Pellicle Photo Collection

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
If you did a sour mash, you probably have a lot of different things including lacto, brett, and others.

Thanks for the info! So do I let it ride out 3-6 months? Taste and go from there? Do i take out the fruit? Looks like the pellicle has already dropped since this pic from last week.
 
Pellicles Rise and fall like the tide, but maybe not be finished. I think it's more of a oxygen barrier than a fermentation checker. Anyways, What's the deal with all this Pellicle TALK.
Baby Pellicle on Lambic Mead from 2nd Generation Bug Cake (around 3 months)
EkDRwPn.jpg
 
Pellicles Rise and fall like the tide, but maybe not be finished. I think it's more of a oxygen barrier than a fermentation checker. Anyways, What's the deal with all this Pellicle TALK.
Baby Pellicle on Lambic Mead from 2nd Generation Bug Cake (around 3 months)
EkDRwPn.jpg

Cool, I'm gonna let this ride out for 3 months then check again ;)
 
I am considering making a sour brew, and i dont know where to get started. Looking for some sound advice. I know i should do a basic brew in the beginning and go from there. Any recommendations on what brew i could do it with? Or just any brew will do? Being in alaska, i have a miniscule selection of microbrews that i can choose from and i would like to start a sour with the dregs from another brew. Im pretty sure i have seen some sours that i could choose from to get some dregs.

Im new to brewing and any advice would help. Can i make any style beer into a sour? I dont want to tie up one of my carboys for as long as it takes for a sour to ferment, so i was planning on using a few of the growlers that i have laying around to make them. Is a sour too complex for a noob brewer like me?
 
I am considering making a sour brew, and i dont know where to get started. Looking for some sound advice. I know i should do a basic brew in the beginning and go from there. Any recommendations on what brew i could do it with? Or just any brew will do? Being in alaska, i have a miniscule selection of microbrews that i can choose from and i would like to start a sour with the dregs from another brew. Im pretty sure i have seen some sours that i could choose from to get some dregs.



Im new to brewing and any advice would help. Can i make any style beer into a sour? I dont want to tie up one of my carboys for as long as it takes for a sour to ferment, so i was planning on using a few of the growlers that i have laying around to make them. Is a sour too complex for a noob brewer like me?


You can sour any style, but very bitter or very roasty styles are tougher to do right. Start with a simple grain bill, add the yeast and bacteria of your choice, and wait. After a few months to a year, check the gravity and flavor and see if you want to add anything like fruit.

Anchorage Brewing does a few funky/sour beers, see if you can get some of their beers to use the dregs.

There is a guy here doing a bunch of 1 gallon sours with extra runoff from his other batches. Do a search for that to get some ideas.
 
Great! Thanks for the advice. I believe that I have had one of the sours from anchorage brewing. I think it was called andromeda or something along those lines. I will do a little more research and I will be sure to post my results. Would it matter what style the beer was that I want to use the dregs? Or just any with the right bacteria?
 
High IBU beers are also harder to sour, especially with lacto. You can always dry hop after you get to the sour level you like. I am thinking of dry hopping some berliner in the future.
 
I can finally join this thread!!!!!!!!!! The funny thing is, I have two 1-gallon saisons sitting on Brett that I thought would have formed a pellicle by now, but haven't. It's my club's barrel project Wee Heavy that got contaminated that gave me my first pellicle. So far, it's only begun to sour, and I think it tastes really good. I'm going to split my portion and do a few experiments with fruit and/or Brett. From the sour taste and the look of the pellicle, I would guess it's a lacto contamination, but don't know for sure.

:ban:

DSC_0594.jpg


DSC_0596.jpg
 
WLP645 Brett Claussenii after six months in primary. It was topped up a little with a blender beer a couple of weeks before this, but the pellicle looked the same before topping up.

The blender beer was a Belgian strong ale with ginger and grapefruit peel, with WLP566 Saison 2, that had aged for about 10 months. Racked about 7 liters of that into this one. This was Rakau hops and a basic Saison sort of recipe with 100% Brett C.

This whole thing was racked into a keg and an entire bottle of Sauvignon Blanc was added. It was tapped for a party. Some loved it, some hated it, as is to be expected. Me? I loved it.

brett_c.jpg
 
Sour blonde, Sanctification clone. Soured nicely now with Sanctification dregs, brett, lacto and pedio. About to bottle.

ImageUploadedByHome Brew1403483994.156336.jpgImageUploadedByHome Brew1403484005.184508.jpgImageUploadedByHome Brew1403484011.745164.jpgImageUploadedByHome Brew1403484022.370719.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Saison started with a 3rd gen 3711 with Brett Lambicus, then pitched dregs of Wild Beer Co's Somerset Wild into secondary.

