First Sour Mash - Cheater's Framboise

I'm planning on doing a sour mash based on the THE IMPATIENT MAN'S LAMBIC-ISH FRAMBOISE, found at http://www.brewboard.com/index.php?showtopic=29637&st=0

My intent is to create something kind of like Lindemans Framboise (the one beer my wife will actually drink) except I don't want to wait a year or more for it to be ready! The recipe I'm thinking of is as follows:


8.0 lb Rahr two-row
2.0 lb White Wheat
1.0 lb Crystal 60L
1 oz Black Patent
1 oz Roasted Barley
1 oz Honey Malt
1 lb Lactose
0.5 lb oven aged cascade @ 60 mins
0.5 lb oven aged cascade @ 30 mins
US-05 ale yeast
9 lb frozen raspberries (racked on top of in secondary)

The procedure will be:

• 
  mash all of the grains at a normal temperature, 152° or so, for 60 mins

• mash out, collect my runnings, sparge, collect more runnings, and combine them all in brew pot

• once it all cools to 120°, add a half pound of crushed, un-mashed 2-row, cover the pot with plastic cling wrap, and allow to sour for 12ish hours

• skim the nasties off of the top, separate the sour wort from the grains, and boil for 90 mins, with the hop additions at 60 and 30 mins and the lactose at 5 mins.

My questions are:
1. Will this work to produce a drinkable sour beer?
2. Should I be worried about the amount of head space (oxygen exposure) during the souring?
3. Will the final product be dry, sour, and sweet??

This is my first time attempting anything like this so please bear with me and I am open to suggestions!

Any thoughts out there? I'm going to mash and sour this tonight and brew tomorrow. Should I be worried about trying to keep the temp between 110° and 120° while it sours?

I was waiting for someone else to comment. I've never done a sour mash, so can't really provide much constructive feedback, but on first impression it looks very busy and you are just tossing anything you can think of in there. It may turn out wonderful, but looks to be a jumble of ingredients.

Why 0.5 lbs of hops per addition? A couple ozs total should be fine. If they still have some of their flavor left, it will dominate the beer.

From what I have read, it it may be best to get the cling wrap touching the surface of the wort, leaving no airspace.

The 0.5 lb of hops is a typo, my bad! Its supposed to read 0.5 oz at 60 and 30 mins. Are you saying I should simplify my grain bill?

rancidcrabtree said:

The 0.5 lb of hops is a typo, my bad! Its supposed to read 0.5 oz at 60 and 30 mins. Are you saying I should simplify my grain bill?

Click to expand...

Lambic is basically a wheat beer; Pilsner + Wheat and nothing else.

I figure the lactose is to get the sweetness of Lindemans. I think you would be better off mashing high to get the sweetness rather than adding the lactose.

Again, I've never done a sour mash, so have no idea how it will turn out.

I don't think you want to mash high.

Lambics are supposed to have a light body, and mashing high is going to give you a heavier body.


What I am confused about the tiny quantities of black patent, roasted barley, and honey malt. I presume they are for adding color, but it just seems like a bad idea to me.

I'd probably let it go longer than 12 hours. I've done several sour mashes and the minimum I've done is 2 days with the full mash. I also added pre-cultured lacto to the mash to speed things along. I usually go off of my pH meter to determine sourness.

Cling wrap and co2 purging are your friends during a sour mash. They really both really help to keep the vomit/death smell down.

Regarding the lactose, the original recipe calls for 3 lbs, and in the comments the OP says he would consider going as high as 5 lbs to get the sweetness of Lindemans. I think Lindemans is a little too sweet, not to mention lactose is $5 a lb at my LHBS, so im sticking to 1 lb. Regarding the small amounts of specialty malts, the original recipe calls for 1 oz black patent, 1 oz roasted barley, and 0.5 oz smoked malt. LHBS didn't sell smoked malt so im skipping that, I don't know what the other malts will contribute other than color, and im sure it will get plenty of color from the 9 lbs of raspberries so I can leave them out if the general consensus is that it would be better off without them. I added the honey malt, I figured it would be an easier way to sweeten it up a bit without spending another $20 on lactose. I've never used honey malt before, the 1 oz was just a guess at what would be a good amount, I can drop it too.

After reading a bit more on sour mashes, this is what I think I might do:

Mash low (148ish) for 60-90 mins
Drop temp to 110-120 and add u-malted grains to mash tun
Cover with tin foil, let sour for 12 to 15 hours
Mash out, collect runnings, apathetic and continue as normal

Thoughts??

I should have said "add un-mashed grains to mash", stupid auto correct!

Assuming I don't have 2 days to let this sour, could I add more un-mashed grains, maybe a full lb or more, and hope the additional bacteria would speed up the process?

