Fast sour brown ale

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
rexbanner

rexbanner

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 8, 2008
Messages
1,378
Reaction score
102
Location
DC
So a helpful brewer told me about the fast sour technique recently. You know, the method where you mash and divide the wort in half. Then you boil and ferment one half as normal, and take the other half and add lacto, let sit, and afterwards boil and ferment as normal. Then blend.

My plan is to make a beer like this:

10 lbs pils
1 lb caramunich
.5 lb aromatic
.5 lb special b
15 ibu ekg

I'd like to use all brett to ferment it, was thinking of brett b. I love brett, the more medicinal taste the better. Sound good? Any suggestions? I'd like to ferment on raspberries as well after primary.
 
Are you planning on inoculating with a pure lacto culture or doing the crushed raw grain roulette game?

I only ask because I just did this with a wit. The pure culture went nuts for 2 days and began producing seriously raunchy fart odors. I had to run the fermentation exhaust through an gas mask canister to scrub the odors. I have since added yeast (with out boiling) and it is starting to dissipate. I think it was a hardcore diacetyl production from the bacteria. I might have to give it a quick boil before blending but we'll see since I already added yeast. I am sort of doing this as a loose experiment of the Lacambre method of brewing wit.
 
smokinghole said:
Are you planning on inoculating with a pure lacto culture or doing the crushed raw grain roulette game?

I only ask because I just did this with a wit. The pure culture went nuts for 2 days and began producing seriously raunchy fart odors. I had to run the fermentation exhaust through an gas mask canister to scrub the odors. I have since added yeast (with out boiling) and it is starting to dissipate. I think it was a hardcore diacetyl production from the bacteria. I might have to give it a quick boil before blending but we'll see since I already added yeast. I am sort of doing this as a loose experiment of the Lacambre method of brewing wit.
Click to expand...

I am planning on using the pure culture. I'm going to be brewing this in a few hours so hopefully you'll see this before then.

I was under the impression that boiling and fermentation would scrub any nasty flavors/odors produced by the lacto. Also, does lacto release any type of gas? I thought it didn't. I don't want to annoy my roommates.
 
rexbanner said:
I am planning on using the pure culture. I'm going to be brewing this in a few hours so hopefully you'll see this before then.

I was under the impression that boiling and fermentation would scrub any nasty flavors/odors produced by the lacto. Also, does lacto release any type of gas? I thought it didn't. I don't want to annoy my roommates.
Click to expand...

Lacto produces CO2.
 
FYI, I've made this beer several times and it's actually probably my favorite beer I've ever tasted. It's just kind of a ***** to make. I also have tried adding different kinds of fruit, all to good effect. Instead of buying lacto I just throw in some uncrushed grain and have gotten even better results.

The recipe is more like this:

8 lbs pils
2 lbs munic
1 lb caramunich
.5 aromatic
.5 special b
 
If you want to make it easier, you can mash, boil and pitch the grain into the whole wort. When it's soured long enough for your tastes, bring the whole thing up to 170F (or boil if you like, lactic acid boils at 251F), then cool and add yeast. Sometimes I skip the second boil, as most lacto strains won't eat some of the bigger sugars that sacch will. As you said, simple sour browns are delicious with fruit.
 
I made something quite similar recently.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/quick-ish-flanders-400363/

I ended up using a combination of the sour wort and clean culture methods. I pitched wyeast brett lambicus.

Its still fermenting, and has been one of the most vigorous fermentations i have had. Its clogged my blow off tube several times.

Its moderately tart after just a few days and quite funky already. I look forward to seeing what it ends up like in a month or so.

Ideally I would rack some of it on cherries, but it would have to be frozen cherries at this stage as they are well out of season over here.

Its definitely looking promising at this stage
 
sockmerchant said:
I made something quite similar recently.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/quick-ish-flanders-400363/

I ended up using a combination of the sour wort and clean culture methods. I pitched wyeast brett lambicus.

Its still fermenting, and has been one of the most vigorous fermentations i have had. Its clogged my blow off tube several times.

Its moderately tart after just a few days and quite funky already. I look forward to seeing what it ends up like in a month or so.

Ideally I would rack some of it on cherries, but it would have to be frozen cherries at this stage as they are well out of season over here.

Its definitely looking promising at this stage
Click to expand...

Looking at your bottled list makes me happy.

As many people need to try making these beers as possible. I remember when I tried one, which was also my first sour beer ever, I thought "well gee anyone would like this beer, it's just great." I have brought out bottles at beer tastings and they've been huge hits, especially among non-beer drinkers and wine drinkers. I plan on doing a version of this at my nano soon.
 
Yeah I'm just a little addicted to Belgian beer. I like have a big selection of Belgians on hand. Love making them

My most recent obsession is sour beer. Over the past couple months I have brewed 35 gallons of sour and wild beer.

This quick sour idea occurred to me a month or so ago. As with many great ideas, turns out someone has thought about it before me :)

So far it looking promising. The Brett L is getting very nice and funky. Also easily one of my most crazy fermentationalist. Had krausen fill my bucket to the lid for 4 days now. I've top cropped the yeast a couple of times now for the next one
 
I have a dubbel with Brett L and it took 5 months for it to drink about perfect. It wasn't until I removed it from the kegerator in my outdoor cookhouse for a few weeks to make room for other stuff and let it go up and down in temperature with the outside weather that it fully developed. Kind of makes me think that Brett or at least Brett L likes temperature changes. It was back in March and the temperature swings here in TN were between 30F-70F for those few weeks. Its unknown if it just needed more time or was it temp changes that helped it develop. This was brewed on 11/4/2012.
 

Similar threads

Beernoob88
Adding fruit or flavoring to a sour beer...
Replies
6
Views
1K
Drewch
Drewch
G
How fast?
Replies
6
Views
333
MightyMosin
MightyMosin
gorlox18
First sour - sanity check
Replies
5
Views
1K
gorlox18
gorlox18
T
Philly Sour Raspberry Sour
Replies
22
Views
6K
DuncB
D
A
Wouldn't Know Him From Adam(bier)
Replies
0
Views
438
AlexKay
A

Latest posts

Back
Top