expedited sour beer... with possible problems.

i have been a home brewer for a couple of years and have yet to brew a straight forward simple brew. i figure if i wanted that i would just buy it from the store. i am super into experimental brewing just to see what happens mainly. that being said here is something i tried and some questions about it.

ten days ago i decided to see if i could make a sour beer in the time it takes to make a normal beer. my process was to steep my grain then just turn off the burner. i let that sit open on the stove (room temp) for three days before i brought it back up to a boil and finished it out like you would any other beer. my (extract) recipe was:

2 lb acidulated malt (to start out sour)
1/2 lb buiscut
1/4 lb munich dark
1/8 lb cara aroma
3 lb Pilsen lt. DME
2 lb org white sugar (to make it a bit drier)
2oz bramling cross hop (roasted a bit)
1 irish moss tablet
whitelabs sake yeast (because it sounded fun)

it got good and frothy in that three day period of open wild fermentation. my boil was 60 minutes, which i feel was long enough to kill off any of that crap that got in it, but the sourness would remain. i don't know i just make stuff up, but it usually works out for the best. now, today, i just transferred it into secondary and it is wonderfully sour tasting, but on top of that it smells like the stinkiest dumpster in the summer time. i really hope that that subsides over time, from other forums i have read it seems like a possibility. what do you all think? this could be a great new process with some practice and tweaking. also, it is the cloudiest beer i have ever seen.

This sounds so scary to me...

So the wort sat for 3 days exposed to oxygen? I hate to say it, but I don't think the smell is going away.

I imagine letting wort sit like that left it subject to whatever floated in, rather than being innoculated by a source like grain in the case of a sour mash. Being in your kitchen it probably got a lot of exposure to mold spores, e coli and other nasty stuff typically found in houses. I would not expect the nasty smell to go away but it might.

tasq said:

So the wort sat for 3 days exposed to oxygen? I hate to say it, but I don't think the smell is going away.

Click to expand...

i was under the impression oxidization was only a problem after you pitched your yeast, or is this a special circumstance where technically there were two times where yeast was pitched?

The problem is that the wort not being boiled had some bacteria in it from the grain and mash. Some of the bacteria that are aerobic will make some seriously putrid smelling byproducts when they are allowed to grow an uncontrolled environment. Sure you killed all the potentially pathogenic crap in the wort by boiling but all their disgusting byproducts are left behind. I bet you gots a bunch of butyric acid in there.

hadabar said:

This sounds so scary to me...

Click to expand...

+4 to this. I'm shaking in my boots. Got any pics of the krausen?

I made a sour mash that I let sit for 3 days in my mash tun/cooler @ as close to 120* as I could keep it (I just threw in a hand full of two row to innoculate). It turned out great. Not a very complex sour, but good for such short time. However I laid plastic wrap on top of it to make sure no air could get at it. Id suggest retrying and using some plastic wrap or something similar to make sure no o2 gets in.

You could always try something like this for a more controlled, quick souring: http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=29637&hl=impatient

seraphorist said:

i was under the impression oxidization was only a problem after you pitched your yeast, or is this a special circumstance where technically there were two times where yeast was pitched?

Click to expand...

It's the other microbes that you need to be worried about, not oxidization. During that time all kinds of stinky/nasty bugs could have made it in there. Many of these love oxygen.

HopsJunkie said:

+4 to this. I'm shaking in my boots. Got any pics of the krausen?

Click to expand...

no pictures, sorry. this was my first successful airlock blow off though!

Congratulations, that is the most acid malt I've ever seen in a recipe by about a factor of 2. :cross: Did you taste it after mashing and before you left it on the stove to sour? If so, how tart did it get from the acid malt? I ask since I'm planning on using the same amount in a quick sour...

I did a sour mash like this once (room temperature for 24 hours). The resulting brew convinced me never to sour mash below 110F again. Good luck!

scone said:

Congratulations, that is the most acid malt I've ever seen in a recipe by about a factor of 2. :cross: Did you taste it after mashing and before you left it on the stove to sour? If so, how tart did it get from the acid malt? I ask since I'm planning on using the same amount in a quick sour...

I did a sour mash like this once (room temperature for 24 hours). The resulting brew convinced me never to sour mash below 110F again. Good luck!

Click to expand...

there wasn't even a hint of tartness to it right after the steep. i did pull the grain bag out right when it was done though, and tasted the grain. it was super sour, so i put the bag back in to leech all of that goodness out.

i read a lot about acidulated malts before trying this, and everyone online was saying the most they would ever put in a beer was less than 1 lb. saying yeast wouldn't work if the ph was too far off. but my beer fermented just fine (better than actually), and my brew is acidic as all get-out.

next time i will honestly go so overboard on the acidulated (and cut way back on the "aging" stage). i'm thinking about going in the 5 lb. range.

did your sour mash smell so stinky also?