There are a couple issues here if you are trying to recreate a lambic.

Sour mashing will not result in an aged lambic. There is nothing wrong with sour mashing, I use it in my 100% Brett KY Common. But you won't wind up with a lambic.

Regarding the grainbill- you no longer have to follow the typical lambic bill of Pilsen and wheat, since you aren't turbid mashing or adding bacteria to eat up those complex sugars.

And about the mash temperature. It's common practice to follow a turbid mash. It's also a common method to mash high around 157-159 F so your initial yeast strain will only be able to eat so much, then Brett and lacto have plenty to munch on. But in your case you don't have to worry about that.
Reserve a handful of grain. I'd mash low around 148 to compensate for body. Let it cool to around 115 then try to keep it there for around 24 hours. Once the temperature is down to around 115, toss in the reserved grain. That will reintroduce Lactobaccillus delbruckii, which is what you want. There are a lot of opinions on a full sour mash vs 25% soured 75% unsoured. But I find 100% at 24 hours works for my setup.

http://***********/stories/techniques/article/indices/9-all-grain-brewing/1723-sour-mashing-techniques Helps a lot

I found this method in an issue of Zymurgy and highly recommend it if you try this again.

1. Make a sour starter - 2 tablespoons of un-milled grain in 1.030 wort in a flask for three days at 100 - 110 (I use a heat stick in a water bath and temp controller to keep the temp - it will smell and taste tart).

2. Do a regular mash and cool to 100-110. The sour starter goes in for 12 - 36 hours depending on how sour I want it to get (Again I use a heat stick and temp controller to keep the temp).

3. Boil with hops and ferment with a clean ale yeast.

I then make a few different fruit syrups and add to taste or drink as is.

This makes a great Berliner Weisse that you could be drinking in less than one month.

Hmm, a sour starter, I wish I had thought of that 2 or 3 days ago! From my limited exposure to sours I like what I've tried so far, and so does SWMBO (go figure!) so I will definitely be making more. Im moving in a couple of months to a more brew friendly home so im hoping to get more in depth with sours, even some true sour fermentations. Thanks for all of the advise so far, I will keep this thread updated as I brew.

I am going to try and start the mash a little earlier today and let it go for at least 18 hours before I boil. Are there any thoughts on the roasted barley, black patent, and honey malt? Let me know what you guys think, you can't hurt my feelings!

Quick update:

I mashed using 8 lbs of 2-row, 2 lbs of white wheat, 1 lb of C-60, 2 oz of honey malt, and 1 oz of black patent. I dropped the roasted barley. Mash temp was 149° although it dropped to 145 after the first 45 mins so I let it go a total of 90 mins. I then cooled it to 120°, tossed in a lb of milled, un-mashed 2-row and covered the surface with tin foil. Its been souring for almost 13 hours, I just checked it and it has a slightly funky smell, but nothing gag-worthy yet. The taste is fairly sour, it's not pucker-worthy yet, but it is getting there. I'm going to let it sour for another hour or three while I oven age an oz of cascade.

I've seen this recipe several times before but I've never seen anybody try it and come back around and say it was a great beer or really matched that lindeman's beer. There's really no sourness at all in that lindeman's beer. There's a little bit of that lambic funk in the flavor that might be slightly replicated by a sour mash but anything more than a few hours is going to get more sourness than meets the lindeman's beer.

That's ok, I'm not trying to get an exact clone, I think Lindemans is too sweet. What I really want is a sour and dry framboise that hopefully has a little residual sweetness. I have no idea if I will get that or not with this recipe, this is my first time trying to brew anything sour and if it turns into something drinkable I will be happy!

Update:

I let this sour for 15 hours, it had a great flavor and smell, kind of like a sour apple cider, it was very good! I boiled for 90ish minutes, I'm not exactly sure due to the fact that I ran out of propane somewhere between 60 and 30 mins and had to transfer to my stove top. I finished with 5.4 gallons at 1.064, about 83% brewhouse efficiency. The taste was sour and a little cascady, if I was to do it again I would:

1. make sure I have enough propane to finish the boil!
2. purchase actual aged hops or else research oven ageing better. (I tasted a little bitterness in the final sample, but hopefully that will fade with age)
3. use less grain or adjust crush to compensate for the longer mash. (I got 83% and I was planning on 75% which is my norm)

I'm looking forward to racking this one on top of the 9lbs of raspberries I have waiting in my freezer and I'm really looking forward to my first taste of the final product. This is definitely one I will keep in the closet so I can taste test as it ages. Thanks to all who posted and gave advice. I will give an update next time something interesting happens.

Maybe I missed something, but it would be great if you posted exactly what you did for the sour mash (all the little bits folks forget about, such as how you covered it and what temperature you kept it).

