Sour wort: 60h in, ph 5 and canned bean smell

Hi everyone,

sunday evening (Europe time), I brewed a light Belgian pale and tried my first Sour Worting on it. 2 days and 12 hours later, I sampled a small glass of it: it smells like canned beans and my ph stripes give me something around 5. Should I worry?

Some facts about the beer:

• OG is around 1.045
• The only hop addition is Columbus (15.5%), 6g (0.21oz) at 60min.
• My lacto source is a big handful of unmilled grains in a hop bag.
• During the first 12 hours, the temperature wasn't great: it once went as low as 35C (95F) and as high as 54C (130F). The 2 next days were much more controlled: always between 45C (113F) and 48C (119F).
• The top of the kettle is filled with CO2
• The kettle is sealed with plastic wrap
• For the top of the kettle, the only smell I could smell was something I identified as lactic acid
• The sample was taken from the tap of the kettle

Do you see anything wrong with what I did? Did you ever smell canned bean?

Thanks,
Gildas

Yes a few problems here. First, hops. Don't use hops - their purpose is to impede lacto and other bugs. Second, 130F is getting pretty close to killing lacto (I don't remember exactly what temp). Third, you should lower the pH with lactic acid (before pitching lacto) to around 4.5, to minimize risks of bad bugs.

I wouldn't be too comfortable with my wort sitting around at a pH of 5 for three days, but that's just me.

Canned beans is probably DMS which is normal but not sure why the pH isn't falling.
Add some more grains or maybe try some yoghurt.
It's best to add hops after the souring, so you sour your wort and then boil and add some hops, although next time I'm not going to add any.

Thanks to both of you, that's helping.

SpeedYellow: yeah, I wasn't proud when I saw the wort to be that warm... Pitching lactic acid up front is a great idea. What source of lactic acid to you use then? If you have a reasonably cheap and reliable source of lactic acid, why do a sour worting or mashing to begin with?

How did it taste? I don't trust test strips. Yeah, the hops are probably the issue. I use brunwater to calculate phosphoric acid and mineral additions to get a correct mash pH. I never had a problem with the mash not souring. My money is on the IBUs.

I did not taste it, I'm afraid of what it might contain without protection from the sourness... The stripes sure aren't accurate; what I can say is that it seems to be as far from the pink of lemon juice as from the green of the tap water.

About hops, I've read not to get higher than 10 IBU, would you recommend 5 or even 0 IBU?

0 IBU as in no hops at all when kettle souring. Only add the hops after it is sour, either in a boil or by dry hopping. I would dump this and start again. I buy lactic acid at my LHBS, should be readily available. Lower it to 4.5 first, pitch at no higher than 115 deg and either keep it around body temp or higher, or let it free fall, depending on the bugs used. Check out the lactobacillus page at www.milkthefunk.com for lots of great info.

I eventually tasted it and it is a bit sour, but not much... A biologist & brewer friend told me to let it live so I'll eventually get it to boil & fermentation and check it out in one month.

In the meantime, I was browsing through the forum and found an answer to my question: it's better to add a small amount of lactic acid and to go through the sour mash rather than just adding more lactic acid because the sour mash will produce other flavors which won't make the beer taste as medicinal as with only lactic acid.