Question on souring?

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DisturbdChemist

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This will be my first sour attempt. I had a bunch over last weekend and loved everyone of them. I'm debating on either doing natural souring which takes a while. plus i dont think i have all the equipment for it yet. or just adding the right amount of Lactic acid at bottling for the first time until i get be a more experienced brewer. I'm thinking of souring a modification of Edworts haus pale ale. Eventually doing a natural souring once i read up and understand what i have to do.

any thoughts?
 
If you don't want to go the full monty and inoculate your beer with some critters to sour it up along with the yeast, or after primary fermentation, which, like you say, can take a while, you might consider souring the wort.

Reserve a small portion of your wort, like maybe a liter from your 5 gallon batch for instance, and pitch it with lactobacillus (throw in a few pieces of un-mashed grain, a natural place for lactobacillus to hide out) in a separate container at the same time that you pitch yeast in the main batch. Let the liter of lacto-inoculated wort sour for 12-24 hours, then pasteurize it by bringing to boil again, cool it to room temperature, and pitch it into the main batch.

This way, you get real lactic souring without having to worry about it after primary fermentation. The overall pH of your beer wont be so strong as to disrupt primary fermentation, especially once it gets rolling in the first place.

Another even easier way to get the sourness in there is to use a small proportion of acidulated malt, which is already sour from the get-go.

If you are doing an all-grain batch you can let the mash go sour. Because lactobacillus is commonly found on grain, and mashing temperatures are typically not high enough to kill the organism (hence the need for a boil), you can let the mash sit for longer than the mash time. Once mash temp drops below about 120F these critters will start souring the whole batch. I've never done it, and don't recommend it. It would be hard to control the sourness of the final product without some experience. This is the process that some American whiskey makers refer to when their call their whiskey 'sour-mash', where traditionally the beer was fermented right on the grain, the wort never being separated from the mash. Naturally, their beer was sour, but the distillation process left the sourness behind.

You can find some good information in this book, but you can probably find just as much by searching the forums.

Good luck!
 
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I dont feel comfortable to go the full monty yet but i'm sure ill get there in the future. Does the wort separated from the main batch has to be at a high temperature for the lactobacillus to grow and sour? like 90-100F. To be clear, your saying just have like a small handful of uncrushed malt to the separated wort and let it sour until the sourness you want? Will the sourness dilute once poured into the 5gals or is it like a concentrated form of lactic acid. I'll like to do it your way you discribed because i havent heard that way and its kinda cheating if you just pouring concentrated lactic acid you can buy at the LHBS.
 
Some breweries add lactic acid at bottling so you definitely wouldn't be the first to do it.

I am also a fan of the sour wort process, although I typically do it pre-boil and add the soured portion to the boil. Doing it this way you can only go so far with souring because you can reach a point where the ph is low enough it starts to negatively affect fermentation. (Less of an issue with an all brett fermentation.) If you want to seriously sour the beer with a sour wort process you definitely need to do it in the manner binkman described so the majority of fermentation can be complete before adding the soured portion.
 
So does the wort with the unmilled grain has to be at a certain temperature for those two days?

If you can keep it between 90-110F it's going to sour faster. If you leave it at ambient temperatures you will want to give it more time to sour because the bacteria will work slower at a lower temperature. At a minimum try to keep it warmer the first day or so to make sure the right bacteria takes off a crowds out the rest. The others may produce less desirable flavors.
 
Do you know how I can keep that warm? Maybe a crockpot or on the stove at the lowerest setting, or on the stop in pot of warm water? I want to get this right and not mess up a good batch of beer
 
To be honest, I think the easiest way is to do it properly.

Brew a basic beer, nothing too special, with low IBUs (about 10).

Ferment for a week with any ale yeast.

Have a party with few sour beers.

Rack beer to a glass carboy pour in the dregs from the sours, put on an airlock and leave for about a year.


