Why is Sour Mashing not talked about more?

If you enjoy a great sour beer but dont want to wait for months to years to enjoy your brew, this may be for you... Ive seen a lot of posts recently about souring beers and people are not getting the results they are looking for. My question to them is why not use a sour mash method or what did you do wrong while sour mashing? I have had success with mine the 2 times I have tried. I may be wrong but what is the difference between a lacto blast up front then aging and slow aging on lacto? The only difference I could see would be that most Lacto blends come with Brett.

For those not familiar with Sour Mashing...

To create a sour mash, Mash in as normal with your grain bill but put a handful or 2 of grain aside to add when the temperature drops to less than 120. Cover with saran wrap and push out all the bubbles to create a barrier from oxygen. Allow to sit for up to 72 hours but maintain temperatures around 110F. The mash will take on a horrible smell but will taste sour. In some cases a good clean infection may smell of buttered corn. Upon reaching the level of sour you are looking for, drain your wort, sparge as necessary, and boil for 10-20 mins to kill the lacto. Add to your carboy as ferment as normal. Simple enough right?

My experience with sour mashing:

First beer:
Partial sour mash Raspberry Wheat. I used my 5 gallon Igloo cooler added 155 degree water to 1lb of grain. At 110 degrees I added a handful of milled grain and covered with saran wrap and maintained the temp for 3 days. After 3 days I boiled for 20 mins and added to my already fermenting Raspberry Wheat. After an eruption, the beer fermented nicely with just a touch of sour.

Second Beer:
Peach Berliner Weisse. 60% Pale malt 40% Flaked wheat. Mashed in 5 gallons at 154 and added ice until temperature hit 117. By this point the cooler was topped and saran wrap was unneccesary. I used a hotwater heating element installed in the bottom of the cooler attached to a MH1210F to maintain temperatures around 110F. After 3 days I boiled for 10mins with my East Kent Goldings and fermented for 4 days before racking onto 4 pounds of peach puree. After a total of 3 weeks I had a simple Berliner Weisse with a touch of peach. After about a month now, the peach is starting to shine through and it has just been sitting in the keg on tap.

I hope this all made sense and would love to see more recipes popping up utilizing this method. Cheers!

I think the problem with sour mashes is that it only gives a lacto bite, not the depth of other bugs such as bretts or pedio or something. I love my sour mash berliner, but wish it was sharper and more tart. Now it just gets too lactic for my tastes when I try to let it go longer to lower the pH. My current batch is being fermented with WLP644 "Brett" Trois as I had some on hand. Unfortunately, it didn't sour quick enough and I had to leave on vacation so I boiled before I had developed more sour, but the little funk it is contributing is a nice touch. I'll be splitting onto cherries and mangos soon. My raspberry version was a huge hit, with more requests to re-brew than anything else.

I have a failed acid malt sour mash I did that I decided to pitch Almanac dregs in, it's starting to get nice and tart after a week or two. I may try to grow up some dregs and continue this type, as it gives the bite I crave in my sours. Primary with some "Brett" and then pitch some commercial sour bug dregs near the end to give some more bite.

Out of curiosity, what would you say are the pros/cons of sour mashing vs sour worting? I would think sour worting would have less chance of spoilage...

What do you mean by spoilage? We're kind of TRYING to spoil it to get the sour...

I follow the method in this recipe, which sounds the same as the OPs methods. My failed berliner was a kettle souring/wort souring. I tried to follow a method such as this, and it never got very sour, and had an odd malty funk. That method has left a sour taste in my mouth

Ive read that other unwanted organisms can get in there and make some pretty nasty flavors and smells. Holding it at the right temperature helps keep them off but i figured that boiling it before would help get rid of anything and then you add pure lacto.

I think sour mashing isn't talked about more because of the unpredictability of it. Done well, they're pretty good, but you have such a large opportunity for error with butyric and isovaleric acid that there are better ways of doing it. Besides, you're just as likely to have yeast in your grain starter, which will just boil off the ethanol when you finish it.

