First sour saison

Towards the end of this week I plan on brewing my first sour. The base beer will be a saison that I intend to ferment with Wyeast 3724 Belgian saison, then rack into secondary with Wyest 3753 Roesalare Blend. Months down the road, and before bottling, I plan on racking it onto some cherries, hoping for a sour cherry saison in the end. Since this is my first "sour" fermentation, I was wondering if I should plan on working up a starter for the Roesalare blend (smack pack dated 6/2013). Any other words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated!

You don't want a starter with Roselare. It's a very specific blend of yeasts, and it's supposed to grow at a fairly calculated rate in five gallons of wort. I'm not totally sure how this "calibration" is supposed to scale to different gravities, but this is the conventional wisdom.

What I'd suggest is... do two 5-gal batches, one with each yeast. Blend them afterward. Delicious success, and you have ten gallons of it!

Don't make a starter - the smack pack comes with a distinct ratio of bugs.

Also, I recommend skipping 3274 and pitching just the Roselare. In my experience the roselare is a relatively tame blend the first time out of the smack pack. It will have more time and food (more sour) if you pitch it as the primary yeast/blend. You can add a little extra yeast if it makes you comfortable to get a nice strong start, but roselare already has a belgian yeast strain in it.

Thanks for the quick feedback. Since I have a pouch of each, I will likely work up a 10-gallon batch, splitting 5 with the Roesalare and 5 with the regular saison strain. Guess I could eventually end up with 3 different batches: saison only, blended, and Roesalare only.

Any feedback on how long to let the Roesalare work before bottling? Obviously ensuring it's at final gravity, just curious what people's individual experience is with how long it takes to work its magic?

Kerin said:

You don't want a starter with Roselare. It's a very specific blend of yeasts, and it's supposed to grow at a fairly calculated rate in five gallons of wort. I'm not totally sure how this "calibration" is supposed to scale to different gravities, but this is the conventional wisdom.

What I'd suggest is... do two 5-gal batches, one with each yeast. Blend them afterward. Delicious success, and you have ten gallons of it!

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The Roselare's going to need at least six months, after you combine the two batches. Sours need time.

I'd advise you to go ahead and do the split batch, though, because while Roselare is a tame blend (with a belgian strain in it, as blizzard remarks) I don't think it's going to give you any saison character, which generally doesn't come from the malt or hops.

Your other option is to do a lacto sour... do your mash, then instead of boiling cool to 110, throw in a bag of unmashed grain, and wait a couple days until it sours from the bacteria. Then heat 'er back up to a boil and do your 60-minute hopping schedule as normal. This will yield a less complex sour, generally, but it's pretty controllable... you get exactly as much sour as you want, as long as you have time to start the boil when it hits the sweet spot.

Though then you'd need to find something else to do with your Roselare.

So as I prep my 3724 Belgian Saision starter, here's my tentative plan for tomorrow's brew session.

Brew a 10-gallon saison batch.

Ferment 5-gallons with 3724 Belgian Saison. Bottle as normal when fermentation is complete.

Ferment 2.5 gallons with 3763 Roeselare
Ferment 2.5 gallons with Belle Saison
Once the Belle Saison has completed its primary fermentation, blend the 2.5 gallon batches together, and begin the waiting process. Once ready, rack onto cherries, then bottle, cage, and cork.

Any obvious downsides? I'm definitely interested in experimenting with some blends, but since I don't have the ability to tie up my 2 primary fermenters for up to a year, this should give me the opportunity to still experiment, and have something to drink in between.

The thing with sour saisons is that they end up just tasting like a dry sourish blond ale. The peppery and estery flavors get broken down by the Brett lea ing you with a comparatively tame flavor from the saison yeast. You get some funk mild yeast flavor and a nice sour/bitter character ter that ive grown to quite like. I have tried this a few ways and right now my sour "saison" is a 1.037 wort with 30% spelt and about 20-25ibus along with an equal amount of aged hops. The yeast is a culture of lambic yeasts I indiscriminately grew simply out of bottle sediment. The latest batch is close to bottling and I only made it around 5 months ago.

Maybe he should bottle each separately and mix at the pour.