Look thru some threads for some recipes if you want to try and copy a particular style.
 
By dregs you mean the yeast in the bottle of the bottle? I have a few sours but I think only one has yeast in the bottom. I need to get extra equipment before I can attempt them. Ill want to do one regular but just do not know all I need to do. You said just don't touch it for a year with the bacteria
 
I did a small sour mash for a stout, and I think it worked out well. I did it in a 1 gallon insulated jug, then boiled it and added it to the beer as it was in primary. However, I will warn you, it stinks, so boil it outside. It also just adds a hint of sour, not the real bracing sour bite of a good lambic or flemish red. I have not done a full batch sour mash, and I would think it would stink to high heaven, but I have read about sparging into a keg, and souring under gas so you don't get the 02, and thus not as much dirty diaper smell, in the process. If you are interested, how I did the sour mash is outlined in this post.

http://grainandgrain.com/2011/02/11/touch-of-funk-dry-stout/

That being said, I agree with Calder it is easier to do the traditional way, it just takes more time. I did make a beer that soured very quickly using Jolly Pumpkin dregs in the primary. It got plenty sour fast, 3 months. You can mash on the cool side to get a very fermentable wort, which will let you bottle it faster, but it won't be quite as sour. A few days before, pour some JP dregs into a starter, let it sit for a few days, then crash it out, and add that with your primary yeast to the wort. Jolly Pumpkin dregs are a great way to get a good sour beer pretty quickly.
 
I still have a bunch to plan for this beer. I don't have a kegging system yet and I can't get jolly pumpkin here in texas. I got some petrus oud bruin and some of their pale. I do want a true sour and looking for a quick sour. What is dreg? I'm not up to par with the beer lingo yet.
 
If you're looking to do a quick sour, you could do a Berliner Weisse that's sour-worted (or sour-mashed, your pick). My BW took 10 days from Mash to Glass, I do keg though, so that helped speed up carbonation. I can share the details if you want.
 
Sure I would like to take a look what you did. I'm not saying it has to be that fast. I don't mind waiting a month or two. I'm just looking for an easier and quicker way to make a sour so I know how this bacteria works and functions. Before dedicating a carboy which I have to get for a year
 
Do you know how I can keep that warm? Maybe a crockpot or on the stove at the lowerest setting, or on the stop in pot of warm water? I want to get this right and not mess up a good batch of beer

Dregs are just the stuff at the bottom of the bottle. It's where all the yeast and bacteria settle, just like when the yeast settles in your homebrew.

Depending on how much you want to sour and how sour you want it will affect what technique you take. Living in Texas, you probably do not have a furnace -- and even if you did, it's not running in these temperatures. I typically do sour mashes in a half gallon glass growler with foil over the top. I mash and sparge enough of the grain bill for 1/2 gallon from the boil volume. I bring it to a quick boil to sanitize, then cool to 120F. I fill the growler up to a couple inches from the top and toss in some grain. Then depending on how sour I want the beer I will let it sour ferment for a certain number of days. I can tell when the bacterial fermentation gets going because I'll get a thick brown krausen. It smells like rotting creamed corn. Do not be alarmed. The smell might might carry past boil into the fermenter but I assure you by the time fermentation is done it is cleanly lactic.

To keep it warm I fill the sink with hot water and put the growler in it. I drop a thermometer in the sink and periodically pull some of the water and bring it to a boil in the microwave. Then I add back. It's an imperfect system but I can keep it in the 85-120F range for most of the day (you may want to think about doing this over the weekend) and get it really hot when I go to bed so it won't cool off too much. Once the krausen gets going you shouldn't have a problem with anything getting in there and making a mess of your sour mash. That's why I say the first few days are most important, just like with yeast fermentations.

