First Sour and Starting a Pipeline

[Atvar]

My goal is to brew 1-2 sour batches a year to get a good pipeline going. I'm a big fan of New Glarus Belgian red, serendipity, and raspberry tart, so I plan on using many different fruits. I have tons of wild black raspberries and blackberries now, and eventually hope to get cherries, apples, blueberries, currants, plums, apricots from my garden and orchard.

My first try at lambic, started Feb 2013:

7lb 2-row
3lb wheat
simple infusion mash
oven staled hops
US 05 primary went from 1.051 to 1.012
2 months later racked to two 3 gallon glass carboys and split a pack of Roselaire blend.

Right now (6 months in) it is a little sour, and pretty plain tasting. I think a lot of this is due to grain bill, attenuation, and waiting so long to add the Roselaire. I am planning adding wild black raspberries to one and blackberries to the other, then give it more time.

Here's my biggest issue atm, I don't like the idea of pitching new batches onto all those fruit guts. I'm thinking the best idea is to rack onto the fruit and immediately put a new batch onto the cake.

I also have an 11 month old porter that got infected, so I let it sit to see what would happen. It has a bit of a sour edge to it, but isn't that bad. I poured dregs of some commercial bottle in it 6 months ago.

So what do you think of reusing cakes with fruit lambics? And is the funky porter worth bottling? I need the carboy space.

 

[McCoy]

There's a blog I like quite a bit called Woodland Brewing that has looked at yeast viability in fruit beers. He started a thread about it here, but it never seemed to get much attention (I personally feel that his blog and findings have gone a little under-appreciated in general).

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/does-fruit-lower-viability-yeast-375021/

 

[Atvar]

That was kind of off topic, but a really neat blog. I guess what you're saying is racking onto old fruit would make any yeast much less viable? I don't know how much of a concern this would be to me trying to make sours. I want the bugs to be able to have their share of sugars to ferment. I'm more worried about volume issues with 1-2 lb/gal of fruit creating a huge cake.

 

[BryanThompson]

I would rack the aged beer onto the fruit then a new one onto the cake with some fresh yeast added.

 

[McCoy]

The reason I was bringing up yeast viability is because it's not as if (most) sours are fermented without any Saccharomyces. Even if fruit didn't decrease the viability of the bugs (if it's killing off Sacc, it may very well be killing off other critters), you probably wouldn't get a pleasing fermentation if all the Sacc was dead. By keeping fruit to the secondary you avoid both your concerns about volume of trub and ensure that all the microbes in your cake should be healthy.

Maybe I didn't understand the question but it sounded like you were asking whether you should add fruit in the primary or rack onto it in the secondary.

Have you tasted the porter again? I think that'll probably answer whether or not you should bottle it.