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In all honesty, I probably wouldn't do anything different if I had to do it over because it all went so well. However, if I did it again and I were going to do something differently, I might have mashed at a higher temperature or pitched the organisms earlier (I did it after one week of regular...

So the one that I brewed October of last year (10/2010) was bottled 5 weeks ago. We cork finished it, and while it's not as pretty as it could be, it's been effective. Anyways, we had tried two or three bottles around 2-3 weeks after bottling, and while the beer was good it was very light, even...

Freshops.com has aged "lambic hops"

Nah man. I won't bottle until probably at least May.

I actually looked into this in the fall and emailed Vinnie, etc. I brewed the beer at the end of September, and will probably consider starting to taste it later in the spring. I got similar information regarding the malt schedule, and formulated a recipe based on that. I actually just used...

I didn't get an actual recipe from Vinnie, but he told me the malts they use, and I calculated the rest based on the color and gravity. It was like 6 lbs 2-row, 4 lbs Vienna, 2 lbs wheat malt, 8 oz crystal-40, 8 oz carapils, 3 oz carafe III, 25 IBUs from noble hop, mashed at 158. 2.5 lbs sour...

Time is not my concern. I'm worried that there might not be enough residual sugars left for the bugs to work on to sufficiently sour the beer.

Hey all, I'm brewing my first sour (modeled after Supplication) and was looking for a little advice. Got some advice from Vinny, and my recipe included about 1 lb of crystal malts (50/50 Crystal 40 and cara-pils), and I mashed in the high 150s, started around 158-159, dropped to 155-156 by the...

I got an email from Vinnie regarding cloning Supplication, and he told me that after primary they add Brett which works for 2 months before they add the other bugs (Pedio/lacto, etc). For a homebrew, is it safe to assume that it should be OK if I add everything (brett, pedio, lacto) at once?

Too sour?

Thanks for the reassurances.

It's pretty amazing really, with how unbelievably well they ferment.

Due to laziness, I've been using a lot of dry yeast lately (US-05 or S-04) and noticed that it ferments unbelievably fast. Even with similar pitching rates after good starters for liquid yeasts, I feel like my dry yeast fermentations go much faster. The strange thing is that even though the...

It's tasting good?

This is kind of what I was thinking. Thanks for the advice.

I'm about to embark on my first sour beer journey. I've read up on how to brew these beers and have listened to a number of helpful podcasts. Personally, I love the character that comes from the Russian River house blend of bugs. I contacted Vinny to see if the famous wood chips inoculated with...

You could consider experimenting on a small scale with adding some Cl (NaCl would work). It's possible that your SO4/Cl ratio from your brewing water is part of it.

It's my understanding that brewing with water from a water softener is actually a bad idea. The calcium and magnesium is replaced by sodium or potassium, and these high levels can cause fermentation and flavor problems. If you can't get around your softener, I'd buy bottled water, or build a...

Correct. If it's really a stone RIS clone, I think you limit your accuracy by smaller boil followed by dilution. Splitting into 2 boils totaling 7-8 gallons, though, is fine.

Don't do a limited boil. Their RIS has close to 100 IBUs. Even if you do half the boil, and add the rest of the extract at the end to keep your utilization high, you'll dilute to 50 IBUs (since 100 is about the soluble limit), and then your beer will finish sweeter than the real thing. I think...