First sour brew day.

Just finished brewing what will hopefully be a funky sour Flanders red kinda thing. I used 3 lbs each of Munich Vienna and Pilsner. 1 lb of caramunich and white wheat. 10oz carared. 10oz special b. 6oz carahell. 6 oz Caraaroma . 0.25lbs acid malt. 1oz at 60min of German hallertau. I just pitched 2 packs of roselare 3763, and 1 vial of WL lacto. I am also going to add the dregs from the lambic.


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Nice! I'm just getting ready to brew my first sour. Got some Roeselare that I will be pitching in addition to bottle dregs from some Cascade, Logsdon and Double Mountain sours. Let me know how your turns out. Cheers!

Looks great dude, best of luck!

Thanks. 24hrs later it's doing something. I'm thinking maybe let this go in the primary for a few weeks and then rack to secondary with some oak cubes and pitch a starter of brett lambicus and maybe another couple dregs? Or should I just leave it in primary for the whole 18 months or so? I want it pretty sour...


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You are adding a lot that is not going to give you much. Most of the malts are pointless, as the sour will be dominant in the flavor. Keep it simple.

1 pack of Roselaire would have been fine, maybe even preferable as it would have been slower to start.

Adding bottle dregs is good, but why the lacto; with the quick start, that probably didn't have any chance to affect the final product.

What do you expect to get out of the extra brett? There is brett in Roselaire, and in the dregs. More is not always better.

I'm sure the beer will turn out fine, I just think you are trying too hard, and will not yield much extra benefit (if any).

Definitely leave it in primary.

You seem to have gone for the kitchen sink approach, which is fine. But I've got my first sour (an Oud Bruin) in primary still, and I think the most important ingredient is patience. It's been in primary for a little more than 8 months and it still has quite a ways to go.

Leave it in primary. Hide it away. And forget about it.

There will likely not even be anything funky cool to look at for at least a month or so.

What Calder said, you are waaaay over complicating this. Roeselare already has lacto, granted a different strain but still, it was already in there, and you dosed that twice, THEN added another. Your best bet now...is just slowly back away from the carboy nice and easy....keep backing away....keep going....now just leave it be for several weeks/months lol. Dregs are good, they add to complexity. But bombarding the beer so early with so much stuff probably isn't going to hurt, but it isn't going to gain you anything except more money spent on the batch.


The hard part is coming now, waiting and leaving it alone for months.

We'll I had heard the roselare blend doesn't make a very sour beer so I added the extra lacto. I pitched it about 3 hours before the roselare looking to add more sour. I had heard brett should be pitched at lager rates but didn't really know how much was in the packs, and heard a starter was not good. After a year or more is there going to be enough yeast to carb? Or should I add fresh brett when I bottle?


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Conrad1 said:

We'll I had heard the roselare blend doesn't make a very sour beer so I added the extra lacto. I pitched it about 3 hours before the roselare looking to add more sour. I had heard brett should be pitched at lager rates but didn't really know how much was in the packs, and heard a starter was not good. After a year or more is there going to be enough yeast to carb? Or should I add fresh brett when I bottle?


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Sounds like your piling a ton of sources into one that aren't all true for this case. Roeselare already has a Belgian, two Brett, lacto, and a pedio strain. Lager rates are required for primary Brett fermentations. Adding roselare 3 hours after Brett isn't going to do as much as it seems in terms of souring.

Its also nicer to add bugs after primary fermentation as bacteria have faster growth rates than yeast. Either using sacc or Brett for primary fermentation. Take it easy and keep it simple. Nonetheless should still be fine though.

Conrad1 said:

then rack to secondary with some oak cubes and pitch a starter of brett lambicus and maybe another couple dregs? Or should I just leave it in primary for the whole 18 months or so? I want it pretty sour...

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you might not want fresh oak cubes in there for 18 months... you'll likely get too much oak. save oaking for the end, so you can rack off the oak when you've achieve enough flavor from the cubes. sour beers that spend months or years in barrels do so in old, used barrels that have most or all of the wood flavor previously leeched out.

the roesalare already has brett lambicus. no need to add more.

dregs are always a good idea.

Conrad1 said:

We'll I had heard the roselare blend doesn't make a very sour beer so I added the extra lacto. I pitched it about 3 hours before the roselare looking to add more sour. I had heard brett should be pitched at lager rates but didn't really know how much was in the packs, and heard a starter was not good. After a year or more is there going to be enough yeast to carb? Or should I add fresh brett when I bottle?


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Roes can make a sour beer, it just takes a long time. Throwing more lacto isn't necessarily going to give you more sour character. It DOES get more sour if you use it again i.e. in a few weeks/months if and when you rack to secondary, have another beer ready to to be pitched, use some of that slurry. As stated above the lager pitching rates for brett is when brett is your primary yeast. As a cleanup crew you don't need a ton of brett, it'll grow just fine on its own.

Throwing in lambic dregs can't hurt, but remember most lambics we can get here are pretty old already. Don't remember if Hanssens bottle dates, good stuff though. Your best bet for getting some funky and tart beer via dregs is Jolly Pumpkin. The bugs in there are straight up monsters