Haha. . Slight modification to my plan. Using the 2.5 gallon fermenters, I lose the ability to transfer both the wort and the yeast come time to blend. So, I'm thinking I will still ferment the 5-gallon batch with the saison yeast, then ferment the other 5-gallons with the Belle Saison and Roesalaire simultaneously. Then down the road, I'm going to split each of the batches with and without cherries, giving me a total of 4 different variations. What the hell - it should turn out to be beer, right?'

Kerin said:

Maybe he should bottle each separately and mix at the pour.

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kscarrington said:

Haha. . Slight modification to my plan. Using the 2.5 gallon fermenters, I lose the ability to transfer both the wort and the yeast come time to blend. So, I'm thinking I will still ferment the 5-gallon batch with the saison yeast, then ferment the other 5-gallons with the Belle Saison and Roesalaire simultaneously. Then down the road, I'm going to split each of the batches with and without cherries, giving me a total of 4 different variations. What the hell - it should turn out to be beer, right?'

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You're sounding like a complete goddamn maniac. In the best possible way.

Brew on, sir. I want to hear how each variant turns out.

I know the best way to make sour beer. Get at me if you are interested.

JBuz said:

I know the best way to make sour beer. Get at me if you are interested.

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The sour boil I mentioned before would sour without harming the saison-ey flavor. Is that what you're talking about?

JBuz said:

I know the best way to make sour beer. Get at me if you are interested.

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Let it be heard. I'm always interested in hearing how people are doing soured beers.

To me the best way is just adding a sour culture (I think the Roeselare sacch is a saison strain) and letting it play out. You end up with the appropriate sour character and a nicely complex beer. I don't know how roeselare would play out in a saison on its own due to the claims of it being tame. Additionally I think the spicy "saison" flavors are attributed to the widely held standard of Dupont. That and pure culture techniques have removed the brett and bacteria that I am sure was in all the saisons of the past. Sure brett and so forth is making a bit of a come back, but the "saisons should taste like Dupont" viewpoint has already put people's mind in a box. So for some style geeks if you make a beer and call it a saison and it doesn't resemble Dupont they'll claim it's not a saison or whatever.

So I say brew on and call it saison. I'd just add Roesalare from the start with no additional saison yeast (at least in one fermentor) because like I mentioned, I believe the sacch. strain is a saison yeast in the culture blend. Also don't be worried about underpitching with a souring culture like Roesalare I do it intentionally. I drastically underpitch my lambics/sour saisons with great end results. I base that on cell counts done on "American Coolship Ales" that was published in a paper listing the cell density near 1mil/ml/degree plato at the PEAK of fermentation. So I drastically underpitch to lightly mimic that.

What. A. Day! So, I worked up the 10-gallon batch starting at 8am, hit my mash-in temp almost dead on, and ended up deciding to take the RIMS system for a test-drive. While initially I had a fast-enough circulation rate and was watching the temp steadily increase to the set-value, at some point I decided to slow down the flow. Bad move. I think I know the factors involved, but in any case, after completing the boil and preparing to cool and pitch, something didn't seem right. I pulled off a sample and it tasted bitter. Not wanting to just be paranoid I gave my wife a small sample, which she described as bitter as well. Long story short, I ended dumping out the entire batch, and started over from scratch. As much as I hated to do it, I would rather waste the grain and 5-hours of work, rather than waste weeks and months to end up with burnt ass saison and a sour burnt ass saision. Thankfully I was able to scrounge up enough Hallertau and more wheat malt, and started round 2 at around 2:30pm. By 8:30pm, the house and garage were cleaned, and I now have 2 carboys sitting in the corner. In the end, I did a 5-gallon batch with the Belgian Saison, and a 5-gallon batch with just the Roesalare. I'll work on prepping the aquarium heater to start ramping up the fermentation temperature for the Belgian Saison once I start to see signs of active fermentation.

I've never gone through an entire 50-pound sack of grain in 1 day before. Have to admit, it felt kind of good! Although, next time I would rather have twice as many fermenters full!

After a 12.5 hour brew day, and a shower, I'm going to finish my pint glass and call it a night. I appreciate everyone's comments and feedback. I'm patiently looking forward to the eventual outcome(s).

Wow, what an adventure. I'm a BIABer with little understanding of RIMS processes, so forgive the dumb question - what made the grain bitter? Tannin extraction due to low flow in a heating coil somewhere?

