Robust Porter Turned Into a Sour

Just before the beginning of the year, I brewed a Robust Porter recipe with English yeast. It had a nice roasty character, but also an underlying sweetness born from low attenuation (finished at 1.026...still don't understand why). So, I pitched a sour starter that I had been developing with WL Sour Mix, and various other microbes.

I did my first QC tasting today, in preparation for splitting it (and another sour brewed at the same time) onto various fruit, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how well this has done. Obviously, its not ready yet, but tastes well on its way to becoming a very good sour.

I plan on splitting half of it onto sour cherries, but I'm struggling with what to do with the other half. Red grapes came to mind (oak+cab or merlot), but I'm not sold on that idea...I'm looking for other ideas on what would sound good. The recipe (not going to type it all out) is a typical (ish) robust porter recipe (pale malt, C80, roasted, black and chocolate malts).

Thanks for the ideas.

I also did this with a robust porter in March and planned to use tart cherries. I recently tasted a friend's lambic that used logan berry puree and it was excellent. Northern Brewer doesn't carry it anymore, but I was thinking other berries might pair well with the roasted porter flavors. Blueberry? Raspberry?

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/winemaking/wine-ingredients/fruit-bases

How about vanilla bean? I have been wondering how I could get marshmallow flavor in a beer myself.
Sour marshmallow porter. Mmmmmm

I brewed 5 gallons of Robust Porter and siphoned off 2 into gallon jugs. One got the dregs from Jolly Pumpkin Bier de Mars and the other got the dregs from Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noire. The one with Bier de Mars taste awesome and has been bottled. The one with Bam Noire still isn't where I want it yet so I'm going to let that one go a little longer. I will say that those Jolly Pumpkin dregs worked FAST. It only took three months to sour with the Bier de Mars.

If it is tasting good, why mess with it. Keep half of it as it is.

Calder said:

If it is tasting good, why mess with it. Keep half of it as it is.

Click to expand...

Second that. You don't always need to mess with a good thing