Experimental Sours

I plan on brewing a batch of Hennepin this weekend, and I wanted to start brewing some experimental sour beers. I currently have the dregs from a Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere and Oud Beersel Geuze waiting in my fridge. My thoughts were to try and make 2 separate SOUR Hennepins. I was going to bump my normal 5 gallon batch up to 7 gallons, so I could have (2) 1 gallon sour hennepins and a normal 5 gallon Hennepin. I have a few questions about how to accomplish this.

(1)Should I dillute the base Hennepin batch before pitching the dregs? The Hennepin recipe should be about 1.073 OG.

(2)Should I make a starter for the dregs or simply directly pitch them?

(3) What is the ideal IBU for the sour batches? The base Hennepin will be about 30 IBUs, but I think this is too high and may interfere with souring. I was thinking I could pull off the 2 gallon sour batches prior to boiling the main batch, and then boil them separately. Any other ideas?

Thanks.

1) It depends what you want, a 1.073 beer could make an excellend sour (I'm about to do a sour tripel).

2)I'd pitch the dregs in directly along with a healthy culture of a primary Sacch strain.

3) Should sour fine, 30 IBUs will stop many strains of Lacto, but the Pedio will be fine. Bitterness and sourness can clash, but after a year of aging you'll be down to 15 IBUs, so no issue there.

Also a note, I did a Hennepin clone from BYO years back that called for 1 oz of dried ginger, waaaay too much. I'd use fresh, or if you go dried back it down to a gram or two.

Hope that helps, good luck.

Thanks for the reply Oldsock. So based on your comments I will simply boil the full batch and then separate into a 5 gallon batch and 2 single gallon batches.

Since you seem to be quite knowledgable on the subject, if I wanted to turn my full 5 gallon batch into a sour brew, would the dregs from a single bottle be enough or would you pitch multiple (is it simply a matter of it taking longer to sour with less bugs initially). I would like to make a starter from the dregs, but from what I have read it seems that making a starter for the bugs would not be as effective as it is for a Sacch strain.

By the way, I love your blog, especially all your barrel aged brews. Thanks again.

I would go with multiple dregs since you don't know which microbes will still be alive. Fresh bottles are better than older ones as well since you'll get a better range of bugs. Starters can work with dregs, but it is hard to get all the different microbes to grow at the same time since they have different requirements for oxygen/gravity/pH/temperature etc... I tend to pitch a pack of Roeselare or lambic blend along with the dregs to provide a base for the dregs as well, but I've had fine results without doing that.

If you are going to sour the whole thing I’d probably drop the IBUs, but it wouldn't be required. You could also try just adding Brett to part of the batch (which is how they make Ommegeddon).

Glad you enjoy the blog, let me know how this batch turns out.

Again thanks for the advice. I just finished a starter for the Hennepin (from the dregs of a Hennepin). I am hoping this takes off, assuming it does I plan on using this as the Sacc for the (2) sour gallon batches. Would you pitch this first, let it ferment out and then pitch the bugs or pitch them together?