Blending Highly Acidic Sour Beers

[505-Brewer]

Still perfecting my fast lacto sour beers where a target pH of 3.5-3.7 is either dry hopped, bretted (is that a verb?) or fruited to add additional complexity, tannins, flavors etc. these beers tend to consumed fairly quickly and I say they have for the most part been very successful.

So Ive also accumulated a number of more traditional sour beers now - often using dregs. Many of these are low pH such as 3.0-3.2 and a number are more like pH 2.7-2.8. Very acidic but wonderful complex and each different in their own way. Some are less than a month old (pH 3.0) 9 months old (pH 2.7-3.1) and others going on 3 years (2.8-3.5)

So now I have a source of lambics, sour porters, ambers, reds and even some fruited beers that I want to blend back. I understand blending to achieve a balance. E.g. I wanted to blend a series of lambics but the least sour one is pH 3.3 and the younger ones are sub pH 3.0! I want the blend to be more approachable.

I was thinking of just brewing up some clean beers to blend with (since I have had young beers be super acidic in no time). Maybe similar grain bills. Part of me wants to mash low and get high attenuation to prevent continued souring after blending but part of me wants to blend w some medium bodied beers and then just keg and keep cool when I reach the balance pH I want (since pasteurizing would be a *****) to give the beer more body.

Oh and certainly need to fruit some of these since they are so nice which adds another souring possibility.

Curious to hear what others are doing and the stories they have to tell re: highly acidic beers and blending. Ive seen a number of articles but I guess Im after blending assuming the pH is very sour and needs to be blended back with a clean beer.

I feel like I'm finally at the point where I sort of have a sour beer program going. I realize the possibilities are endless just thought it might be good to have some discussion on the topic. If there's another thread on this I guess I missed it.

Love this forum and all the awesome folks contributing to it.

Cheers

 

[tarmenel]

Just dropping a line here to see where this goes. Be interested to know.

 

[505-Brewer]

I did a quick sour w lacto from grain that didn't really sour (too many IBUs) so I'm fermenting that out and will use some of it to blend with some 10-11 month old TYB Melange beer (and possibly some lambic for complexity) both brewed with basically the same grain bill. I'll post up my sensory analysis. Plan is to basically blend to taste/pH value desired on a smaller portion then blend full volumes and dry hop one portion and dry hop and fruit the other then go right into the keg for force carbonation. Hopefully nothing goes all ropey during the fruit addition.

 

[TAK]

I'm interested to hear others chime in on this topic. I don't have enough stock built up yet to have a blending program, but I hope to get there. I have a few soleras that are still young. Ideally I'd like to get to a place where when I pull off the soleras I cellar those in kegs, and as I get more and more, I have beer ready to be blended, all pushed by CO2.

When I've had sours on tap, I find I like to mix them in the glass with other clean stuff I have on tap, such as saisons. This has got me thinking about how I'll approach my next kettle sour batch. I only have capacity to kettle sour a 5 gal batch, but I do like to brew 10 gal batches. The kettle sours I've done could all be blended down to something with a more balanced acidity. So, I think next time I'll mash up a 10 gal batch worth of wort, kettle sour half, and make a saison from the other half. Then when they're both done, I'll blend a portion (or possibly) all of the saison back into the sour half.

 

[signpost]

I haven't gotten around to any real purposeful blending yet (blended a few small 1-gallon batches just to see what I would get), so I don't really have any advice to give.

I do have 5 carboys of various sours sitting in the basement, though. So, I may have some use for whatever information/ideas come to light in this thread. I will probably have to actually try out my pH meter sometime soon, so I can have a better understanding of what has gone on with my sour beers.

 

[Wahoo]

Having VERY sour beer is a great blending tool, as long as it's not overly acetic (and even then, in small quantities, it's useful).

In general, I think of the acid beer is the blender, and another, more mild beer, as the base. In other words, typically the quantities of the highly acidic beer are less than the less acidic beer, at least when I am blending.

Clean saisons are are great base to try.
One of my most successful blending approaches is to brew a Red wort and ferment it with brett only, and then use the acid beer to dial in the acidity. This makes a beer FAR more in-line with the character of the sour reds from Flanders than simply pitching Roselare. I should point out that my beers typically have a prominent wood character, which also helps in this style.

 

[505-Brewer]

Having VERY sour beer is a great blending tool, as long as it's not overly acetic (and even then, in small quantities, it's useful).



In general, I think of the acid beer is the blender, and another, more mild beer, as the base. In other words, typically the quantities of the highly acidic beer are less than the less acidic beer, at least when I am blending.



Clean saisons are are great base to try.

One of my most successful blending approaches is to brew a Red wort and ferment it with brett only, and then use the acid beer to dial in the acidity. This makes a beer FAR more in-line with the character of the sour reds from Flanders than simply pitching Roselare. I should point out that my beers typically have a prominent wood character, which also helps in this style.

Agreed on the balance of sour to non sour and saison as a great beer to use. Red sounds tasty. Is the acid beer also the same red grain bil? Only used roselare once w brett and bottle dregs to rescue it. No acetic so far but a couple are super heavy w brett. Plan to blend my first golden dry hopped sour and possibly a lambic (for fruit lambic possibly) in the next couple days. I'll post up once I do. Also hoping to get many of them into kegs mainly because they take up less floor space but also to exclude O2 and make blending a snap!

 

[505-Brewer]

Ok. Did some blending. Its amazing how far a little sour will go. Blended a mango lacto sour and some melange fermented golden sour. Blended to roughly pH 3.4 and added a big dry hop. Next time I would blend w a non sour beer to get more of the sour and complexity into the beer. Airlock smells great.