golddiggie said:
Learn to crawl before you walk. Learn to walk before you run, Learn to run before you try a marathon. Don't go from nothing to a marathon. IMO, pretty much what you're thinking of doing here.
To the OP, I'm also somebody who is pretty aggressively stepping it up to sours. I've made maybe a dozen batches, and 3 of those were 10 years ago. And now I've started doing sours, because those are really the beers I love (and they're expensive as all getout to buy, so the savings are amazing!)
But Golddiggie and AmandaK have good points. Sours take years to mature. So if you make a bad batch now (which you probably will do if you ignore sanitation), then you'll have been wasting a fermenter for months/years while it developed. So you probably want to tread carefully.
I'm not looking for instant gratification either. I want to learn. I don't see why I shouldn't start on the wild side, if that is my goal in the end anyways. Lead the way!
I'm not going to dissuade you from brewing sours. Go for it. Try to get a rotation going of sours so that in 18-months or 3-years you can have a regular new sour coming up. But expect that those first ones are going to suck a little. (Northern Brewer has some extract kits that are good to start)
To help with that, brew some other beers in between to get some practice. You'll improve your methods, temperatures, sanitation, etc. to and your later sours will benefit from it.
You can also mix in some of the shortcuts to sours:
* If you do manage to go all-grain (it's not that hard or expensive if you batch sparge), you can do a nice no-boil berlinner weisse that will be ready in a few months.
* You could try a sour mash. (CO2 is not a requirement, but seems strongly recommended. From my research these can go very wrong)
* You can explore 100% brett ales (ales brewed with wild yeast, isolated from their partners in crime). These don't often turn up sour, but can be unusual. They also ferment in about the usual time.
So, I'd encourage you to follow the beers you're passionate about, but in parallel do some of the more mundane brews to develop your skills.