Today’s brewers, it would seem, are cutting deals with their own personal devils. Where once you would never invite the devil to come dance in your brewery, many brewers are now opening their doors to Satan’s minions of sour (Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus and Pediococcus) in the hopes of joining the ranks of legendary beers and bellowing out the low pH blues.

In many ways, brewers are stumbling over each other as they race to the sour beer crossroads. Breweries that have never dabbled in the black art of sour beers are wielding machetes in the hopes of blazing trails and entirely new paths. And in doing so, many of them are dancing with Lucifer himself as they polka and cha-cha-cha their way into unfamiliar arenas. So it begs the questions: Are these beers any good, and how did we get here?

Historically, sour beer producers have never had to cut deals with the devil. They chose to embrace his personality years ago. Their Old World methods of wort production were designed to only make sour beers. Yet they represent such a small percentage of brewers making beer this way that their use of micro-organisms and wild yeasts is as if they are witch doctors.

The lambic producers around Brussels and the red ale producers surrounding Flanders share a commonality of sour beer aged in oak barrels for extended periods of time (up to three years). Here, the barrels are used as vessels of hope in the purest sense. Each barrel acts as its own micro universe, and there is only a degree of certainty surrounding each vessel.

In Belgian sour ale production, oak barrels act more as stewards than as custodians. Wort is sent to these barrels in the hopes that all the environmental factors will come together to produce an exceptional beer. Modern-day brewers, conducting most fermentations in stainless steel, are far more custodial in their zest to produce clean and predictable fermentations and resulting beers.

Yet there is a new breed of sour beer producers who are attempting both. And this group is hell-bent on challenging the status quo. While not seeking fame and fortune in the purest sense, they are clearly tempting the devil’s due and making some exceptional beers at the same time. And many of their beers are marrying the flavors of oak with sour beer production.

It was once thought that only Belgian brewers were the best producers of sour beer in the world. And while clearly they remain the specialists of spontaneous fermented beers, there is a brave new world of sour beers from all corners of the globe available to the adventuring enthusiast willing to seek out new and unusual sour beers.

As a craft brewer, I am lucky that beer doesn’t require that kind of patience. Most of the beer we produce can be consumed after the 17th day of production. And like most craft breweries, our modern equipment and technology allow us to operate with a high level of precision.

But like Walt’s Magic Kingdom, there remains a place where a brewer’s disbelief is suspended and consumers come looking for that magical beer experience. This place is Brussels, Belgium, where brewing is shrouded in a heavy mystery. As a brewer of wood-aged beers, I have made Brussels my adult Disneyland, and it never disappoints.

In and around the city of Brussels and the Senne River Valley, brewers make a heritage specialty beer known simply as lambic. It remains one of the most romantic beers produced in the world. And like the best rides at Disneyland, it has a narrative, a protagonist and an antagonist. But most importantly, the production methods reach out and engage your senses.

Lambic brewing remains a controlled appellation, requiring a production method of making beer through spontaneous fermentation. Unlike New World techniques in which pure yeasts are added to each batch of beer, lambic is revered for the fermentation yeasts descending like manna from the heavens. Unseen microbes and wild yeast in the air populate the brew, leaving it more magical and mystical than Doc Terminus riding into Passamaquoddy looking for Pete’s Dragon.

In theory, spontaneously fermented beers can be made anywhere, though the best still come from Belgium. Many brewers outside Belgium are now attempting to make their own lambic-like beers by opening their breweries’ sugary wort to the native flora surrounding their brewery. Some have been enormously successful. Others have been epic failures. But it’s this sense of adventure I prize most as a brewer, and it’s also the very thing that drew me to visit the lambic producers of Belgium.

While I had read plenty about the families who produce lambic, my first brewery visit transported me to a fantasy-like world the moment I walked through the doors of the brewery known to most as Cantillon, and to the locals in Brussels as the Museum of Gueuze. This was a brewery that had been making lambic since 1900. I went in thinking it would be like every other brewery I had visited. I left convinced artisanal lambic breweries like Cantillon are places of wonder and amazement.