Sounds like it came out good. Would like to learn from what you did. I've never done it, but might based on your success.

Ok, here goes:

Before this brew I have zero experience with sour mashing so if the experts notice any mistake, that's why!

Based on the advise in this thread I decided to mash low (around 148°) to get a nice and dry finished product. I also mashed thin because I figured the more time my first runnings had to sour, the more sour the final product would be. I ended up mashing with a ratio of 1.5 quarts per lb of grain. Even so, after the 1.5 hour mash and 15 hour souring process I only got 2.5 gallons of first runnings. I kept my grain in the cooler I always use to mash during the souring process, it took a little longer than I thought to get it down to 120° (when I added the 1lb of un-mashed 2-row) than I thought it would. I used some ice cubes and a cold pack (sanitized) from the freezer to help speed up the cooling process. I tried to avoid vigorous mixing to cool the mash as much as possible because I didn't want to oxygenate too much and risk ending up with vinegar. Once I got to 120° I added the un-mashed 2-row, mixed gently, and covered it all with 3 layers of tin foil. That might have been a little overkill but I was really paranoid about oxygenation! After closing the lid I covered the cooler with a couple of winter jackets to aid with insulation. By the end of the 15 hour souring process it still smelled and tasted good so I'm thinking it wasn't a waste of foil. Over the 15 hours I lost about 10° (ending at 110°) but I think I've read that the bacteria from the 2-row husks work best between 120° and 110° so I didn't stress it. I sparged with 5 gallons @ 175° and ended up with 7.4 gallons going into the boil (there must have been a little stuck in the mash tun). For the boil, I went with 90 mins, to kill off the nasties and get the volume down to 5.5 gallons. I ran out of propane at one point and had to transfer to the stove, so I'm not exactly sure how long the boil was but I ended up with 5.4 gallons so I must have been pretty close to 90 mins, maybe a little longer. Overall I am impressed with the taste and odor of this batch, I am excited to see how it turns out!

Edit: I should add, at the end of the 15 hours of souring it smelled good, definitely a sour/kinda funky smell and different from the typical end of mash smell I'm used to, but it was good and not something that would make a person want to gag. I used a pipette to taste test and it was sour but good.

Update: Transferred today from primary bucket to secondary 6.5 gal carboy with 9lbs of frozen raspberries. Gravity was 1.020 as I transferred to secondary, ideally I would have let this sit for another 2 weeks or so to let the fermentation complete, considering my crazy high OG, but since I am on a time crunch (moving in a month) I need to get this done. So I racked on top of the raspberries, took a gravity sample and taste test. Taste was sourish, kind of like a cider going sour, and a little sweet, it made me think of those alcoholic energy drinks called Sparks that I used to drink back in the day before they outlawed them. I'm sure the sweetness came from the wort still being at 1.020. Anyways, I racked on top of 9lbs of frozen raspberries, I decided not to pasteurize before racking since the berries have been frozen in my freezer for the last 2 weeks, hopefully that doesn't bite me in the butt later! Taste was good, nothing like Lindemans raspberry, more sour and I'm think the 9lbs of fruit will only add to the dryness and tartness of this beer, but that's ok. I'm excited to see how it turns out.

Any word on how it turned out? Was 9lbs of raspberries enough/too much? How about the overall sourness and the bitterness?

I'm doing a similar thing.

SO, there I was, trying my first Lambic thinking "I gotta try and brew this". A few dollars later I had the American Sours book heading home. But i'm a little adventurous and enjoy learning from mistakes. And I had a few extra buckets lying around that I could use.

My goal was to try and make a peach/raspberry sour that would be ready around Christmas time. Learn a lot and really just goof off with some brew buddies.

I loosely based this off of CJOHB.

10 lB 2 row.
.5 Lb Crystal 20L
1 Oz of stale Sazz

Mashed at 158 for 60 min (looking for something a little drier?)
Sparged at 170

Tossed in a handful of grain. Kept at 110 for 4 days. I laid some saran wrap right on top of the wort up the sides of the bucket to keep air from entering the wort.
Boiled for 60 min.
OG 048.
Pitched WPL 635.

I intend on letting it sit for a month. Split it into 2 and add about 3-5 lbs of Raspberries to one, and 3-5 lbs of Peaches to the other. Let that sit for a month then rack it off the fruit to secondary until I bottle sometime early November.

After I pitched the Bret/Lambic mix, I read the White labs info on the 635 and it said that I should pitch an ale yeast first, then pitch the 635 in secondary. But the CJOHB called for a blended mix that I assume was the 635. Should I pitch something else with this? Or am I completely off base.

Should I pitch something else when I add the fruit? I'm planning on cutting up the peaches and freezing both then letting them thaw before.

Thoughts?