So the story goes like this. I bought a couple cornie kegs off a guy and they still had beer in them, brown ales I'm pretty sure. Well I dumped the prettier of the two kegs the day I got them, the other less attractive keg I kept around with beer in it as a door stop. After having this door stop for about a year I decided to use it for a sour beer experiment, the idea came from something my friend did with his brothers infected batches. I dumped the beer from the keg into one of my bug buckets and it smells of lactic sourness and some malt. I added a house blend of sour dregs to it and 2 deseeded apples, then covered it with a bed of summit hops. After a month I added drie dregs and some second runnings from a hb batch. A week later I went to add more dregs and saw a nice pellicle. I let this ride for 4 months before I took a taste to see how it was going. Upon the taste I was advised that blending another beer like a blonde could help with the issues I noticed in the body. So after about 7 months total I brewed a blonde with the intentions of blending. On blend day my brewing partner and I did measured increments of both beers from 100% sour brown to 100%blonde with the 50/50 in the mix. The 50/50 blend was the winner by 3 different palates. So we blended 2.5 gallons of each into a bucket with the intention to meld for at least 3 wks before bottling. We bottled the remainder of the sour experiment by itself in heavy champagne bottles to 3 vols. with intention of waiting at least 6 months to open one. I don't expect it to peak till at least a year in the bottle and the same will go for the blended part to when it is bottled. I might take a gallon of the blend on bottle day and put it on blackberries and see how it goes. I know that it is said you can't make great beer from someone's else's bad beer, this is an experiment in playing with beer people think is bad. Plus this experiment has cost me maybe 10 to 15 bucks total and has been a blast.
The first taste, the one that made the decision for a blend.
The experimental batch and the blonde on the left.
The first taste, the one that made the decision for a blend.
The experimental batch and the blonde on the left.