I've used Lacto from grain a few times, but in a starter first and done under airlock. A sour mash really should not smell bad, vomit or fecal aromas are a sign of spoilage bacteria growing in it. And I always had a significant gravity drop from it - you don't get pure Lacto from pitching grains.

Sour worting usually sucks because the Lacto cultures the large yeast labs sell pretty much suck. Lacto delbrueckii is best used in the boil, imho.

i'm guessing you missed this article about 2 weeks ago. It's getting lots of talk

http://blogs.denverpost.com/beer/2015/09/22/beware-the-kettle-sour-beer/15501/

I misunderstood your terms, sorry. I've never tried a quick boil and then souring before the main boil, seems excessive to me. I think you would have nearly the same amount of issues with either method really: Warm, nutrient rich environment perfect for growing anything. Souring is always a tricky time, it's not predictable. I've achieved pretty consistent results with the method above, 3 for 3 really. Keeping it warm keeps it at the temp for a lot of undesirable bugs, but it's also prime for the Lacto. Blocking out the 02 with the saran wrap aims to only allow the lacto to do it's thing, not other bugs. There are some good discussions in that Peach Berliner thread i linked that explain it better than I can. Some say a bad smell is indicative of the wrong kind of bacteria growing, but it doesn't overpower the lacto in the beer. My last attempt smelled better than past attempts, which goes with that, as it tastes cleaner. My failed attempt was mash, sparge, cool, then pitch the grains into the sweet wort, and that one didn't end up working out, smelled bad, didn't get sour, and has weird off flavors im hoping the Almanac bugs clean up (which they are doing fairly quickly)

mhurst111 said:

i'm guessing you missed this article about 2 weeks ago. It's getting lots of talk

http://blogs.denverpost.com/beer/2015/09/22/beware-the-kettle-sour-beer/15501/

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I love the anger in that article from Chad of Crooked Stave. The whole reason craft beer has blown up is because of experimentation and trying new techniques, blending methods, etc. I've had plenty of bad sours, both quick and traditional. I was completely surprised by Trinity's 7 day sour. It had tons of good complexity for a beer soured so quickly.

Given the nature and quick turn around of kettle soured beers, up and comers experimenting with the style should be prepared to dump a bad beer, as they can try again relatively quickly. Yes, they'll lose some money on a failed batch, but that's business, especially experimenting with tricky styles. I see far too many breweries putting out diacetyl bomb sours (Black Market Blackberry Berliner) or other off-flavored sour beers, and I'm not sure why. It causes me to not want to come back and try future offerings.

Not knocking your method, this is actually a great topic to discuss. I don't think the Saran Wrap method really does that great of a job of keeping out O2, that's why you get the smell. Those are from coliform and clostridium bacteria among others, and the grain is covered in them. Less smell is a good sign that you're keeping out more oxygen.

Another thing you can do is pre-acidify the wort to pH 4.5, and that will keep unwanted bacteria from growing.

My experience, a mash out will do a good enough job of pasteurizing your wort. It's the only time I bother to do a mash out. Then, collect your wort in a kettle or chill and collect in a carboy, then pitch a pure Lacto culture. The Lacto will be the only thing working on it, and if you use the right strain, you'll be able to sour within 24 hours before anything else can get in there.

Sour mashing isn't a bad way to go if done right, I've just had too many examples that tasted like vomit. Sour worting can be done reliably and is repeatable - but not with 5335 or delbrueckii.

I totally agree. I know it is not the most reliable method, and I would like to make a better product, but so far, the peach recipe I posted earlier has given me good results: it's been my most requested beer. I am experimenting with other methods to see if I can improve. I tried using acid malt to lower the pH as mentioned in the second recipe, but I coupled it with doing a full sweet wort souring. The end result was terrible, and I'm unsure where it went wrong. I will be trying one change to the process at a time, and adding the acid malt to my current process is the next step. Cultured lacto will be another method, but again, so far, this has yielded an inexpensive and tasty product, fairly reliably.

