sour mash for?

So i brewed a belgian strong ale yesterday and decided to try and milk anything i could from the leftover grain. I Re mashed the grain (about 18#s) worth
and let it sit overnight. Today i drained off the wort and it kinda has a slight sour smell to it, yet tastes a little sweet. Is it even worth trying to utilize this wort or is it best to just toss it out? Any input is greatly accepted.
Ry

You can use it. You basically acheived what's called a sour mash. Brewers will leave a mash overnight, so that it sits in the ideal temperature range for bacterial reproduction, and the mash will sour slightly. What is the SG of these second runnings? Depending on what volume you want to brew, you could get a decent beer out of it, I would imagine. If you've already mashed it, I don't know why you'd want to toss it. Throw a $4 packet of S-05 in there and see what happens.

Sweet, I'm gonna go for it.The gravity of the wort its 1.030. Am in debate if i wanna add some dark extract an make a stout or maybe a little pale malt extract and make an ipa?
seems like since it has a very mild sour to it, an ipa would be a suitable choice. I got about 4.5 gallons from it, so i was shooting to fill up 1 of my 3 gal carboys. shoots

I did a sour mash Kentucky Common last year where I purposely soured the mash. I mashed in with 50% of the grist, and let stand for 48 hours. Good stuff. Definitely doing it again this year. A sour mash IPA does sound interesting.

So you sour the mash and then do the boil like normal? What kind of effect does this have on a finished beer? Just a slight sour tang or can you even taste the difference if you're making something like a porter?

When I did my Wee Heavy I wanted to experiment with a second mash with the same grains and get two beers for the price of one. The second beer is good, but it had some astringency that took 2 - 3 months to mellow.

Overall, it didn't turn out as good as I hoped, but I'm going to keep experimenting with the process.

djfriesen said:

You can use it. You basically acheived what's called a sour mash. Brewers will leave a mash overnight, so that it sits in the ideal temperature range for bacterial reproduction, and the mash will sour slightly. What is the SG of these second runnings? Depending on what volume you want to brew, you could get a decent beer out of it, I would imagine. If you've already mashed it, I don't know why you'd want to toss it. Throw a $4 packet of S-05 in there and see what happens.

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Agreed with this exactly. Sounds delicious. I wouldn't add any extract - it will be a great, refreshing beer all by itself.

Sharkman20 said:

So you sour the mash and then do the boil like normal? What kind of effect does this have on a finished beer? Just a slight sour tang or can you even taste the difference if you're making something like a porter?

Click to expand...

What I did was allow 50% of the grist to sour for 48 hours, then mashed in with the other 50%. It took some work to get it back up to temp, but when I got it there, my brew day went like any other brew day, except for the rancid smell. By the end of the boil, the rancid smell had pretty much dissipated. I then fermented as I do with most ales, 63-65ºF. When it was done, it had a pleasant tartness, but the malt and hop flavors balanced it out. It won 3rd place in the club competition (BJCP category 23), so I'm on the right track with it.

I believe the tartness comes from the lactobacillus bacteria. I've never fermented with lacto, so I'm not exactly sure. However, I will be doing two batches of my Kentucky Common this year. One with a sour mash, and one with lacto/yeast. It'll be interesting to taste the difference.

I ended up going with an abbey yeast for this one. Figured i'd keep the belgium theme. I added 1# of light dme with 5oz of honey at the last 15 min of a 60 min boil. I added .5oz uk golding hops at 40 and .25 at 15 min. This ***** fermented like crazy a solid 2 days then mellowed. Transferring to the secondary today.
Will def let ya'll know how she turns out. Cheers

I know this is three years old, but is it possible the OP is still around to tell us how it came out?