Sour mash not sour?!

Hey everyone. I'm confused as s$!t! I want to do a sour mash to build up a lot of lacto in a pale ale type mash (1.055ish), hopburst the living crap out of it to get a lot of hop flavor/aroma (I'm thinking tropical), and then ferment it with all bretta. So I ended up mashing my house pale ale recipe with 10% acid mash added to start off the sour. Then I boiled the mash for 15 min to sanitize and get rid of any oxygen. I racked the wort off to a CO2 purged fermentor and put on 2 brewbelts and put the fermentor in a sleeping bag. I kept the wort between 105-125 for 4 days and purged with O2 every 12 hours. Now its not sour at all! What's going on? Any ideas? I was thinking maybe there needs to be some more oxygen, or maybe the high OG had something to do with it? I'm really disappointed with how the wort turned out so far, so any advice is good. Unfortunately I have to go on vacation for a month or so, so I had to boil tonight but it should turn out to be a decent 100% bretta beer. Any way, any and all thoughts are welcome. Thanks everyone!

Did you add raw grain or lactose after boiling the mash?

Oh yeah, sorry. I added 1 lb of acid malt

I mash as normal, toss some uncrushed 2row in, hold it at 110-120 for ~2 days, raise to 165F or so, sparge, then boil.

Just out of curiosity, why did you boil to remove the oxygen and sanitize? you added oxygen after that..... and the boil probably killed the lacto.

i wanted to limit the oxygen as much as possible to avoid the "bad" bacteria. i know i added a bit when transferring, but i used a siphon to limit the oxygen. i just wanted the lacto in there to get a clean sourness. just surprising that after 4 days there was nothing!

You are supposed to boil after the mash is soured, not before. Boiling will kill the lacto.

I know. That's why I added 1lb of crushed acid malt into the carboy after I boiled and racked off. There should have been plenty of lacto on the malt to get the job done in 4 days at 100-130, right??

mcondon said:

I know. That's why I added 1lb of crushed acid malt into the carboy after I boiled and racked off. There should have been plenty of lacto on the malt to get the job done in 4 days at 100-130, right??

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Oh. In the OP you said you mashed, added acid malt, boiled, then racked.

You don't need acid malt, regular 2 row will do it as it has lactobacillus. Lactic acid and lactobacillus are different.