Sour Mash?

Anyone here do them?

Are they worth the time/effort?

What styles are they good for?

Anybody have any recipes?

Read about it when I was flicking through The Joy Of Homebrewing and thought it might be a good way to try brewing some sour beers as liquid cultures are pretty expensive in my country.

I've done a small one once. Mashed about 1# pale ale for about 20 minutes, didn't sparge, and let it sit (wort only) covered for a few days in the basement. I then mashed about 10# grains (including specialty) for the normal time, added the sour mash to it, and went through the remainder of the steps. The beer turned out ok, but I would recommend using the cultures. You get a better level of sourness (can control how much culture you add) and you know what you are adding. Unless you live near Brussels (Lambic area), you have no idea what the microflora is in your area. For me, the cultures cost about $10/100ml and I think they are worth it when making a quality sour beer. I would spend the 10 bucks and have a good sour beer instead of doing the sour mash again. My 2cents worth here.

Cool, thanks.

Anyone else do them?

I've done it and had great results. I brewed up my Standard Stout recipe and took 24 ounces of the first run off and put it in a bowl. I put a few crushed grains in and let it sit for a week with tin foil over it very loosely, just to keep dirt and critters out. I then boiled for a few minutes and mixed it back into the fermenter with the rest of the beer. It's the best stout I've ever made. I have pictures in the link in my signarture (partial sour) stout recipe.

EDIT: actually the link in sig is wrong, pics here though: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=44993

I'm also about to do it next weekend with my hobbit ale.

Oh ****, just noticed you are in NZ. I bet the environment there has great natural bacteria. You should try some spontanious fermentation some time. If you get good results MAIL ME SOME OF THE YEAST!!

On a side note, I spent a month on the north island. Had a KILLER time.