Sour Moose Drool?

I love sour beer and I love Moose Drool! At least I love the clone of Moose Drool. I just never had the real thing. Anyway..... I've never made a sour beer but I'm itching to and I keep thinking a brown ale sour would be a great mix! But what do I know? Thought I'd ask some experts! Any thoughts? Am I even barking up the right tree, or should I just make a Tripel and sour that? Right now all my ideas are based on reading and no experience so any input would be greatly appreciated!

I love Moose Drool too. I think it could work but I'd dial the hops back a bunch. I tend to use aged hops in most of my sours but as long as you keep the IBUs low, you should be able to use fresher hops. Brett and bacteria will definitely change the character so it'll be quite a bit different than non-soured Moose Drool. Sour browns are some of my favorite sours to make. I really like how the chocolate notes blend with the acidity from the bacteria.

microbusbrewery said:

I think it could work but I'd dial the hops back a bunch.

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The hops in a brown would definitely keep a lot of that bacteria from taking its course. I would recommend a sour mash technique and then age it if you would like. Im a huge advocate for sour mashing and I think it this situation it would be perfect since the sourness comes before the hops addition.

Thanks! I'll probably do a bunch more homework. I've read about sour mash but never had anything that was made that way. At least not to my knowledge. If I understand right the concept is to create the sour flavors in the mash not the fermentation. If that's right my thought would be that they would be fairly different? But I have very little knowledge of either at this point! Can anyone fill me in on the difference in character between the two?

Funny you should start this thread as I was just thinking of souring a Moose Drool clone (Caribou Slobber) and came looking for info. I had just planned on brewing it as usual and then tossing a lambic blend into the secondary and letting it sit for six months or so. Maybe I'm way off [emoji15]

On the one hand, a beer with a lot of sweetness and body left after the saccharomyces are through is usually a good candidate for an aged, brett-and-pedio sour – all those so-called "unfermentables" are a great source of food for the bugs to chew on as they do their delicious souring work.

On the other hand, the un-soured ungulate excretion recipe is going to call for a lot of hops and roasty character to balance out all that residual sweetness, and while any hop aroma and flavor will age out in the long secondary ferment, the bugs won't touch the bitterness or roast, leaving them in the final beer.

Now, that ain't to say you can't pull off a dark, roasty sour – Tart of Darkness, anybody? – but, that is an awful lot going on, I'd probably dial the hops and dark malts back some.

All I know is this stuff tastes fantastic! http://jesterkingbrewery.com/ol-oi