making a sour

[dad_of_jon]

Hi Y'all,

I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to make a sour.

My research has led me to the following....

Do the usual 15 min boil minus hops, let it cool to bacteria friendly temps.
Add in a greek yogurt starter. once ph drops to reasonable amount re-boil. (Kettle sour)

Then follow my usual process add yeast as normal but add with the dregs from a bottle of boon oude gueze.
Brewing is being done in old equipment due to be replaced :-)

Any thoughts/ideas/advice?

 

[Zephyr259]

Sounds like a good starting experiment. What you using malt-wise? Lambic style with pale/pilsner and wheat?

I'm going to be brewing my brett beers at the end of the month but they're getting brett in secondary so I have a clean beer to compare, and something to show for the time/ingredients if the brett versions suck. Also growing up sour dregs from one of @rats_eyes beers.

Good luck.

 

[strange-steve]

I suppose it depends what sort of thing you want. If you want a nice quick, clean sour like a Berliner weisse then kettle souring as you describe is a good way of doing it.

If however you want something a bit more funky and lambic-like, which I'm guessing you do, then kettle souring isn't really necessary because you'll be in for a long wait anyway. You can just brew as normal but pitch something like WLP655 along with your lambic dregs for some added complexity.

 

[dad_of_jon]

thanks guys, I'm going to be doing a DME beer so probably 1kg of wheat and 2kg of extra light. I do enjoy the full range of sours from flemish red, to berliner weisse and onto oude geuze so manbe i'll drink 1/2 the batch young and age the other half for a year or 3.

 

[Zephyr259]

A potential issue I see there is that the bugs in the dregs might cause the beer to not be very pleasant when young as they'll be busy working so you might have to leave the whole batch for some time. My plan is to brew a full batch of beer then bottle half clean to drink quicker and age the other half with brett and/or souring bugs.

 

[stigman]

I've been contemplating a kettle sour NEIPA who thinks it will work?

 

[Sadfield]

I've been contemplating a kettle sour NEIPA who thinks it will work?

Me. The lower pH should temper any bitterness and enhance fruitiness. I have a Sour IPA in the brew list, although I'm aiming for something more west coast like Buxton Trolltunga using Blanc hops. I'll be using probiotic lactobacillus plantarum as my bacteria source.

 

[strange-steve]

I've been contemplating a kettle sour NEIPA who thinks it will work?

I've had a few hoppy Berliners and the combo works really well imo. Go for it!

 

[Oneiroi]

I’ve literally just done my first sour this week, DME and same process you outlined. Can’t wait to see how it turns out.

I used a Lacto Brevis vial from white labs (£3 from lhbs) which apparently isn’t the best for quick spurs & I
had a bit of trouble getting the ph down low enough. Things I’ll try differently/recommend:

- check best temps for the strain of lacto, they vary a little
- pre acidifying to 4.5 before pitching lacto can help reduce the buffering capacity of the wort
- maybe make a small starter even for little batches


I used US-05 in 3.45 ph wort and it looks like it’s flown through it, lots of bubbles good Krausen etc. Gonna add a bunch of raspberries from the garden to one half tomorrow


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[F00b4r]

I suppose it depends what sort of thing you want. If you want a nice quick, clean sour like a Berliner weisse then kettle souring as you describe is a good way of doing it.

If however you want something a bit more funky and lambic-like, which I'm guessing you do, then kettle souring isn't really necessary because you'll be in for a long wait anyway. You can just brew as normal but pitch something like WLP655 along with your lambic dregs for some added complexity.

The might have been true until the last few years but German craft brewers have been getting hold of 50 (?) year old Berliner Weiss bottles and extracting the lacto and brett (and yeast?) from them to make Berliner Weiss like it was brewed for hundreds of years, definitely not like a kettle sour.
The ones I have had so far are really interesting beers and I should be getting too try it quite a few of the others in a couple of weeks at the Berliner Weiss Summit:

https://www.facebook.com/events/251349952088263/?ti=ia

The Stone Brewing one the will however be a kettle sour one though as I know that they will not allow contamination of their Berlin plant with non standard yeast/bacteria (they are one of the two main sponsors of a yearly Berlin home brew contest and brew the winning beer for sale and specifically banned mixed fermentation beers; pretty cool having Stone be your beer though, although I was abroad at this year and you have to attend on the day, a real shame as I really wanted to get involved and see how good the German homebrewers were at other styles).

 

[Sadfield]

The might have been true until the last few years but German craft brewers have been getting hold of 50 (?) year old Berliner Weiss bottles and extracting the lacto and brett (and yeast?) from them to make Berliner Weiss like it was brewed for hundreds of years, definitely not like a kettle sour.
The ones I have had so far are really interesting beers and I should be getting too try it quite a few of the others in a couple of weeks at the Berliner Weiss Summit:

https://www.facebook.com/events/251349952088263/?ti=ia

The Stone Brewing one the will however be a kettle sour one though as I know that they will not allow contamination of their Berlin plant with non standard yeast/bacteria (they are one of the two main sponsors of a yearly Berlin home brew contest and brew the winning beer for sale and specifically banned mixed fermentation beers; pretty cool having Stone be your beer though, although I was abroad at this year and you have to attend on the day, a real shame as I really wanted to get involved and see how good the German homebrewers were at other styles).

Those bottles would likely have some pre-soured element to them. Kettle/Mash souring isn't a recent invention.

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Berliner_Weissbier

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[strange-steve]

@F00b4r
Of course you're right that a Berliner was traditionally fermented with brett, my point was only that if a mixed-fermentation lambic style beer was the intention then kettle souring isn't really necessary.

 

[F00b4r]

Those bottles would likely have some pre-soured element to them. Kettle/Mash souring isn't a recent invention.

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Berliner_Weissbier

Sent from my E5823 using Tapatalk

Probably, if memory serves Ron P has mentioned quite a few different methods were used by Berlin brewers to achieve the end result.

 

[F00b4r]

@F00b4r
Of course you're right that a Berliner was traditionally fermented with brett, my point was only that if a mixed-fermentation lambic style beer was the intention then kettle souring isn't really necessary.

Sorry that was laziness on my part, I really meant to just write the first half of your post.
I'm going to see if I can get hold of the mixed culture though as some of these brewers at the event started off as homebrewers.
That said, I am actually doing a kettle sour version this week, and going to split it three/four ways to test out different fruits (and maybe some Brett with one), much quicker to get an idea of what fruit works really well before having to do "slow beer" and it can still be pretty good.

 

[strange-steve]

Sorry that was laziness on my part, I really meant to just write the first half of your post.
I'm going to see if I can get hold of the mixed culture though as some of these brewers at the event started off as homebrewers.
That said, I am actually doing a kettle sour version this week, and going to split it three/four ways to test out different fruits (and maybe some Brett with one), much quicker to get an idea of what fruit works really well before having to do "slow beer" and it can still be pretty good.

Good luck with the brews, it's a style I'm keen to revisit soon myself.

 

[dad_of_jon]

can't believe it's been 5 months since I made a batch. Will have to crack one open when I come off shift xmas morning or better to leave it till after xmas dinner to cut throught the rich food