Desired/Expected Gravity after Primary

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mkade

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Hey all, I'm brewing my first sour (modeled after Supplication) and was looking for a little advice. Got some advice from Vinny, and my recipe included about 1 lb of crystal malts (50/50 Crystal 40 and cara-pils), and I mashed in the high 150s, started around 158-159, dropped to 155-156 by the end of the mash. I fermented for a week with S-05, and after 6 days transferred to secondary and added the critters, as well as sour cherries and pinot-aged oak cubes. I was a little disappointed, however, that my beer's gravity had already dropped to 1.013. S-05 is always very fast, and I'm confident that basically all primary yeast activity is complete, but will this be enough residual sugar to funkify and sour this beer sufficiently? I'm expecting/hoping to drop about 10 more points from the base beer to 1.002-1.004, plus I also added just over 2 pounds of cherries. Should I have considered mashing even higher to get more residual sugars? Thanks for any and all advice.
 
I think you'll be fine, seeing as the aging period is well over a year. That will give the bugs plenty if time to do their work.
 
Time is not my concern. I'm worried that there might not be enough residual sugars left for the bugs to work on to sufficiently sour the beer.
 
Over the long secondary the Brett can and will eat the typically non-fermentable sugars. If you let it sit long enough they will eventually eat the cherry pits too. So you will be fine with 1.013
 
Mine dropped pretty quick too then slowed to a halt and now is still going down a year later.
Anxious to hear how the batch turns out, supplication is one of my favorite. What recipe did you use?
 
I didn't get an actual recipe from Vinnie, but he told me the malts they use, and I calculated the rest based on the color and gravity. It was like 6 lbs 2-row, 4 lbs Vienna, 2 lbs wheat malt, 8 oz crystal-40, 8 oz carapils, 3 oz carafe III, 25 IBUs from noble hop, mashed at 158. 2.5 lbs sour cherries added to secondary with 1 oz pinot-soaked oak cubes along with a starter from russian river dregs and WLP 655 (Belgian sour mix).
 
I had a similar situation with my flemish red. I used us05 and it came down to 1.016 after primary. I plan on adding 5-7 lbs of michigan sour cherries when they are in season next year. I figure by then the sac will have died off and the Brett/pedio/lacto will chew on those cherries for another 9-12 months.
Your fruit addition was fairly small. Let it go for a year or so and add more fruit if you aren't happy with where you are at.
 
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