I wasn’t sure what I would see when I first crossed the threshold into the Museum of Gueuze. I stood there, frozen in time. I marveled at the sights, sounds and actions around me. The first 10 minutes of my visit were pure chaos, with equal parts beer production and theater going on. Members of the Roy family, the owners of Cantillon, were hard at work producing lambic and greeting guests. I half expected the entire family to stop and break into song, as if a Belgian production of The Pirates of Penzance was going on during the open brew day.

The brewery is multi-leveled. With the exposed wood beam construction and trap doors between levels, in many ways it feels very much like stepping into the belly of the Niña, Pinta or Santa Maria. The first person I saw was a young man playing the part of the captain. Always on the move, he was affable and respected by the staff and consumers alike. Breezing through the room, he approached and stuck his out hand, as if to say “Jean Van Roy, Captain of the S.S. Lambic. Glad to have you aboard on our journey today!”

His first lieutenant checked in periodically to give details about the preparations for the day. Below the wood deck, crewmembers worked to secure the supplies and move barrels and sacks of barley. It appeared the S.S. Lambic was sailing well at that moment.

Jean’s father, in the role of the ship’s doctor, greeted new travelers, documenting where they were from. One by one, he opened their bottles of lambic and sent them off to meet their fellow passengers. The queen mother tended to the storefront, where provisions and trinkets signifying the journey were being sold, gathered for takeaway back to the visitors’ home countries. All of this theater-in-the-round took place while brewing continued in the back of the building. It was a scene like no other brewery tour I have been on.

Chicago is almost the polar opposite of Flagstaff, AZ, home to Northern Arizona University and The Lumberjacks. About the only thing these two places have in common is that both can get quite windy from time to time and I’ve heard last call uttered more times than I can remember in both these cities. Because of this, I have a soft spot in my drinking heart for them both.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to explain why a city needs a plethora of dive bars and juke joints if it hopes to maintain a shred of credibility. Luckily, there’s no shortage of these in Flagstaff. My collegiate favorite was Charly’s. I quickly came to appreciate Charly’s as a silvering institution in downtown when I discovered my laughingly fake ID instantly made me a man at this fine establishment.

The windowless smoky watering hole was dominated by its pervasive bourbon, straight, no-chaser attitude. The rotting floor under the pool table slanted toward the Grand Canyon. Every Sunday a new acoustic trio plucked bass strings as cool-hand Luke brushed the snare drum from a corner stage.

Some were touring groups passing through Flagstaff pausing long enough to tune up on their way to Phoenix. Others were much more baby-faced, toting their inexperience and aspirations of grandeur to the stage in hopes of becoming the next big thing. From time to time we were blessed by the presence of a gifted trumpet player dissecting classics, adding new layers and riffs. The whole concept of drinking and shooting pool while new bands closed out each Sunday night was so very hip and entirely college-like.

Late-night Sundays brought early Mondays where I constantly nodded off during intro to music. The professor often reminded us that there is nothing more quintessentially American than jazz. For more than 100 years, it has moved in and out of the American fabric, allowing a group of craftsmen to weave the most amazing tapestry that we recognize as jazz. But if you distill it down to the core, jazz musicians are just people making music. What makes these greats legendary is the manner in which they are inspired to seek out new and unusual opportunities with their instruments as they hone their craft.

At our core, brewers are people who make beer. Yet the brewers I spend more time with consider themselves more artist than scientist. It leads me to wonder: Has craft brewing become another quintessential American form of expression? What if in the midst of this great American craft brewing revolution, brewers are acting more like jazz legends riffing their way through classics on their way to bigger, bolder and more amazing flavors?

In 1992, Greg Hall from Goose Island Beer Co. in Chicago might very well have become the first American brewer to produce a bourbon-barrel-aged beer when he filled six oak barrels that previously contained Jim Beam. He poured this experiment at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver that fall, inducing rumors, appreciative nods and whispers of something entirely new. Sure, the beer looked like beer, but clearly this was something altogether different. His improv succeeded and in doing so launched an entirely new genre of beer. While I wasn’t there, it clearly was a landmark release and pointed the compass of brewing down a new road.

