Mirror, mirror, on the wall, what’s the fairest beer of all? Well, I don’t like beer. But trust me—Iron Tug Brewing sours have changed my mind.
I’ve tried time and time again to hop on the beer train. I would love to go from one brewery to the next, picking out my favorite ales, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t acquire the taste. Sour beers, however, have my heart. And the ones at Iron Tug? Best in town.
I’m currently sipping on Iron Tug’s Pear Pie Sour from the Shore Leave series. Of the four I tasted, this one ranked lowest on my scale, but it’s still delicious. The sour tang is prominent, but the sweet pear taste left lingering on my tongue soothes any bitterness.
Iron Tug was established in 2016, but current owner Mike Nulton became involved in 2020 when the taproom on Park Avenue opened its doors. The team is small, with Zack Allard as head brewer, Georgina Konecny as taproom manager, and a handful of bartenders. Allard came aboard in 2022 with ten years of experience and two breweries under his belt, bringing new recipes and flavors to the brand.
“I knew right away brewing was something I could see myself doing. You’re going to be wet, you’re going to be tired, you’re going to lift extremely heavy things all day . . . but the smells, the sounds, the busting your hands all the time—I thought, ‘yeah, this is for me,’” Allard says.
So, what exactly is a sour beer? To put it simply, it’s just a beer with a lower pH. You essentially want the beer to produce lactic acid, which drops the pH and sours the beer. Allard also uses aseptic fruit puree, which can be added at different times to create distinct flavors.
“Normally people take a bacteria, put it directly into a beer, and then that would convert some of the sugars into lactic acid and sour the beer,” Allard says. “Science has kind of caught up with the brewing industry, so we actually use a yeast that produces lactic acid as opposed to adding bacteria. So, I’ll brew normal beer [and] put yeast in it like I would any other beer, but the byproduct is alcohol, and that’s sour. It eliminates some unnecessary steps and makes the process a little bit safer, and we’re one of the fewer breweries that are doing it.”
A typical brew day for Allard consists of six to eight hours of crushing grain; filling tanks with water; getting the tanks to proper temperatures; and determining the sweetness or dryness of the beer, alcohol percentage, water chemistry, pH, minerals and chemicals needed; boiling; and cleaning—a lot of cleaning. But before he can even start that lengthy process, Allard spends a few hours at the drawing board, perfecting different recipes. About half the recipes at Iron Tug existed before Allard joined the team, and the other half are his creations.
“If it’s food, you can turn it into beer,” Allard says. “People get really weirded out by the amount of different beer flavors there are, but it’s just cooking with liquid. A lot of my recipes are somewhat spontaneous. I’ll either come up with a name and, years later, come to fruition with it, or maybe I’ll see a combination of fruits that spark something—‘this could go good with this, or this would be perfect for this season.’ In the store, I’ll walk through the juice aisle or a food aisle and get ideas like that. If you can imagine a flavor, you can make it with beer.”
Coming in third place from my flight (but really, tied for second) is the L.L. Brew J. I’m obsessed with the strong lemon zing. It’s not too sour and tastes a little wheaty, but it’s more pungent than the Shore Leave Pear Pie Sour currently sitting in fourth.
Iron Tug has some beers that stay on tap year-round, such as the Fathom Lines New England IPA and Tug Light Lager, but many crowd favorites rotate through. For sours, the Shore Leave series is a collection with the same base recipe of beer, but the fruit and spices change with the seasons.
“For springtime, we’ll have a peach cobbler and a cherry cobbler—things like that. For summertime, we have orange creamsicle, blueberry cobbler, things of that nature,” Allard says. “All the cobblers are pretty popular; we do a key lime pie in the summertime people love, the orange creamsicle is a hit . . . they all have their moment in the sun.”
I round off my flight with two more sours from the Shore Leave series. Tied for second place was the Apple Pie Sour, and bringing home the gold was the Mango Sour. Both were phenomenal and full of flavor, but the mango taste blew me away.
Allard has me try Iron Tug’s Raspberry Wheat Ale which, disclaimer, is not a sour beer, and you know how I feel about that. But to my surprise, I like it. Now, obviously it has a stronger “beer” taste and minimal sour tones, but it is a little thicker from the raspberry fruit puree and went down easy.
Other non-sour beers at Iron Tug include Random Company; Sweet Potato Pie Amber Ale made from roasted sweet potatoes, brown sugar, and marshmallows; Barley One; Boatmeal Stout; and CTHULU, a Triple IPA, which clocks in at ten-and-a-half percent ABV.
Setting the excellent beers aside, Iron Tug also serves wines, ciders, seltzers, and spirits. There are events all the time—euchre nights, weekly trivia, music bingo, and live music performances on the back patio in the summer. All the details, from the drink recipes, to the decor, to the little touches like the beer claw machine and complimentary popcorn, create the coziest atmosphere.
Two new changes are coming this spring: long-awaited front patios and a full kitchen.
“We are partnering with Bubby’s Barbeque—he will be serving his amazing food out of kitchen. He has arguably the best barbeque in the greater Rochester area, and we are very excited to create an amazing menu pairing his barbeque and our beer,” Nulton says. You can find more information on Iron Tug’s menu, events, and booking at irontugbrewing.com or through social media at @irontugbrewing and @bubbysbbq.
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of (585).
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