If you are just going for some tartness, go 1-3 days from when the krausen appears then add it to the beginning of the boil to reach full boil volume. If you want serious sourness, boil the rest of your beer (you may want to divide out the hops for the sour portion to make sure your bitterness is appropriate), pitch your yeast in the clean portion and after a week, do your sour mash and let it go 3-5 days from krausen (if the krausen drops you need to stop the sour mash) then boil it, cool it and pitch with your clean portion.

As you can probably tell, it's an imperfect process. It might be easier to just add lactic acid at bottling.

This technique will give you a berliner weisse kind of sourness. It won't give you the complex sourness or complex flavors you get in lambic, etc. because you don't have brett and you don't have those long fermentation processes developing complex flavors. It will still make great, refreshing beer.
 
barrooze said:
If you're looking to do a quick sour, you could do a Berliner Weisse that's sour-worted (or sour-mashed, your pick). My BW took 10 days from Mash to Glass, I do keg though, so that helped speed up carbonation. I can share the details if you want.

I'm very interested in the details :)
 
In the next couple months I will be doing a "quick" sour saison and a fairly quick witbier.

I'm just undecided on how I want to go about doing the saison. I have found that even when using bacteria and brett in a beer mashed for fermentability you get sourness, and it's "quick". I did one with a East Coast Yeast culture called Bug County. I brewed it up in the beginning of November and it's cold conditioning right now. Last I checked it was at 1.004. So with that said you could brew up a saison recipe and pitch the Wyeast Rosalare blend. It should take around 4 months. Something I wonder about is the ability of 3711 to ferment in acidic worts. Since 3711 is voracious as a fermenter you could possibly add the mixed culture and when it's sour to your liking 3711 could possibly ferment it out rest of the way. I'm intrigued by this concept actually. The other option I have for a quick sour beer is to use 10-15% acidulated malt. Each 1% of acidulated malt should approximately drop pH .1. So if I had a beer finish fermenting at 4.5-4.8 the acidulated malt would bring it down into the 3 range of pH. This again is something I wonder about with 3711s ability.

The way I'm going to do the witbier is a more traditional way of brewing witbier. I will do a somewhat dextrinous mash and only hop half to 2/3 of the wort. The rest will be boiled separately and will receive a lactic acid culture for at least 3-4 days before adding the yeast. Then they will be blended for bottling. That should be no more than a few weeks.

I guess the most important question that I have for you is this. What style of sour beer are you looking to make? That depends on the technique you use for cheating to make it quick.
 
Maybe a pale ale. I'm thinking of modifying edworts haus pale ale to be soured. If you have to cold condition the saison I'm unable because I don't have a chest freezer but looking for one and about to build a temperature control to it.
 
In my mine i thought it was a lager. I havent done a saison yet i had a sour saison last weekend and it was great. I can find some recipes and see what i need. What i like to do is separate about a gallon of wort when i brew and add the uncrushed malt. Does it have to be uncrush? What if i take the wort out before the boil will it still have the lactic bacteria in it? Will a gal of sour mash will produce a good in you face sour taste but not too over powering?
 
Wild / sour beers are by definition a little unpredictable. If you just want a beer with a lactic acidity and tang, I'd recommend buying a bottle of food grade lactic acid. Lactobaccillus generally doesn't produce much acid unless it's held at very warm temperatures (I've had good results at 90-98F).
 
Thats probably one of the reasons that there are such few sour beers out there. That plus contamination, I still have a little more research before i attempt this and how to keep it warm for a couple of days. I'm garuantee sour if i just add the lactic acid to the bottling bucket but same time i think its kinda cheating but good for first timers
 
My method for sour-worting a Berliner Weisse:

My BK has a 10gal volume, so I made a batch size of 9.5gal, preboil volume of 9.75gal.
Grain bill was:
7# pilsner malt
5# wheat malt

Mashed at 149F for ~90 min (until fully converted). Sparge to get a Preboil volume of 9.75gal. Make sure when you drain your tun, your BK is already on your burner. You don't want to move a kettle with almost 10gals of liquid!