ImageUploadedByHome Brew1404690805.032263.jpg


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Citra Saison with WLP670 and Jolly Pumpkin E. S. Baum dregs. When adding Anchorage Brewing Galaxy White IPA dregs this evening (at 4 weeks primary), I found this.

ImageUploadedByHome Brew1404789617.166536.jpg

Smells like cherries.
 
Well I was hoping the film growing on an imperial stout was nothing to worry about, but is looking more like an infection. Can any experts here ID this? I assume Brett based on the look and fact the beer is about 11.8% and over 100 IBUs (calculated anyway).
ImageUploadedByHome Brew1404823779.101858.jpg
ImageUploadedByHome Brew1404823790.026527.jpg
 
Sir,your newborn is so pretty

I am not against having sours, have about 50gallons from 3mo-3yrs; I didn't really want this one to be though haha. Oh well, with all the sours I have done I am surprised this is my first infection. The bad thing is that it was my attempt at Hunahpu; just got all the tinctures/additions ready to do add and do some blending. When pulling samples of some sours a few weeks ago I think I may have f'd up and used a sour racking cane to pull a sample to check the gravity on this also. Note to self, don't check gravity after midnight or after drinking a lot.
 
[ QUOTE=MarshmallowBlue;6245833]100% Brett C Mead (bochet style): ONLY 4 DAYS OLD WTF?

photo+1+(1).JPG
[/QUOTE]

Man that's gorgeous!



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
My cranberry sour experiment. This was about 7 months ago. It's almost ready to bottle.

tumblr_mysykeUrPE1qawuaao1_1280.jpg


edit: Whoops. Forgot I already posted this picture here. Oh well. I still think it's pretty. And it tastes amazing.
 
So I think I have an infection.... Anyone want to tell me if they can ID it and if it's safe to drink? It's a hefe in the secondary about a week now.

beer.jpg
 
Looks like a winner! Light colored pellicle is usually indicative of a benign infection - not harmful, as long as it doesn't smell like death. If it was me, I would try rack that beer into a glass carboy flushed with CO2 and then air-locked or hard-bung'ed for several months. Who knows what the microbes are. With sour beers being all the rage, I'd definitely save this one. You may not want/like sour beers now, but in a few years this could be liquid gold!

TD
 
Im not sure ive had a sour beer. Any suggestions as to which commercial one to try? Could i also rack to a keg and let it go that way? Would i then also need to rerack to a different keg to drink? Right now it smells awesome! Not like death at all.
 
Some pics of my most recent sour fruit beer 2 weeks after racking onto fruit. The rhubarb is mostly floating and has a nice crusty layer of stuff. The blueberries are half floaters and half sinkers with some nice crust as well. The Guava has the best looking pellicle of the three, all have same base beer. Really looking forward to these!

TD

IMG_0044.jpg


IMG_0045.jpg


IMG_0046.jpg


IMG_0047.jpg


IMG_0048.jpg
 
Im not sure ive had a sour beer. Any suggestions as to which commercial one to try? Could i also rack to a keg and let it go that way? Would i then also need to rerack to a different keg to drink? Right now it smells awesome! Not like death at all.

I wouldn't keg it unless you want to risk permanently contaminating the keg, and all connected tubing, etc the beer will be in contact with. It could become a dedicated sour keg if you're into that. If you are in Texas, you should check out Jester King beers! Also some notable and widely distributed sour beers from Europe include Rodenbach, Monk's Cafe, Petrus (several varieties), and Cuvee de Jacobins. Might also try Orval from Belgium. Not sure if you can get any Prairie Artesian Ales (more funky farmhouse than deeply sour from what I've tasted). You can check www.wherethesourbeersare.com or google for the website and see what you can find in your distribution area. Also Goose Island has several sours - all given feminine names like Sophie, Matilda, Gillian, Halia, Juliet, I think there is one more. The Matlida isn't sour but they are all nice beers.

TD
 
Oh so now any equipment that comes into contact with this is no longer viable for regular beer? Grrrr not happy......
 
So thinking out loud. If I was to use my head and think ahead should this turn out AWESOME.... How might one capture the infection as to infect future beers with the same stuff? I'm thinking along the lines of yeast washing etc. I'm sure my wife won't mind a few more jars in the fridge.... :)
 
Could just direct pitch onto the trub. It'll probably be a while before you should bottle it anyway


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
So thinking out loud. If I was to use my head and think ahead should this turn out AWESOME.... How might one capture the infection as to infect future beers with the same stuff? I'm thinking along the lines of yeast washing etc. I'm sure my wife won't mind a few more jars in the fridge.... :)


It washes the same, but the %s of different yeasts/bugs will be hard to duplicate.

Also, be very careful to sanitize and seal the jars really well if storing it with other yeasts
 
Back
Top