Heavy Metal Beers: California Wild Ales Goes Crazy With New Sour
Heavy Metal Beers: California Wild Ales Goes Crazy With New Sour
(Courtesy California Wild Ales)
Heavy metal music has long been part of the craft brewery soundscape. You visit a brewery and more often than not, that’s the music playing in the background.
That’s not a surprise.
Both cultures tend to celebrate independence, excess and doing things their own way, which also explains why brewers have spent years collaborating with metal bands, naming beers after songs and generally finding excuses to put skulls, demons and other assorted darkness on beer labels.
Now California Wild Ales is getting in on the act with a new barrel-aged sour that pays unmistakable tribute to one of heavy metal’s most legendary figures without ever actually using his full name.
The San Diego brewery has released Ozzy Oz-Orange, a 6% ABV Blood Orange & Cherry Sour that is now pouring at its Ocean Beach and Point Loma tasting rooms.
And no, California Wild Ales never actually calls this an Ozzy Osbourne beer.
But between a beer called Ozzy Oz-Orange, bats, round sunglasses, crosses, a purple monster and an invitation to climb aboard the “crazy train,” you don’t exactly need a degree in heavy metal history to figure out where the inspiration came from.
Even the brewery describes the beer as being inspired by the “rebellious spirit of heavy metal,” while stopping short of making any official connection to the late Black Sabbath frontman.
But the beer itself is considerably more serious than its name.
Ozzy Oz-Orange began as a mixed-fermentation wild ale that spent approximately 12 months aging in American oak barrels, developing the tart acidity, funk, vanilla and oak character associated with traditional barrel-aged wild beer.
After its year-long maturation, the beer was conditioned on locally sourced blood oranges and cherries, with the citrus supplying much of its aroma and tartness and the cherries adding a darker fruit component.
The finished beer clocks in at 6% ABV and is available only on draft for a limited time.
And in 2026, that kind of beer is becoming an increasingly specialized proposition.
Wild and barrel-aged sour ales were once among the most adventurous frontiers of American craft brewing, with breweries devoting enormous amounts of time, cellar space and money to beers that could take months or even years to reach consumers.
But today’s slowing craft beer marketplace is a very different place.
With overall craft beer production continuing to contract and consumers increasingly gravitating toward more familiar, approachable styles, painstaking mixed-fermentation and barrel-aged wild ales occupy an even more niche corner of an already crowded beer landscape..
But California Wild Ales owns that corner.
“Wild beer and heavy metal have a lot in common,” California Wild Ales co-founder Bill DeWitt said. “Neither one was created to quietly follow the rules. They can be loud, unconventional, and a little unpredictable, and that’s exactly what makes them interesting.”
And if you’re going to release a year-old barrel-aged wild ale into today’s increasingly cautious craft beer marketplace, naming it after the Prince of Darkness isn’t the craziest thing you could do.
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And while we’re at it, there’s this…
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