At this point, I wrapped my heatwrap around my kettle and put the probe to my temp controller on the outside of my BK to get a pretty decent reading of the wort's temperature. When the temp dropped to 115F, I tossed in a pound of unmilled 2-row. The outside of the grain is covered in lacto bacteria, or so I'm told. ;) After tossing in the grain, I covered the entire surface of the liquid with Al foil, making sure I push out as much oxygen as possible. You want zero air at the surface of the wort, so try to get as much out as possible. Put the lid on my kettle, set the temp controller to maintain a temp of 110-120F, wrap the kettle in blankets, winter coats, whatever it takes to help insulate and maintain the temp.

I left it for 48 hours at this temperature. After the desired duration (the longer you wait, the more sour and tart it'll get) I unwrapped all the insulation, removed the foil, and started fishing out the grain. I used 1# this time. There was a TON of grain in the wort.... I will probably use just 0.5# next time. Try to get out as much as possible.

When you're finished fishing out the grain (there will be a lot at the bottom, fyi), bring your wort to a boil. I boiled for 15 minutes, killing all the bacteria that soured the wort. That's the best part about this method, NO CHANCE OF CONTAMINATION! At the start of the boil I added just 5 IBU of Hersbrucker. At flameout, I turned on my IC and chilled it down. When it got to ~70, I racked 5.5gal to a carboy and pitched WLP029. I fermented at ~62-65.

My OG was 1.032 and FG was 1.001. The beer is super tart, fruity, slightly sweet and very dry. It's quite delicious!

For the other 4 gallons, I kept those in the boil kettle, covered the opening with cheesecloth and left out overnight. Then I racked it to a carboy. Within a few days, fermentation occurred. Now it's got a slight pellicle. I'm going to leave it until about May. It should be quite interesting!!!
 
My biggest dilemma is keeping it at those temperatures for that time period. Your way sounds easy and do able just dont have the equipment aka heating jacket, etc.

Thanks for all yalls help and making me understand how it works and also many ways to do it.
 
My biggest dilemma is keeping it at those temperatures for that time period. Your way sounds easy and do able just dont have the equipment aka heating jacket, etc.

Thanks for all yalls help and making me understand how it works and also many ways to do it.

If you have a garage, just wait until summer. My garage can get to 110 during the summer, pretty easily. Anything over 100F will do the trick.
 
No, i live in a crappy apartment at the moment. Looking to find a house next. If I can save up some money for a down payment. I want a house with a garage because i hate landlords. They never leave you alone. lol

I'm going to make a quick sour this month sometime and when summer(march) ill go a sour the way you describe though i do BIAB but its the same thing so it will keep at temperature
 
Today I am mashing a quick sour saison. I have 5lbs of acidulated malt in the mash. I left it go for 30 min with just 2% acidulated in the mash then I added the 3.5lbs I had planned. I had an additional pound to toss in if I felt like it and I did. I can taste the acid in the mash. The pH of the mash is 4.2 at the moment and I'm getting ready to sparge. I will take a pH again once I cool before I pitch yeast. Then I will have a mini ferment segregated for both yeasts to track pH as it drops.

I am using a grown up culture of Dupont for one fermentor with a back up of some 3711 if or when the dupont craps out because of the low starting pH. The other fermentor is getting my new favorite ECY03 Farmhouse brett. That one I figure won't have a problem because if the sacch dies off the brett will bring up the rear. The Dupont fermentor has 3711 as a back up, and if that craps out, I have some brett blend from ECY04 that I just repropagated. So one way or another they will finish.

Will update with some results hopefully in a week or two.
 
Tell you what I want to do...I want to get a barrel. I want to fill it with wort and ...say Rosalare. I am patient. Sometime between one and two years I want to pull some out and drink it. At that point I will top it off (will also periodically replace the angel's share). I want to repeat this process until either the barrel or myself needs to be replaced.
 
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