Lactobacillus and Saccromyces together?

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jibby

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I want to make a light, well balanced sour beer that finishes relatively quickly (a few weeks). The time factor means that I can't use Brett to sour it, since that would take months. I was thinking a combination of Lactobacillus delbrueckii and Saccromyces (French Saison), but I'm not sure of the pitching schedule. If I pitch them both in the beginning, will Saccro win out, or will the bacteria take over? I was thinking of doing the following:

1. pitch both in the beginning.
2. primary fermentation 6-12 days at 65F-75F (maybe ramping up 1F/day)
3. secondary fermentation for a few days at 90F (for Lacto to finish the job)

Also, the recipe will be:

87% Pilsner Malt
8% Munich Malt
5% Wheat Malt
OG: 1.050
FG: 1.004 (or lower!)
IBU: 10 (since Lacto is slowed by hops)
 
i'm brewing a no-boil BW tomorrow and splitting the batches.

one is getting sacc/lacto-d at the same time (WL berliner blend) and the other is getting sacc until primary is "almost done" and then i'm overpitching lacto-d. probably four days later.

intuitively i don't think pitching them at the same time is a good idea, but we'll see - i don't have any applicable experience which is why i'm doing this... lacto will eat sugars without contributing alcohol and i'd be too worried that if you left it that high of temp the lacto might do "more" than you want and lower your overall ABV reducing the effectiveness of the sacc...
 
I tried making a BW in the fall by pitching both at the same time and I got very little sourness, if any. I still have some bottles left and opened one up last week with no noticeable tartness. From what I've read, making a sour mash with only the lacto and then blending that with the larger volume of wort that had sacc acting on it might be your best plan. And I've seen suggestions of keeping the sour mash as close to 120F for a few days with as little exposure to O2 as possible. I think most people let it sour to a desired point(measured by taste test so it's really up to you) then boil the sour mash to kill the lacto and any other bugs you may have picked up, before blending with the rest of the fermenting beer.
 
I'm doing a berliner weisse this weekend. A second batch of 2, which I'll blend together. They both have the same grain bill w/ 8% acid malt. The first batch I put in lacto after primary was finished, and that is supposed to take 'months' to sour.

So, the second I'm going to pitch lacto first into primary and let it sour for 2 days or so (taste it) and then pitch the English Ale. I want it to be really sour, so then I can blend to taste with the bland one. I'm going to either do (or both) a steam sanitize of the primary or do a 'no chill' and fill the fermenter with boiling wort (pitch next morn) so I can get a lacto only spoilage in virgin wort.
 
It is amongst the plethora of options others are recommending for the style. I didn't come up with it.

All accounts I've seen say that a post primary lacto pitch will take about 9 months or so for the lacto to eat remaining sugars and sour the beer to any decent level. I'm not waiting, hence the second batch with a no-sacc all lacto pitch for the first 48 hrs.

Acid malt didn't make my beer sour enough at all, even at 8%. But that's probably because my water is so ungodly bicarbonate.
 
It is amongst the plethora of options others are recommending for the style. I didn't come up with it.

All accounts I've seen say that a post primary lacto pitch will take about 9 months or so for the lacto to eat remaining sugars and sour the beer to any decent level. I'm not waiting, hence the second batch with a no-sacc all lacto pitch for the first 48 hrs.

Acid malt didn't make my beer sour enough at all, even at 8%. But that's probably because my water is so ungodly bicarbonate.


Yah its really tough to make a "quick" sour. They need to sit a long long time for with those bugs in there. I think the blend you are talking about New Belgium just used with their Vrienden collab with Allagash.
 
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