Craft brewing has traditionally been best served by artisans who adopted a handcrafted mantra to separate themselves from megabreweries. Yet many craft brewers are now cranking out beer on systems that look as if they are being guided by the ground crew from NASA’s Mission Control. Specialized mechanization and machines have relegated handcrafted to the click of a mouse as computers are handling more than ever before.

Automation has created fewer opportunities for tradesmen to learn from a master anymore. Where once it was common for the unskilled to be apprentices before joining the work force, the term now rarely comes up in conversation unless, of course, you’re talking about reality TV show involving Donald Trump. Thing is, it used to be that to learn skills in life, you had to spend years working as an apprentice to become a true craftsman.

I’ve been lucky enough to apprentice several skills since my youth, culminating most recently in the art and science of brewing. I’m certain my first apprenticeship began some 30 years ago when Prometheus (my father) let me build—then ignite—the family campfire for the very first time. This was the first of many different father-son apprenticeships I would spend under his tutelage.

That summer, I mastered the art of splitting oak logs into kindling. We then perfected crinkling newspaper before moving on to thermal engineering and the structural design of making a teepee out of small splintered logs. As summer came to close, I was allowed to strike my first match to the edifice I had erected, thus ending my campfire-building apprenticeship. We celebrated by making s’mores.

As a lover of amazing spirited liquids, I have come to respect the mighty oak. While not quite as regal as the majestic redwood, the mighty oak is truly one bad-ass and versatile tree. From the humble smoking pits of Austin, TX, to the cellars of Bordeaux, oak remains the portal to our pre-Industrial Revolution woodworking past. It also connects us to a skilled labor force known as coopers who remain the stewards of an Old World tradition of bending oak staves into liquid-tight barrels.

Amazingly there are more than 500 species of oak in the world, yet barrel builders typically rely on only three species for building wine and spirit barrels. Yet, in spite of the automation creep into industries all around the world, the use of oak for barrel production, aging of spirits and storage remains a patient slog.

The mighty oak is a slow-growing tree and exists as the preferred material for barrel making, since it is a pure wood free from resins. American oak species grow at a rate about double that of French counterparts. Sourced trees must reach at least 50-80 feet before being harvested. This growth takes at least 50 years. Some of the most prized French oak trees can take between 80 and 150 years to become harvestable.

Once suitable trees have been located, they are cut down and sent for processing. Typically only the base of the tree below the first limb offshoots is suitable for barrel production. Each tree yields enough oak to make only one or two 59-gallon barrels.

After the logs are broken down into pieces called staves, they are sent out to an outdoor maturation area where they will “silver” in the elements for two years. This process breaks down many of the harsher tannins, making the staves better suited for aging precious liquids. The process of sourcing suitable wood is a slow one. It’s just not the sort of wood you select from the lumber yard.

A stunning sexy shiny brand new American oak barrel answers:

“I have longed for this day since I was a tiny little oaky seedling. So, for better or worse, I do.”

Brewer with filling wand in hand:

“You may now kiss the bride.” (Brewer begins filling the empty barrel.)

Later, the newly joined Mr. and Mrs. Firestone Walker Double Barrel Ale dance together as husband and wife for the first time as Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt tearfully croon:

I don’t know much

But I know I love you

And that may be

All I need to know …

Amid a flurry of cheers, the stunning oaky bride and her new ale husband are sent off to honeymoon where they will slumber together for one week. She’ll lavish him with drying tannic kisses as he softly bathes her inner staves with an intoxicating caramel wash. Their consummated union will soon nurture stubby, little brown progeny sent out into the world as striking examples of a marriage made in heaven. And with each sip, the world will confirm what the brewers already knew—Quercus alba and ale can indeed be suitable life partners, and Firestone Double Barrel Ale showcases this with stunning clarity.