A few beginner questions regarding the sour beer process

I'm looking to brew my first Lambic in about a month. I've been doing lots of reading and research and seem to run into a lot of conflicting information. I was looking to brew the Lambic recipe in the "Brewing Classic Styles" book. My main questions are about the fermentation process.

1) The recipe calls for fermenting primary with a neutral yeast (White Labs WLP001) and then adding the bugs from the White Labs Belgian Sour Mix 1 (WLP655). It seems a lot of people say to skip the neutral yeast and just add the sour mix and let it ferment. So should I follow the instructions in the book, add both at the same time, or just add the sour mix?

2) I plan on using a 6.5 gallon glass carboy for fermentation. Do I need to transfer to secondary, or is it okay to just let it sit on the yeast cake? From what I read it seems it would be beneficial to just let it sit in the primary as the bugs have more things to eat from the yeast cake.

3) To add a bit more variety of bugs, I plan on using dregs from some bottled sours. I've read the article here(http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/06/harvesting-sour-beer-bottle-dregs.html), but am still uncertain of the process. With the last 10% of beer in the bottle, do I just put some sanitized foil over it and then stick it in the fridge until I'm ready to pitch it? Or do I make a starter just like a normal one and add the dregs? Again where do I store this(room temp, fridge) and how long is it good for?

4) The recipe calls for aged hops. Obviously I won't have time to age hops before brewing, especially not for a few years. What should I do in this situation? It doesn't specify a variety of hops, so which should I purchase?

Thanks in advance for any help.

boralyl said:

1) The recipe calls for fermenting primary with a neutral yeast (White Labs WLP001) and then adding the bugs from the White Labs Belgian Sour Mix 1 (WLP655). It seems a lot of people say to skip the neutral yeast and just add the sour mix and let it ferment. So should I follow the instructions in the book, add both at the same time, or just add the sour mix?

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It really depends on the yeast you're using. Wyeast provides a lot of the strains that are found in lambics, but they also provide the "lambic blend" strain 3278. I'm unsure of white labs as I've never used it. Basically, the lambic blend will have a Saccharomyces yeast in it to do the bulk of primary fermentation. At that point, the lacto will kick in, followed by the brett. If you aren't using a yeast with saccharomyces in it, then you'll need to use a neutral yeast to do the bulk of primary like US05. You'll then need to follow it up by adding lacto and brett after primary.

boralyl said:

2) I plan on using a 6.5 gallon glass carboy for fermentation. Do I need to transfer to secondary, or is it okay to just let it sit on the yeast cake? From what I read it seems it would be beneficial to just let it sit in the primary as the bugs have more things to eat from the yeast cake.

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Again, this depends on the yeast. If your yeast is combines with sacch, then you can leave it all on the yeast cake. If you're needing to use a neutral yeast for primary, I would rack off of it into a secondary carboy. It's really not neccissary to do so though. I just prefer it.

boralyl said:

3) To add a bit more variety of bugs, I plan on using dregs from some bottled sours. I've read the article here(http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/06/harvesting-sour-beer-bottle-dregs.html), but am still uncertain of the process. With the last 10% of beer in the bottle, do I just put some sanitized foil over it and then stick it in the fridge until I'm ready to pitch it? Or do I make a starter just like a normal one and add the dregs? Again where do I store this(room temp, fridge) and how long is it good for?

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You'll want to use it like a fresh pack of liquid yeast. You can save it in the bottle by putting foil over it and storing it in the fridge. It should last a week or so. Then just make your starter at room temp when you're ready. If you don't need the starter for a week or so, it's okay to put it back in the fridge and just warm it up when you need to pitch.

boralyl said:

4) The recipe calls for aged hops. Obviously I won't have time to age hops before brewing, especially not for a few years. What should I do in this situation? It doesn't specify a variety of hops, so which should I purchase?

Thanks in advance for any help.

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I'd purchase a noble hop variety. I've always been a fan of saaz and hallertau, but since you won't really taste them, it's not a huge deal. I've used centennials in a lambic before and it came out fine. To age them, you can just leave them out on your kitchen counter for a few weeks. Be warned though, they will start to stink.

