axlrose16
Well-Known Member
I'm about a month in on a sour solera project and wanted to see if anyone out there has input on results for something this size after about 1 month. To give some detail, these are full sized cab barrels, one french and one american, full of a belgian dark strong. One barrel went through primary on an abbey yeast. The other received a hefty dose of many different strains of bugs that I grew up, including BugFarm 4 and a lot of Avery's own Pedio blend. The buggy barrel started getting notably tart as of about 1 week ago and ever since then I've been blending about 1 gallon per day between the clean and buggy barrels. A pretty nice thin pellicle formed early on in the buggy barrel before some sacch in a couple of my bug blends took over and blew krausen all over the place. The latest taste from the buggy barrel is pleasantly sour with some forward cherry notes and some nice soft lactic tart flavors. No real barnyard to speak of quite yet. The headspace in each barrel is now almost non-existent as I've topped off each barrel with wort from the batch that I'd fermented separately in order to allow for all the bubbly stuff during primary. Does anyone out there have any tasting notes from sour barrel projects for the first month or so? I've got a ton of bugs in this barrel but I wasn't expecting such quick results. I'll post pictures ASAP. Cheers.