heading to the brew shop, need a quick answer

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OHIOSTEVE

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I called the brew shop and they are out of acid malt. I need some for a recipe I am trying. is there a substitute I can use?
 
Lactic acid. Not sure if the malt is treated or it's naturally occurring but that's what makes it sour.
 
Ok revvy do I need to buy anything extra to do the sour mash? I assume a search wouldanswer that but I am on the road on my phone.
 
I used lactic acid on my last mash it worked well. It costs about $3-$4 for a bottle. You'll need some way to administer a very small dose, a 2-3 ml for example.
 
OHIOSTEVE said:
Ok revvy do I need to buy anything extra to do the sour mash? I assume a search wouldanswer that but I am on the road on my phone.
Click to expand...

Nope. Just do a small mash and let it go sour for a day or more.

Here's how flyangler did it for his guinness clone.

The "Sour Mash" part of this recipe comes from mashing in 1/2 lb of the Maris Otter with about 3 cups of water at conversion temperatures, then letting the small mash sour over about three days. Once it was starting to bubble and smell sour, I drained it, sparged with another pint of water through a mesh strainer, and boiled for ten minutes before cooling and adding the soured wort to the primary fermenter. The sour portion of the mash smelled a lot like old sneakers while boiling, but fermented out to a nice extra "twang" of sour and a mild funky undertone not unlike a very mild Belgian.
Click to expand...

This was the conventional way for doing this, acid malt is simply the substitute or easier way to do the same thing.
 
Ok recipe calls for 4 oz acid malt. So sour 4 oz 2 row and sparge to the proper % of the wort?
 
Are you in cincinnati, I probably have some. Not sure without being home to look though.
 
My understanding of acid malt being used at that quantity is that it's often used to help with the mash pH, moreso than necessarily trying to add an acidic quality to the beer's flavor profile. That's my understanding of where acid malt originated; German brewers needed a way to adjust mash pH without adding any chemicals directly (Reinheitsgebot). That's how I've used it; I have crappy efficiency, I *think* because of pH so I've played around with adding a little acid malt.
 

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