making a sour beer & time

I have previously made one sour beer successfuly. It finished out to be very close to a berliner weisse. I kept cracking bottles over a year to taste the change. It was a great experience to taste it change very slowly.


The one deterent I have is the nine months and the bottling(to get it out of the primary's need to make other beers) required to achieve such a beer.

I have recently read an article in brew your own magazine on sour mashing.

The question is if I use this technique of sour mashing can I avoid the 9-12 month wait & drink my beer in say less that 2 months out of my keg??

Has anyone ever done it?

I would be leaning towards an oud bruin. Had a home brewed one from a master a couple years ago & I will never forget it.

I appreciate your input.

I noticed you did not say how you soured your first?
Your answer is sort of but not really. They will end up with different flavor profiles. Souring your own mash will subject your mash to local bugs. When using a bug pack from a lab, you are using bugs from elsewhere. You are also introducing bugs at different times, one at mash and one at fermentation.
I have tried a Kentucky Komon beer at New Albanian Brewing that was made traditionally with a portion of the mash soured. It is a very good beer, but I have noticed that it is very hard to make consistently because the changing of the seasons changes the sourness of the beer in one way or another..
That said there was no where near the compexity of a Rodenbach which is soured over time not in the mash.

There is no substitute for time...Good luck, happy brewing.

The one issue you might run into with attempting to bottle a young sour is that the bugs are going to keep eating sugars very slowly for a long time. Bottle bombs or excessively carbed beers will be the result.

Maybe split the batch into smaller carboys (3 gallons), and age them that way. You can bottle one somewhat quickly, and keep the other for blending experiments. Just a suggestion.

The first & only sour beer I made was a few years ago.

It was a simple plain ale. Double batch.

I pitched in knottingham ale yeast.

After it was fermented. I began a starter with Brettomyces. approximatley 4 litres.

I can't find the exact strain at white labs right now.

I then put 8 jars of sour cherries in one carboy with half the Bret starter & the other half of the starter in the other.

Both were excellent. As previously mentioned. The time is an issue. I am wondering if it can be bypassed by the sour mash process in BYO magazine.

It took a year for the sourness to completely kick in. By the end of the next summer all had been drunk. Both were excellent.

kmlavoy said:

The one issue you might run into with attempting to bottle a young sour is that the bugs are going to keep eating sugars very slowly for a long time. Bottle bombs or excessively carbed beers will be the result.

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Nope.
If you sour MASH...you'll kill the bugs during the boil. It will never get any more sour. In fact, if you sour mash, the only part of the process that differs from a standard beer is the fact that you're gonna let either your grain, or your sweet wort sit out for 18 - 24 hours to rot....then you boil away just like any other beer, ferment just like any other beer, and bottle and drink just like any other beer.
Here is the chronicle of my first go with a sour mash.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/sour-peach-beer-76710/

Big Kahuna is exactly right. The boil will 'fix' the level of sourness in the mash by killing the bugs responsible. Sour beers are not a project for the impatient, I'm afraid. Especially not an Oud Bruin.

I have heard of people making "fast" Berliner Weisses by making the base beer and then pitching a tube of lacto, letting that work for a day or two then pitching the saccharomyces. Giving the lacto a head start will turn out a fairly sour beer. But, if you plan to bottle, I would let it sit for a minimum of 6 months or, IMO, or you risk bottle bombs.

I think a Oud Bruin could potentially be done in 6 months as well as this style is not known to be overly sour (like a Flanders Red). But again, I would say 6 months minimum before bottling.

Beerrific said:

I have heard of people making "fast" Berliner Weisses by making the base beer and then pitching a tube of lacto, letting that work for a day or two then pitching the saccharomyces. Giving the lacto a head start will turn out a fairly sour beer. But, if you plan to bottle, I would let it sit for a minimum of 6 months or, IMO, or you risk bottle bombs.

I think a Oud Bruin could potentially be done in 6 months as well as this style is not known to be overly sour (like a Flanders Red). But again, I would say 6 months minimum before bottling.

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Lactobacillus is definitely the fastest way to getting a sour beer of any sort. Pitching it before the yeast is a good way to let it really take off, but it will basically achieve the same thing as a sour mash. All a sour mash does is utilize the naturally occurring lacto from the husks of the grain. So basically, you're souring, then boiling.

I'm sitting on a Flanders red that I made using the roselare pack from wyeast, and I am planning on a 15-18 month wait. These beers take time. They're not something you can rush and you need to be prepared to wait. OTherwise, you're better off just buying the beers you like in that style.

I do not yet have experience with both types of sour beers to know the difference but i suspect there will be a considerable difference in the flavor profile between a sour ferment and a sour mash.

A sour mash produces the acid in the mash from mostly lactic bacteria. Then the wort is boiled which will result in some compounds being boiled off and other produced. Then the sugars are fermented with sac yeast.

A sour ferment happens from the bacteria and other bugs operating in an alcoholic environment eating mostly the unfermentable sugars left. If nothing else a sour ferment should leave the beer drier than a sour mash.

However a sour mash should still produce a sour beer and it should not take any longer than it does for a normal beer except for the couple days for the sour mash. It seems like something worth trying. I have been thinking about doing a sour mash beer myself. I already have a Flander's Red ale in the fermenter.

Craig

Another old thread, but oh well. It's fun to revive the dead threads.

I plan to make a Berliner Weisse soon by souring the wort first for 24 hours and then boiling it for about 30 minutes with some hops. One time I mashed some beer and threw the grains in the kitchen trash. The next day the entire kitchen and a lot of the house had a very strong sour milk smell. The grains had already been mashed, but they still had enough bacteria to go sour in the summer. So I think this method will work. I feel better about boiling the wort when it is sour enough for me, so that no bacteria will grow in the bottles and cause bottle bombs later. Plus I can drink the beer sooner.