Partigyle + blending to create high gravity and/or high IBU versions of sour beers?

I was thinking, if you took the first runnings of a big mash and made a big, plain old saccharomyces beer, you could take the second runnings and make a sour with the lower gravity runnings.

After a few months, a high gravity sacch beer would be pretty mature, but a sour beer might still be green and harsh. Blended together, you might get the best of both, like a lambic mixed with an IPA to get a hoppy lambic, for example, with enough dilution to mellow out the sourness. A 50-50 mix might not be appropriate, so you'd probably have a lot of sour beer left over to continue bulk aging. Has anyone tried blending sacch beer with sour beer? I see a lot on blending sours together, but nothing about this (except Guinness).

I just started making my first sour ale and did something very similar. What I did was make a lacto starter from grain husk, smelling the starter to make sure it was a good clean sour. Then took second runnings from an IPA pitched my lacto starter and sour worted it in my bk covered with aluminum foil for 4 days. After again checking to make sure it was a clean sour and not one that smelled like garbage, I brought it up to a boil for 45 mins and added 2 oz cascade with 5 mins left. This way I killed of any bugs so I don't infect any equipment and was able to hop my beer to whatever IBU I wanted without prohibiting the lacto. I'm going to rack it on some rhubarb in like a week. In the end no blending and I get a hoppy sour ale.

The plan could work but I would avoid mixing a sour with an IPA. Sour and bitter are not a great combo. However hop aroma and sour can work well together.

If you blend clean and sour beers together the bacteria and brett will consume the residual sugars in the clean beer.

You can treat the sour beer to kill all the microbes. I have been mulling over something like this for a while now. My plan was to make a really big quad and then get something really sour with a lower OG, then blend it back to get a 9 or 10 abv sour quad. Would be interested to know if anyone has done this.

spenghali said:

You can treat the sour beer to kill all the microbes. I have been mulling over something like this for a while now. My plan was to make a really big quad and then get something really sour with a lower OG, then blend it back to get a 9 or 10 abv sour quad. Would be interested to know if anyone has done this.

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Right but that isn't what OP was asking about doing.

KeyWestBrewing said:

Then took second runnings from an IPA pitched my lacto starter and sour worted it in my bk covered with aluminum foil for 4 days. After again checking to make sure it was a clean sour and not one that smelled like garbage

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I would be way too scared to leave such a low PH thing in an aluminum pot for 4 days. I can't imagine it not tainting the flavour.

spenghali said:

You can treat the sour beer to kill all the microbes. I have been mulling over something like this for a while now. My plan was to make a really big quad and then get something really sour with a lower OG, then blend it back to get a 9 or 10 abv sour quad. Would be interested to know if anyone has done this.

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Yeah, I was thinking that high alcohol or high IBUs will kill pretty everything except brett? If I blend 3% lacto beer with a 9% clean beer, then the resulting 6 to 7.5% would be lights out for the lacto? And there's always campden.

Here's someone who has a method of blending young sours with a sweet base using cold crashing, campden, and sulfite-tolerant wine yeast for carbonation:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/c...e-if-i-want-new-brewing-wild-cultures-282340/

I didn't see this post before, but it sounds very promising.

Depending on your lacto strain and whether you have pedio or other various souring/funking lifeforms in the beer higher ABV or IBUs may not stop them. I believe even the WL and WY strains of lacto are good to 8% ABV. If you want to blend a stable product you'll need to do the above cold crash/campden process or bottle pasteurize.

TimT said:

I would be way too scared to leave such a low PH thing in an aluminum pot for 4 days. I can't imagine it not tainting the flavour.

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I got the idea from people that mentioned doing it that way though I can't think of which threads they were off hand. At the moment though it taste and smells fine.