I believe the primary cause was slowing the circulation of the wort through the RIMS tube, allowing excessive wort contact with the element. An easy comparison is a coffee pot that had been left on a burner, or when you get a drink from a coffee shop and the coffee is burned. It just has that underlying bitterness about it.

I'm going to have to take my system for a test drive with just water before I feel comfortable enough to attempt another brew with it.

All that being said, the carboy with the Belgian Saison is working away. And to think I was concerned a 24-hour starter wasn't going to be sufficient. This is 13-hours after pitching. And yes, it now has a blow-off tube!

Kerin said:

Wow, what an adventure. I'm a BIABer with little understanding of RIMS processes, so forgive the dumb question - what made the grain bitter? Tannin extraction due to low flow in a heating coil somewhere?

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Sad that you had to dump 10 gallons, but your plan for the 10 gallons from round 2 sounds awesome. I'll definitely be curious how all the variations turn out.

It was one of the toughest brewing decisions that I've had to make, to throw away that much time, grain, and resources. As I sit on the couch, listening to both carboys chugging away, I know I made the right decision!

signpost said:

Sad that you had to dump 10 gallons, but your plan for the 10 gallons from round 2 sounds awesome. I'll definitely be curious how all the variations turn out.

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You have no idea how much I was appreciating the simplicity of BIAB Saturday afternoon/evening. I'm currently sitting on the couch, winding down from my "Monday", drinking the last bomber of bourbon vanilla porter that I made from my BIAB days!

Kerin said:

I'm a BIAB

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Absolutely. If the mash doesn't taste good, none of it can.

So you went from BIAB to RIMS? I don't know a lot of people who made that particular switch. What made you take the leap?

It wasn't a direct switch, but rather a gradual migration. Went from BIAB to using a 5-gallon cooler mash tun around January. Appreciated the ability to have greater control over the brew session, and the unbelievably clear wort it produced. Ended up picking up a keg from a brew friend to convert into a mash tun. Based on the volume and lack of insulation, I decided it would be a good excuse to build up a RIMS system. I've done 2 or 3 brews on the most current system (10-gallon HLT, 15-gallon keg mash tun with false bottom, 15.5 gallon BK, using a pump to transfer the majority of the liquids), before I decided to give the RIMS system a trial.

Kerin said:

So you went from BIAB to RIMS? I don't know a lot of people who made that particular switch. What made you take the leap?

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Sorry its been a few days. Zymurgy Vol.34 No.2 pg 36.
If you don't have it let me know.

Things are moving right along with both batches. The other day I pulled a sample of the Roesalaire blend. Good flavor, already starting to pick up some sour notes.

I was getting concerned with the non-sour batch, as 3 weeks into fermentation it was still hovering around 1.030. I started it at room temperature, and once fermentation signs were visible I began ramping up the temps about 2° a day, and it's been sitting steadily at 83°. Decided to be patient and ride it out, and I was pleasantly surprised that it's now at about 1.014. Looks like I can save that emergency packet of 05 for another batch! I'll give it another week or so to finish out, then will split the batch into cherry and non-cherry.

My saison isn't behaving - stopped at 1016, which is when I shrugged my shoulders and bottled it. Still pretty tasty - it was a desert beer in the first place, with noble hops and honey malt - but not as dry as I wanted. Probably oxygenation.

Try some yeast nutrient if you don't get much more out of the yeast.

Trail said:

Your other option is to do a lacto sour... do your mash, then instead of boiling cool to 110, throw in a bag of unmashed grain, and wait a couple days until it sours from the bacteria. Then heat 'er back up to a boil and do your 60-minute hopping schedule as normal. This will yield a less complex sour, generally, but it's pretty controllable... you get exactly as much sour as you want, as long as you have time to start the boil when it hits the sweet spot.

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I do BIAB in a 44 qt bayou classic with fryer basket/bag. Using this method, I could just do my normal mash, let it cool to 110 like you say, then put a handful of grain in a hop bag, tie it to the handle, cover the BK in saran wrap or something and let it sit for a few days. Once it reaches sour enough flavor, boil and add hops as usual.

This would essentially allow me to brew a sour without having to buy separate equipment or worry about cross contamination, right? Or am I missing something?

How many days does it take to reach a detectable sour flavor?

I racked half of the non-sour variant onto a pound of sweet cherries, will probably bottle in about a week or so. FG ended up hitting 1.004.