Turning a Bad Batch of Cider into a Sour?

This is uncharted territory for me. I have never brewer anything sour so my experience is extremely limited. Just wanted to warn you.

I brewed a 5 gallon batch of Cider and after aging it a few months it tastes like Apple Vinegar (which isn't really a bad thing since I have been using it to marinate pork shoulders for smoking). I was telling a guy at in my brewclub and he suggested doing a sour mash, adding a gallon of my Vinegar Cider and letting it age into a Sour Apple Brew.

Is this possible? If so, does anyone have any advice or recommendations?

Thanks in advance!

interesting idea. ive done a batch of cider with brett b as the primary yeast, after a few months of aging it turned out well, developed mango/pinapple flavors.

I just started sours, so I'm pretty new at this too, *but* if it is already vinegar- maybe you have an aerobacter infection, and it would just turn your beer to vinegar too?

Thakog said:

I just started sours, so I'm pretty new at this too, *but* if it is already vinegar- maybe you have an aerobacter infection, and it would just turn your beer to vinegar too?

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Yep. You definitely risk an acetobacter infection consuming the beer and turning it into vinegar as well.

However, you could make a sour beer and mix the two in a glass, but I don't know how sour beer and apple cider vinegar would taste together.

If you want to use it, I would recommend nuking it with 100ppm of sulfite (10 campden tablets or 1/2 tsp of potassium metabisulfite powder) to make sure the acetobacter is dead. Then blend into whatever beer you want to mix it with. Otherwise, the acetobacter will chew through everything and you will end up with 10 gallons of apple cider vinegar.

Saccharomyces said:

If you want to use it, I would recommend nuking it with 100ppm of sulfite (10 campden tablets or 1/2 tsp of potassium metabisulfite powder) to make sure the acetobacter is dead. Then blend into whatever beer you want to mix it with. Otherwise, the acetobacter will chew through everything and you will end up with 10 gallons of apple cider vinegar.

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it will turn to vinegar only if he lets O2 get to it, otherwise it should be fine

Thanks for all the feedback.

The bad cider is sitting under pressure in a corny so I could easily mix my cider and beer in a corny without allowing any O2 in.

Anyone have ideas for a recipe that would well with this experiment?

Yum, sour graff!