Sour brewing in an apartment

I'm a huge fan of sours and would love to start brewing sours, mostly for the appreciation of the style, but also because sours are expensive. Current living conditions have me in an apartment with limited space and brewing partial mashes. Big life changes are happening (getting married this sunday!) and long story short i know we (me and the mrs.) are going to be in this apartment for at least, but i can't guarantee longer because who knows where we'll be in two years.

is it possible to get a decent sour into bottles in a year? all the clones for sours i like seem to need 22+ months and i'm almost positive i can't move a full carboy without messing something up royally. anyway to fulfill my sour aspirations?

Berliner weisse could work, but I've never seen a bigger sour get really good that quickly.

what's wrong with moving a sour vs. other beers?

I would say buy some gallon jugs (10-12 bucks a piece, even less at thrift stores) and use 5 at a time. Easy to move and you wont mess anything up.

I am an apartment brewer who wants to do sours as well. I am also like you moving in 2 years to another apartment.

I'm planning on doing this kit http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewi...hern-lambic-grand-cru-partial-mash-kit-1.html and letting it sit in plastic primary for at least 12 months. I'm also going to try to do some 1 gallon kits like statseeker suggested and use dregs from whatever I'll be drinking at the time (JP, Belgian sours, Ommegang Aphrodite, etc)

My particular problem is my carboys are glass and i live on the second floor of an apartment. I've always had it in my mind that that moving a carboy and disturbing the liquid too much is a bad thing (not to mention that they are glass and might break). I never considered the one gallon solution. they'd be super easy to move and it would make it really easy to use different fruits/oaks/random things. Would you ferment in a primary then use the one gallons for secondaries?

You dont want to shake them up obviously, but shifting the carboys is not a big deal. If you're careful, not much is going to be lost except maybe the pellicle, which will grow back with time and a little O2 in the head space.

You could do it either way I suppose. If you make a good sized starter with the roselare or any other type of lambic blend/dregs that you might use you can split up the starter. Say if you make a 1 liter starter you can split it up into roughly five 200ml pitches. So you can use the five 1-gallons as your only fermenters or you can do the primary 5-gallon and 5 secondaries. That part is up to you, whatever you're more comfortable with. Personally, I'd do the primary and then 5 secondaries just to be able to use different additions to each to get a different outcome during aging.

Congrats on your marriage. You might want to wait on that venture until she moves in. Women tend to have lots of stuff and you may not have room to commit for a year (or more) to a carboy.

Splitting to 5 x 1gal jugs is probably your best bet in this case. The danger with moving sours and the pellicle falling is that it might not reform, and the beer could be essentially done fermenting. When that happens and you slosh it around bad things can happen.

I lost a 2yr old F red that way - I moved it to my new house (carefully), I had tasted it before I moved and it was great, but I didnt have time to bottle so I decided to wait, well after moving in I took another taste and.......ethyl acetate. the whole batch was ruined in less than a week

How about sticking it in a keg?

Jusy my two cents- I live in a Brooklyn apt (tiny), and just bottled a 1 year old plambic since I'll be moving. Using Al B's bugs, the beer turned out AWESOME in just that years time. I'm sure it would continue to gain complexity with further aging, however as it stands now it's very complex and tasty.

I've got a quick solution to your problem.

As long as you're just looking for the lactic tang, sour a portion of your wort with cracked grain.

Make 5 gallon batch. Pull off 3/4 gallon. Ferment the rest as normal. Place 3/4 gallon in gallon jug and add a handful of cracked pale malt (or oats). Close lid, wrap with sweatshirt (or sleeping bag) and place in a very warm spot for a week (looking to keep it close to 100*F).

Strain grain and boil soured wort for 20 minutes, cool, and add back into fermentor.

I've done this quite a few times with great success. You don't need the long-term aging a traditional sour does and you risk zero equipment infection. Perfect for your apartment situation!

What exactly is happening to the cracked oats? I've heard of quick, no risk of infection spurs but I've never had them explained

Very interesting, I would like to know more details as well.

cimirie said:

I've got a quick solution to your problem.

As long as you're just looking for the lactic tang, sour a portion of your wort with cracked grain.

Make 5 gallon batch. Pull off 3/4 gallon. Ferment the rest as normal. Place 3/4 gallon in gallon jug and add a handful of cracked pale malt (or oats). Close lid, wrap with sweatshirt (or sleeping bag) and place in a very warm spot for a week (looking to keep it close to 100*F).

Strain grain and boil soured wort for 20 minutes, cool, and add back into fermentor.

I've done this quite a few times with great success. You don't need the long-term aging a traditional sour does and you risk zero equipment infection. Perfect for your apartment situation!

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I've had good luck with this approach too, though (like cimirie says) the character is essentially the same as the short-run sours (berliner weisse, etc.) and not for the more complex aged sours (oud bruin, etc.). Raw grain is rife with lactobacillus, and you are giving your wort a solid dose with a handful of it.

I'm not sure why you suggest there's any different risk of equipment infection, though. This is basically the same as adding a vial of WL lacto, no?

I do lacto sour beers pre boil to avoid contamination. They are really quick. While not as complex as said above, you end up with a really refreshing lemonish sour.

What I do is take my mash after a normal beer and cap it with 1-2 pounds of base grain (for the lacto and some additional OG), a few ounces of torrified wheat (for head proteins stripped from the first mash), and a couple gallons of heated water in a cooler 24-48 hours. Then I do a mashout. I get the gravity of my wort usually in the 1020s so I do a quick very low IBU hop calculation and boil away. I've added grains of paradise, grapefruit peels, coriander and various other things for additional flavor. I use Nottingham or S-05 usually and don't worry about temperatures too much. The only one I wouldn't do again is from an oatmeal stout...it was foul.

MalFet said:

I'm not sure why you suggest there's any different risk of equipment infection, though. This is basically the same as adding a vial of WL lacto, no?

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Yes and no. Yes in that all you're doing is introducing lacto to a portion of wort and letting it do it's thing. No in that your lacto is confined to a disposable water/milk jug, then you're boiling it. Live lacto cultures never touch your fermentor, bottling equipment, legging equipment, beer lines, etc.

cimirie said:

Yes and no. Yes in that all you're doing is introducing lacto to a portion of wort and letting it do it's thing. No in that your lacto is confined to a disposable water/milk jug, then you're boiling it. Live lacto cultures never touch your fermentor, bottling equipment, legging equipment, beer lines, etc.

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Ah, gotcha. I misread your first message and thought the souring came after the lacto. Interesting approach!

You can definitely make a good sour beer in less than 2 years. I actually brew a batch of Flanders Red and Oud Bruin the same time every year. The beers have stabilized and developed good flavors in 12 months. They do develop more complexity past the year mark, but I don't think there is any advantage to bulk aging versus bottle aging at that point.

And I'm a big fan of the 1 gal batches, see this thread.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/easy-way-make-sour-beers-1-gal-wort-dregs-189748/
And I suggest buying apple cider in the 1 gal glass jugs because it is much cheaper than just buying the jug at your LHBS + you can make some hard cider easily.