay had isolated Australian No. 2, which is considered the first pure Australian yeast culture; a year later he had knocked up Melbourne No. 1, the first to be used commercially. Thanks to Melbourne No.1 the beers down south were distinctive and renowned for their quality. At the same time the Foster brothers had arrived from America and through the use of refrigeration introduced the first commercial-scale lagers. Old de Bavay was a restless soul and having fixed up beer went on to cure diphtheria and sort out ore mining in Broken Hill while consulting to Foster's, Swan, Cascade and CUB. He also made a significant contribution to the war effort by developing the process to manufacture acetone for use in the production of cordite. Back at the Ashes, former England fast bowler Selvey and I were in one of many beer establishments currently in the throes of passion about sour beers. Yep, fashion has swung that far. Belgians have been turning out a line of these for many years. Lambics, or sour beers, were traditionally brewed in open fermenters in the Senne Valley, Belgium, where the wild native yeasts were perfect for this style of beer. Home brewers still bang them up, but not intentionally. I have been in one Lambic brewery where the roof was falling in and was only propped up by poles. While another roof had been built over the top, nobody dared pull out the old one for fear of disturbing the wild yeasts. Some of the more popular sours are the Geuze, Rodenbach and Kriek, which are available in Australia. Be warned, however, that sour is an acquired taste. Our man Selvey has not acquired it. In the middle of a drinking session after a day's cricket somewhere, our host popped up at the table with a Rodenback and a Geuze, poured them and asked the giant what he thought. "If you delivered a barrel of that to my pub I'd send it straight back," he said, his face puckered like he'd just sucked a lemon. It's off! If there were more men in the world like Selvey there would be no naked emperors, but don't let him put you off trying a sour beer. It's one of those things you got to do.