Lambics aren't near as scary to brew as they seem. They just take a lot of time and patience. It's like going all-grain. Once you do it the first time, you'll wonder why you waited so long. My only other advice it that you brew another batch of lambic a few months after you brew the first, that way if the first one doesn't taste right, you can blend the two. Blended lambics are the best way to go when you're new to sours. And make sure to ferment them and age them for AT LEAST a year, if not longer. I have some great lambics in my cellar that are over three years old and they taste fantastic.

I am not setting out to argue, everything that was posted before is accurate.

1) The recipe calls for fermenting primary with a neutral yeast (White Labs WLP001) and then adding the bugs from the White Labs Belgian Sour Mix 1 (WLP655). It seems a lot of people say to skip the neutral yeast and just add the sour mix and let it ferment. So should I follow the instructions in the book, add both at the same time, or just add the sour mix?

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If you are not brewing to a style you can do either. The Sacc will eat first. The Brett, Lacto, Pedio will slowly begin to activate. I have used Saison yeast (WLP 568) for my Sacc, my logic is to have a further level in there no matter how disguised this becomes after a long aging.

2) I plan on using a 6.5 gallon glass carboy for fermentation. Do I need to transfer to secondary, or is it okay to just let it sit on the yeast cake? From what I read it seems it would be beneficial to just let it sit in the primary as the bugs have more things to eat from the yeast cake.

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According to "Wild Brews" for a Lambic style you leave it on the yeast cake for the entire fermentation, for Flanders styles take it off of the yeast cake by transferring to secondary and then add brett and bugs. If you leave on the yeast cake it will sort of autolyse, I know a bad word usually. However the brett will eat the yeast cake and you will not have the threatened vomit inducing wet cardboard flavors. This will instead provide food for the brett and a lower gravity. Even if you add the brett and bugs at the inception and then decide to transfer the brett and bugs will still be suspended to transfer to secondary. Your brew, your call.

The last two were answered better above.

Thanks for everyone's replies. According to White Labs website the WLP655: "Includes Brettanomyces, Saccharomyces, and the bacterial strains Lactobacillus and Pediococcus." So it sounds like the Saccharomyces could do the primary fermentation.

I plan on brewing another lambic in a few months so I have multiple going and can do blending. I was going to let them sit for a year then check them out and add fruit for another 3-6 months. Is there a general formula to how many lbs of fruit to use per gallon of beer? I wanted to do cherries, blueberries, and cranberries on 3 different batches.

I’ve had bad luck just pitching the blends without added Sacch. Due to the other microbes in there and the acidity the Sacch just isn’t as numerous as it should be for a healthy primary fermentation. I do like the blends though, and the other primary strain you add doesn’t really matter (although I try to avoid strong attenuators like US-05). I tend to use some yeast from whatever other batch I have on hand, Belgian, English, Scottish, German, American, whatever. Whatever you do make sure there are souring microbes in primary, that’s the only way I’ve gotten as much sourness as commercial lambics.

Obviously I really like dregs as well. I’d avoid leaving them in the bottle with aluminum foil, acetobacter thrives with oxygen and alcohol and is generally present in dregs. I’d either make a small starter and add the dregs to it as you drink the beers, or just wait and add the dregs to the fermenter as you drink sour beers even months into fermentation.

You can try different methods and different dregs on your batches and see what works best for you.

Aging hops for a couple weeks at room temp isn’t going to do anything except oxidize them a bit, it takes years for the alpha acids in hops to break down for true “lambic hops”. With that said, if you aren’t doing a spontaneous fermentation (without added yeast) you are fine just using ~10 IBUs of any moderate AA% hop. The large quantity of aged hops is really just to protect the wort from heat-loving microbes during the slow natural cooling (which could drop the pH too far before the Sacch takes off).

For fruit there isn’t a perfect number it depends on the beer, fruit, and your tastes. .5 lbs is the low end (good for assertive fruits like raspberry), 2+ is the high end (good for mellow fruits like peaches). I generally do ~1 lb for sour cherries. My blueberry lambic was a bomb, but the issue was the base beer. Never used cranberries, but I would start low since the beer will already be sour (wait a year before adding the fruit, and use the cranberries in the least acidic batch). I had an article in September’s BYO that is well worth picking up if you want to read a lot more about adding fruit to sour beer.