We just discussed this technique for souring a week or so ago with a pro brewer. He was saying to let it go at around 120F for 24 hours since that is the temperature range you want to grow the right bacteria, but your method would probably be OK too.

He also said it smelled (and tasted) like the worst thing imaginable for a couple of months and then suddenly it cleared up and tasted fantastic.

weirdboy said:

We just discussed this technique for souring a week or so ago with a pro brewer. He was saying to let it go at around 120F for 24 hours since that is the temperature range you want to grow the right bacteria, but your method would probably be OK too.

He also said it smelled (and tasted) like the worst thing imaginable for a couple of months and then suddenly it cleared up and tasted fantastic.

Click to expand...

this is the most exciting thing i have ever read! thank you.

do you know if he bottled it smelling all nasty, or if he let the stank mellow out before he decided it was ready to bottle?

mine actually is smelling quite a bit better already (still cloudy as **** though). here's to high hopes!

Well this guy is the head brewer at The Bruery here in SoCal and all of their sour stuff goes into barrels for a year or more usually. So they are sampling out of the barrel every so often to check on it, then when it starts tasting as good as they think it will get, they rack it to a brite tank for packaging.

as i understand it, you don't need anywhere near that amount of acidulated malt - the souring from the malt is from the lacto on the malt eating sugar - not the flavor of the malt or the additive. that being said, even a small amount of acidulated would reproduce and start chomping on it - just not sure how much benefit you get out of that large of a quantity... maybe just overtaking the batch quicker...

i'm assuming you steeped your grains, let it be for three days, then boiled, then pitched yeast? when did you add the DME and sugar? did it open ferment for three days before pitching your yeast?

sounds like you just sour mashed with open fermentation...

with a sour mash you can get a sour beer in the same time as a normal beer no problem. kentucky commons, berliners, guinness, etc., anything that is sour mash only can be done quickly...

and i know berliners aren't sour mashed - just using it as an example of a "quick" sour...

jtakacs said:

as i understand it, you don't need anywhere near that amount of acidulated malt - the souring from the malt is from the lacto on the malt eating sugar - not the flavor of the malt or the additive. that being said, even a small amount of acidulated would reproduce and start chomping on it - just not sure how much benefit you get out of that large of a quantity... maybe just overtaking the batch quicker...

Click to expand...

Acidulated malt has lactic acid on it, not lactobacillus. When acidulated malt is added to water, the lactic acid drifts off into the mash water and sours it cleanly.

why not just add lactic acid? i've only used acidulated to innoculate sour mashes...

ALL malts are covered in lacto...so any malt will innoculate a sour mash

jtakacs said:

i'm assuming you steeped your grains, let it be for three days, then boiled, then pitched yeast? when did you add the DME and sugar? did it open ferment for three days before pitching your yeast?

Click to expand...

i steeped, let it sit, then continued on as if i hadn't let it sit (brought it to a boil, threw in the malt/sugar, hopped accordingly over an hours period, then cooled and pitched the yeast).

jtakacs said:

why not just add lactic acid? i've only used acidulated to innoculate sour mashes...

Click to expand...

i always see lactic acid in a little squeeze tube at the brew shop. it always just looks so labratory-esque. i like to do things that take some sort of process/effort on my part. just squeezing in some lactic acid seems so non-intimate to me.

seraphorist said:

i always see lactic acid in a little squeeze tube at the brew shop. it always just looks so labratory-esque. i like to do things that take some sort of process/effort on my part. just squeezing in some lactic acid seems so non-intimate to me.

Click to expand...

You could always put on some Barry White while you're doing it...

"hey lactic, why don't you lie here next to the fire... oooooohhhh yeeeaaahhhhhhh...."

weirdboy said:

You could always put on some Barry White while you're doing it...

Click to expand...

hey, i'm a romantic. what can i say? love your beer, and it will love you back.

seraphorist said:

hey, i'm a romantic. what can i say? love your beer, and it will love you back.

Click to expand...

Amen....

so it has been a month now... i just poured a cup from the carboy to smell and taste. it no longer smells like a garbage can, and it is actually quite nice! i nice tart flavor as well! i guess i will bottle it now and report back in a few weeks after it is ready. a little bit of optimism in you experimental brews pays off. that's what i have learned from all this.

If you don't report back in a few weeks we will assume you are dead.

i guess that is fair enough.