sheepdawgg

Recipes 

anyone thought of using a crockpot to incubate a lacto starter/sour mash? it seems to be holding it right about 105 degrees on the low setting. i potched a wl lacto vial 18 hrs ago and now theres a bubble every 5 seconds. just make sure theres water in there.

todd46

Recipes 

Clever, I like it

tugbucket

Recipes 

muwahahaha, now I can use that crockpot before it gets cold out and she wants to use it for borsch

dcHokie

Recipes 

is that a glass gallon jug?

i had thought about using my crockpot for a sour-mash, but had lent out my big Erlenmeyer and got cold feet about using a standard glass vessel unattended.

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Fermenting/Aging: Wild Ale, Repas du Matin Sour Table Beer, Flanders Red, Sour Solera, Le Batard Saison Solera, 3Brett Saison, Brett English Brown, OudBruin, Sour Solera, Lambic, Sour Stout, Barleywine Barrel
Bottled/Kegged: Brett Belgian Rye Stout, Berliner Weisse, FlandersPale, FunkyDirtyBlonde, Brett Old Ale, Dark Saison, Brett IPA, Orval clone, Funky Fig Saison, Mango BGSA, JP Bam clone, Rapture RIS, '09 RIS, '10 Oak Barleywine

Fred82

Recipes 

Yeah I did the same thing on my last Berliner Weisse. I used a regular growler, filled it with some of my unboiled wort and a handful of raw grain and left it there for about 7 days. Used mine on "warm" setting and it held pretty close to 100F... it's pretty slow to start though.

Only hassle was that the max amount of time the crockpot could stay on was 8 hours so temperature sometimes had time to go down a bit before I could start it up again.

The resulting was pretty darn sour. The smell was borderline bearable when I blended this back in the clean fermented beer. It's been 3 weeks in bottle now and it's quite sour already but there are still some off flavors that cleaned up with time on the previous batch so I'll give it some more time.

I think I'll leave the lacto starter for only 3 days next time. It keeps souring in the bottle anyways and I like to be able to enjoy a few easy drinking ones before the sourness gets more intense and limits drinkability. I also fear I may have developed some off flavors by leaving the lacto starter for so long but I need to give the beer more time in bottle before I can judge.

ReverseApacheMaster

Recipes 

I always add the sour mash/sour wort pre-boil so between the boil and fermentation it blows out all those unwanted smells and flavors, leaving behind a cleanly tart beer. That may not be an option if your soured portion will drop the ph so low the yeast won't ferment but if you are successfully bottle conditioning it doesn't sound like that is your situation.

sheepdawgg

Recipes 

The temperature change isn't fast enough to break the glass. Even if It turns off in the middle of the night it will take a few hours.

A side note... I turned it up to just under 120 and the Krausen went away and the bubbles slowed down to one every twenty seconds. Let it fall back to 105 and my little buggers took off again.... Interesting stuff, hope I didn't hurt their feelings

Fred82

Recipes 

Hey, good point there, I could try this out next time. That being said, I like the fact that my beer continue to evolve (and sour) in the bottle and I don't think that would be the case after boiling the whole thing. Still worth a try just to see what kind of profile I could get with this.

Double_D

Recipes 

That's awesome! I just used my little cooler last time and added hot water periodically.

ReverseApacheMaster

Recipes 

Definitely will not continue to evolve in the bottle if you boil the sour mash/sour wort but it's an option if you are getting too much DMS or other off flavors.