I think the key to keeping unwanted bugs to a minimum is the same as every other practice in homebrewing, attention detail. Sour mashing is a quick way to sour but the process is still tedious. Sanitized equipment, and minimal exposure to outside vectors will reduce the chances for a ruined mash. That is why I created my sour mash tun. Its kind of a "fire and forget" tool. The MH1210F monitors the temperature and kicks on the heater when it needs a boost. I have it set to kick on and off when it encounters a 2 degree shift in temperature. The only post 120F exposure that your mash encounters is the grain pitch.

The Denver Post article mentioned the changing of flavors and taste from "Vomit to Pineapple" due to aging but in my experience the flavors change initially post boil and even more significantly after fermentation. By the time I kegged and poured the first glass I had a great tasting beer without off flavors. Maybe Im just lucky but Id like to think that I nailed it...

What was your lacto culture in the one that didn't work?

Agate said:

What was your lacto culture in the one that didn't work?

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I've only ever used the grain spiking, never used any other forms of lacto cultures.

martyjhuebs said:

I think the key to keeping unwanted bugs to a minimum is the same as every other practice in homebrewing, attention detail. Sour mashing is a quick way to sour but the process is still tedious. Sanitized equipment, and minimal exposure to outside vectors will reduce the chances for a ruined mash. That is why I created my sour mash tun. Its kind of a "fire and forget" tool. The MH1210F monitors the temperature and kicks on the heater when it needs a boost. I have it set to kick on and off when it encounters a 2 degree shift in temperature. The only post 120F exposure that your mash encounters is the grain pitch.



The Denver Post article mentioned the changing of flavors and taste from "Vomit to Pineapple" due to aging but in my experience the flavors change initially post boil and even more significantly after fermentation. By the time I kegged and poured the first glass I had a great tasting beer without off flavors. Maybe Im just lucky but Id like to think that I nailed it...

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Awesome! That's totally how I would do a sour mash. I think most people who try it don't go to that extent, though. I'd still worry about a gravity drop from wild yeast, although probably not much of a concern at 120°F. Still, I can turn around a sour worted beer in about 10 days without all the futzing.

That article kind of sucked, though, and you really can't count on butyric acid being esterified into ethyl butyrate. Maybe a little, but I wouldn't count on it.

But are we discussing sour mashing versus sour worting, or quick sours versus traditional sours? Kind of have two conversations going.

Oh god

To purists, however, quick souring is a bastardization of a noble brew.

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There is a difference between being a purist and a snob. Craft beer is about experimenting, and doing things in new, old or myriad ways to create interesting results. This article just kills me.

To say kettle sours are a misrepresentation of the style because there are some bad kettle soured beers is straight beer snobbery. I'll just keep the rest of my thoughts on this matter to myself.

My original coversation was aimed towards quick souring using the sour mash versus the traditional way that takes months to years. IMO these are 2 completely different things. If you dont want to wait months to years for the premanufactured cultures / yeast blends to fully develop your beer, sour mashing is the way to go. I would only use this method though for specific beers. If you want something super complex, stay away from it. If you want a simple easy drinking sour, use this method. There isnt much talk about it and I want to raise more awareness in order to get a more eztablished and repeatable technique going that produces great results.

martyjhuebs said:

My original coversation was aimed towards quick souring using the sour mash versus the traditional way that takes months to years. IMO these are 2 completely different things. If you dont want to wait months to years for the premanufactured cultures / yeast blends to fully develop your beer, sour mashing is the way to go. I would only use this method though for specific beers. If you want something super complex, stay away from it. If you want a simple easy drinking sour, use this method. There isnt much talk about it and I want to raise more awareness in order to get a more eztablished and repeatable technique going that produces great results.

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I'm with you there. They're two different tools in a toolbox. Why take a year to make a gose, and why try to make a gueuze in two weeks? Each beer calls for a different technique.

