First real sour

Hey all. I finally have time and room to do a real sour (have done sour mash berliners in the past) and want your guys opinion on my recipe and procedure. Here is the recipe and plans:

5g batch

8lbs pale malt
2lbs flaked rye
8oz turbinado sugar
4.0 black barley
1oz willamette (5.2%aa) (2 year old hops from my freezer)
active notty pulled off my conical
1L starter of 2 bottles of Orval dregs
1 bottle of dregs from Sour in the Rye from The Bruery

Gonna pitch everything at the start and let sit for a year.

Anyone see anything they might change or anything I might be doing wrong?

Just a question or two. What do you want to get out of the sugar and are you using the black barley just for color? What are you roughly hoping the ibus to end up at?

The sugar addition was for the hell of it. Black barley is for color, but i might cut back on it a little so i dont get any flavor. Beersmith calculated the IBUs at 15, but i would assume they are less due to the age.

Roll with it and learn from it. The sugar will do very little if nothing but just add a bit of alcohol. The small amount of roast will add color and will have a minimal impact on flavor. I'd be more inclined to achieve that color with a light or medium crystal it you want to retain a little body/sweetness. I do mean a little sweetness. My last oude bruin was very crystal heavy like 15% crystal and it ended near 1.010.

MaynardX said:

Hey all. I finally have time and room to do a real sour (have done sour mash berliners in the past) and want your guys opinion on my recipe and procedure. Here is the recipe and plans:

5g batch

8lbs pale malt
2lbs flaked rye
8oz turbinado sugar
4.0 black barley
1oz willamette (5.2%aa) (2 year old hops from my freezer)
active notty pulled off my conical
1L starter of 2 bottles of Orval dregs
1 bottle of dregs from Sour in the Rye from The Bruery

Gonna pitch everything at the start and let sit for a year.

Anyone see anything they might change or anything I might be doing wrong?

Click to expand...

My suggestion would be to sub the pale malt for pilsner malt. Also, I wonder how the rye will meld with the Brett and lacto. I'd probably just do a typical wheat like white wheat or flaked. To contradict myself, if this is what you have on hand go for it! Send some to me.

I am not sure I would trust using only the dregs from the sour in the rye, i would be sure to have a backup source for bugs.

If stored properly, your hops could still be over 4 AAs. In a 60 min boil you will get around 15 IBUs. Lacto doesn't like hops, I'd cut the hops in half; general rule of thumb is less than 10 IBUs.

8lbs pale malt
2lbs flaked rye
8oz turbinado sugar
4.0 black barley

In 5 gallons that could result in a 1.065 wort. While this may be OK, it is on the high side. Lacto and Pedio do not like alcohol. The higher the alcohol, the slower they work, and when it gets too high (generally set around 8%), they can stop working altogether. I usually shoot for about 1.055, and I suspect that too is probably on the high side.

The simple sugar is pointless in this type of beer.

Black - what's it for. Maybe use a dark crystal.

The bugs in 1 bottle could do it, but it could take a long time. Depending on the age, some of the strains may be dead. I'd go get a couple of bottles of reasonably fresh JP (the bottles are all dated), and pitch their dregs too.

I'd be tempted to pitch all the dregs a day or two before the sacc yeast to give them some time to start building. Once the alcohol starts everything else will slow down. Don't aerate, pitch the dregs, wait for as long as you feel comfortable, then pitch the sacc and aerate. The last one I made I pitched an old pack of Roeselare with no aeration, then pitched some sacc after 2 days and aerated at that time to help the sacc.

One of the things I find so appealing about wild ales is that I think of recipe formulation as somewhat of a free-for-all. If you know your raw ingredients and the flavors you want, go for it! I also think of it as being far less important than fermentation/cellaring, which can be somewhat of a crapshoot. Mostly that's controlled through blending, so it's a good idea to have a few batches going. That said, I do have some random thoughts...

If you want a bit of color with minimal flavor impact, Carafa III Special (dehusked) is a great option. I'd suggest using a starch adjunct (wheat, flaked maize) in addition to, or in place of the sugar so the bugs have something to chew on over the course of fermentation. Edit: You've got plenty of rye, good to go... Sour in the Rye is a great beer and I got plenty of dregs from it. I might feed the dregs a bit of wort a day or two before you brew to build them up a bit, then pitch everything in primary.

Good luck, have fun.

Thanks for the input, guys. I decided to order a vial of wlp 655. Im gonna do a 10g batch now and split it. The 655 will go in one batch and the sour in the rye in the other. Im gonna use C-120 instead of the black malt and I dropped my Hop addition to 0.5oz.

One question, though. Does the Sacc strain affect any flavor from the bugs? Ive been reading that a lot of people use a belgian or hefe strain when making a sour. Should I consider using one of these instead of Notty?

Yes. Some brett strains will produce enzymes that break down bound aromatic compounds into other aromatic compounds. So the more esters available the more the brett has to play with. You can make a fine beer with out a belgian strain but you will be surprised to find out that a very estery beer can be turned into a more subdued ester profile just from a little time with brett.

MaynardX said:

One question, though. Does the Sacc strain affect any flavor from the bugs? Ive been reading that a lot of people use a belgian or hefe strain when making a sour. Should I consider using one of these instead of Notty?

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I too would like to know. I have a number of Belgian strains and add them to my bug mix when I use it because they are said to produce more complex sours. I really don't know how true that is.

If fermented warm (mid 70s), Notty can produce lots of esters too.