Ithaca brewing - sour beers

did anyone else happen to catch the sunday session episode where ithaca brewing was on and they were sampling a few of their sour beers?

he (ithaca 'executive' brewer) threw a curve ball at them when he indicated his sourness came from acidulated malt rather than inoculating the wort with lactic bacteria. also ferments the beers out most of the way with their house yeast and uses a strain of brett (can't remember which one) to finish out, letting that work for the better part of 6 months. high mash temp to ensure plenty of brett food also... i think he used like 14% acid malt.

interesting if you're looking for a different way to produce a sour beer. just thought others might be interested.

I've been thinking about doing this myself. I've found that beers with *just* acid malt or food-grade acid taste one dimensional, but I've been wondering if brett + some added lactic acid would round out the flavors enough with ethyl lactate and so forth to make a good beer. It sounds like that's what Ithaca is doing... maybe I'll move that plan up in line.

I caught that as well.

I thought it was interesting and may give it a shot one day on a small batch.

Anyone here had their beers? How do they stack up?

Brute is one of the best AWA's produced. I'm surprised to hear this and I definitely must try it now.

That was an awesome show. I also liked how he mentioned propagating Brett like a regular starter. He gave a lot of good info out

definitely. they had that "IPA" they drank first which was fermented with brett c. and brett b. (i think). there is a good thread on here about fermenting only with brett:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/muse-my-second-all-brett-beer-135753/

once some brewing time opens up, i'm very interested in trying out some of the techniques he talked about.

I did a batch of something that I hope will resemble Brute, based on the info from that show.
See this thread
The "executive brewer" Jeff O'Neil said they ferment the Brute first with their house strain which is similar to Whitbread (Wyeast 1099), then finish it with the Drie Fonteinen strain, same strain as in Avery's 15.

dstar26t said:

The "executive brewer" Jeff O'Neil said they ferment the Brute first with their house strain which is similar to Whitbread (Wyeast 1099), then finish it with the Drie Fonteinen strain, same strain as in Avery's 15.

Click to expand...

That's a tricky subject. Avery got their strain for 15 from Drie Fonteinen, but if you culture the yeast from a bottle of 15 you will get mostly a mutant of the Drie Fonteinen strain rather than the pure strain. That's not necessarily bad- it has a lemony tartness and a mild funk that I like quite a bit, but it's something to think about if you get that far down the road to trying an exact clone.

dwarven_stout said:

That's a tricky subject. Avery got their strain for 15 from Drie Fonteinen, but if you culture the yeast from a bottle of 15 you will get mostly a mutant of the Drie Fonteinen strain rather than the pure strain. That's not necessarily bad- it has a lemony tartness and a mild funk that I like quite a bit, but it's something to think about if you get that far down the road to trying an exact clone.

Click to expand...

What he said was that they use the same yeast that Avery uses, which Avery got from Drie Fonteinen. So, if it has mutated like you're suggesting, it's still the one you want for Brute.
Thanks for the clarification