ja09
Well-Known Member
Just found out about this today and I'm pretty excited to try. Glad he got a mention in the new BA magazine. Totally subscribing and interested to hear the results.
Just wanted to share a quick experience from buying yeast from Black Man.
Placed an order last Friday. Saturday got an email saying they had cancelled the order.
I emailed them to ask what was going on & Barrett responded that he was sorry, the system automatically cancels any order they haven't filled in 24 hours, and he was on the road and unable to fill it. He asked me to re-order Monday morning. I thought this was a little strange, but re-ordered again on Monday and put a note on the order to please contact me if it couldn't ship that day.
Yesterday I got my package. Barrett had included an ice pack (rare for dry yeast in my experience), a sticker, 8 ounces of free hops, and he had paid extra to ship it 2nd day delivery. There was a personally written note inside the package apologizing for the inconvenience, thanking me for the re-order, and a quick note on fermentation temps.
That is what you call solid customer service.
Anyway, i'll be doing a sour brown on Saturday. Will post some results.
You can definitely get a very sour beer without doing a sour mash or kettle sour.My sour brown is just about ready. It has been bottled for 9 days.
I used the American sour blend, fermented at 70 for 2 weeks, then ramped up the temps to 84 for a week.
I was only able to get the ph to 3.9. Tasted the hydro tube sample and while you could definitely detect a sour note, it wasn't anywhere near the sours you taste at RR, Crooked stave, wicked weed, etc.
I saved the yeast/bacteria, although I've been reading how sacc that worked in such low ph environments really isn't suitable for re-use. Not sure how much truth there is behind this.
While the dry blends seemed like a really good idea at first for an easy sour beer option, I just don't know that you could ever get a really low ph sour beer without doing a sour mash or kettle sour. Interested in hearing other opinions on this.
You can definitely get a very sour beer without doing a sour mash or kettle sour.
I think the drying process may be particularly hard on these bacteria in these blends though... At least that's my guess at why the pH hasn't been dropping with these... I have been slacking though.. I still have 3 blends left to try. From what i've heard though... I think I'm going to be trying these in 1 gallon batches rather than full sized batches.
then maybe use the slurry from the 1 gal batch for a 5-6 gal batch? essentially treat the 1 gal as a starter...I think I'm going to be trying these in 1 gallon batches rather than full sized batches.
Whats your process for getting low ph out of these dry sour blends? I meant that as far as using lacto goes, I'm not sure the dry blend works near as well as souring the mash or in the kettle.
Obviously pedio/brett is a completely different animal, and I wasn't meaning to compare to that method.
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