I think the issue is when you try to pass off a quick sour as a traditional sour, and it's not. In general, traditional sours are "superior" beers, in that there's a lot more going on in them. But quick sours are also great in their own way! Let them be what they are, enjoy them for what they are, and don't try to charge me $20 for a bomber of one! I'll drink those all day long for a fair price.

But again, there are a lot of crappy quick sours out there, and it's not helping the style or the market.

Agate said:

I'm with you there. They're two different tools in a toolbox. Why take a year to make a gose, and why try to make a gueuze in two weeks? Each beer calls for a different technique.

I think the issue is when you try to pass off a quick sour as a traditional sour, and it's not. In general, traditional sours are "superior" beers, in that there's a lot more going on in them. But quick sours are also great in their own way! Let them be what they are, enjoy them for what they are, and don't try to charge me $20 for a bomber of one! I'll drink those all day long for a fair price.

But again, there are a lot of crappy quick sours out there, and it's not helping the style or the market.

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Exactly. Way to word it without being overly negative

Here's a mango quick-sour gose with citra dry hop. F'ing delish! I proudly wear my death to kettle sours shirt whenever I make a beer like this.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1444345600.828875.jpg

I just like doing a kettle sour for several reasons:
I can use the thermo on my kettle to monitor the temp without opening it.
It is already sitting on a heat source should I need to bump it back up.
Its easier (IMO) to check pH thru wort in a kettle than mash in a mash tun.

Nothing against sour mash, I've had some great sour mash beers, its just easier with my equipment to do a high quality kettle sour.

Some people might disagree with me, but I get a distinct (not good) flavor from beers where the bacteria has been pasteurized.

Personally when I do quick sours (berliners, gose, etc.) I do no hops, pitch my lactobacillus with a 1 day head start (I find that a high room temperature is sufficient for brevis and plantarum) then ferment with brett. When it's ready I add fruit, keg, etc.

This method makes a more complex beer, limits off flavors, and does it in a similar time period too a sour mash.

Agate said:

Here's a mango quick-sour gose with citra dry hop. F'ing delish! I proudly wear my death to kettle sours shirt whenever I make a beer like this.

View attachment 308337

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I posted before reading the whole thread and just have to say I agree with everything you have said. That gose sounds delicious

inflictor-of-grimness said:

Some people might disagree with me, but I get a distinct (not good) flavor from beers where the bacteria has been pasteurized.

Personally when I do quick sours (berliners, gose, etc.) I do no hops, pitch my lactobacillus with a 1 day head start (I find that a high room temperature is sufficient for brevis and plantarum) then ferment with brett. When it's ready I add fruit, keg, etc.

This method makes a more complex beer, limits off flavors, and does it in a similar time period too a sour mash.

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That's actually what I've been doing too. The pasteurization is kind of an unnecessary step, pitch plantarum in carboy, pitch sacch the next day. Just need a separate carboy specifically for fast souring, carboys are cheap.

I asked about a similar topic recently and got some good feedback. I had assumed that sour mashing by adding fresh grain after the regular mash was a more traditional way of doing things for a Berlinerweisse.

As you can read in my thread, that didn't turn out to really be the case.

Still, I like the sour mash technique, but it was definitely cool to get some perspectives from people that have really delved into the topic of sour beers.

Agate said:

That's actually what I've been doing too. The pasteurization is kind of an unnecessary step, pitch plantarum in carboy, pitch sacch the next day. Just need a separate carboy specifically for fast souring, carboys are cheap.

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Exactly my approach for the last few berliner-like beers I've done. Brew as normal with no hops or mash hops, then pitch my sour culture a day to a week before pitching sacc. Hasn't gone wrong yet!

@Agate and @martyjhuebs, as well as any others with successful experience....

I know there is talk of different lacto cultures not being worth the purchase, so what is your preferred lacto for a quick sour like a Berliner? I intend to give a new method a try and want to try for a clean lacto pitch. Can lacto be harvested and stored like other yeasts? I've always done a sour mash/wort, as I liked the predictability and "sanitary" part of it, but is a sour fermentation (Post boil lacto/sacch pitch) worth a shot as well? I'm making a decent quick sour, but wouldn't mind a better method if it's easily (and quickly ) Done

christyle said:

@Agate and @martyjhuebs, as well as any others with successful experience....

I know there is talk of different lacto cultures not being worth the purchase, so what is your preferred lacto for a quick sour like a Berliner? I intend to give a new method a try and want to try for a clean lacto pitch. Can lacto be harvested and stored like other yeasts? I've always done a sour mash/wort, as I liked the predictability and "sanitary" part of it, but is a sour fermentation (Post boil lacto/sacch pitch) worth a shot as well? I'm making a decent quick sour, but wouldn't mind a better method if it's easily (and quickly ) Done

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I saw your other thread on this berliner. IME, you can get a pretty quick sour if you do it right using traditional methods. Ive repeatedly done a few in under 2 months:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=543576

Although ti seems most breweries do berliners with sour worting/mashing due to how fast it can be. However, ive found the sour character isnt as complex as I would like using this method. Plus, ti doesnt evolve over time like traditional sour aging

christyle said:

@Agate and @martyjhuebs, as well as any others with successful experience....



I know there is talk of different lacto cultures not being worth the purchase, so what is your preferred lacto for a quick sour like a Berliner? I intend to give a new method a try and want to try for a clean lacto pitch. Can lacto be harvested and stored like other yeasts? I've always done a sour mash/wort, as I liked the predictability and "sanitary" part of it, but is a sour fermentation (Post boil lacto/sacch pitch) worth a shot as well? I'm making a decent quick sour, but wouldn't mind a better method if it's easily (and quickly ) Done

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I REALLY like omega's OYL-605. It's a blend of plantarum and brevis, with plantarum doing the bulk of the work. 1-liter starter, no hops in the wort, pitch at 90 and within 24 hours you can expect to be at pH 3.5 or less. It's very hop intolerant, so keep them away from your wort! At least until after souring.

If you can't get that blend, look for something that contains plantarum, such as good belly probiotic juice or tablets.

You can keep a culture of Lacto going for later use - just buffer it with some calcium carbonate to a pH over 4.0 to keep the bacteria healthy.

I've stopped boiling after souring - just pitch your sacch or brett in with the bacteria. For me, boiling is an unnecessary step unless you want to hop the wort for whatever reason.

m00ps said:

I saw your other thread on this berliner. IME, you can get a pretty quick sour if you do it right using traditional methods. Ive repeatedly done a few in under 2 months:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=543576

Although ti seems most breweries do berliners with sour worting/mashing due to how fast it can be. However, ive found the sour character isnt as complex as I would like using this method. Plus, ti doesnt evolve over time like traditional sour aging

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My normal sour mash berliner, while not super sour, when fruited has been a huge hit, so I'm afraid to alter it much, but wouldn't mind cleaning it up a tiny bit with a cleaner lacto fermentation. Also, sometimes I just want a tart fruit beer, not a fell on sour assault. Plus SWMBO likes the berliners, not the full on sours.

It's interesting, my first attempt at this beer was half fruited, and half left as is. The plain version ended up being more or less undrinkable, with excessive milky lacto flavors. I let it sit and it transitioned into a more wine-like flavor, and now it's coming into it's own as a decent clean berliner, but it's been over the course of 6-8 months in the bottle I believe.

Agate said:

I REALLY like omega's OYL-605. It's a blend of plantarum and brevis, with plantarum doing the bulk of the work. 1-liter starter, no hops in the wort, pitch at 90 and within 24 hours you can expect to be at pH 3.5 or less. It's very hop intolerant, so keep them away from your wort! At least until after souring.

If you can't get that blend, look for something that contains plantarum, such as good belly probiotic juice or tablets.

You can keep a culture of Lacto going for later use - just buffer it with some calcium carbonate to a pH over 4.0 to keep the bacteria healthy.

I've stopped boiling after souring - just pitch your sacch or brett in with the bacteria. For me, boiling is an unnecessary step unless you want to hop the wort for whatever reason.

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Great info, thanks!