first sour mash - when to combine mashes?

[AdamWiz]

I'm about to do my first sour mash beer, a Kentucky common. It is only going to be a 3 gallon batch, so my total grain bill is 5 pounds. I plan on mashing/sparging 1.5 pounds of my base malt and souring for a couple days, then mashing the remaining 3.5 pounds of grains and combining the two runoffs in my boil kettle on brew day. I have 2 questions:

1.) for my sour mash, do I want to leave all my grains from the mash in there while I let it sour, or mash and runoff as usual and just sour the wort(with a bit of uncrushed grain for lacto)?

2.) Most of the sour mash references I have seen say to combine the sour mash with the main mash before sparging, but I am hesitant to pour the funky stuff into my main MLT. So I was planning on doing my sour mash in a 2 gallon beverage cooler I have, then on brew day mashing the remaining 3.5 pounds of grain in my regular MLT, running off the wort as usual, then combining that with the wort from my sour mash in my boil kettle. Is this OK, or is there some reason I need to combine before sparging? Any input is appreciated.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

If you keep the grains in the sour mash you will want to sparge the.grains to get the sugar and acid off. If you are souring wort that has been mashed and sparged you can add that directly to the boil kettle.

People have success and failures both ways. Personally I like to sour just wort. The more important question will probably be whether you have a way to keep the larger volume of grains plus liquid warm or the lesser volume of just wort.

 

[maskednegator]

I really dig this method:
http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/07/sour-old-ale-quick-oud-bruin.html
It's great when you want a cleanly lactic beer, and it's even better when used with brett as the only fermenting organism.

 

[jtakacs]

personally i like sour mashes as opposed to souring the wort - but i've never done a sour mash ONLY... it's always gotten bugs added later.... just did an oud bruin this way.

 

[AdamWiz]

I decided to just sour the wort and not the whole mash. So yesterday I did a mash and sparge with a pound and a half of 2-row and collected about 3/4 gallon of wort. I let it cool down to 120 and stirred in a packet of "yogurt starter" that contained a mix of freeze-dried lactic cultures and also a bit of uncrushed 2-row. I left it in the small 2 gallon beverage cooler and wrapped it up with several towels to keep it as warm as possible. Tomorrow I'm going to mash/lauter the remaining 3.5 pounds of grains and combine the runoff with my soured wort in my boil kettle. We'll see how it goes.

 

[AdamWiz]

This morning, I opened up the cooler of sour wort, and there was a thin skin on top. It smelled kind of funky but not too bad - sort of like sour bread dough. Temperature was down to about 95 degrees. I did the rest of my mash and combined the wort with the soured portion in my boil kettle. The hydrometer sample tasted only very slightly sour, pretty much what I was going for. Can't wait to see how it turns out.

 

[jaythebassist]

Can't wait to see how it turns out.

Did you rack this beer yet? How did it come out?

 

[AdamWiz]

It turned out really well. Doesn't taste funky at all, just has a bit of a tart edge to it. Everyone who has tried one has loved it, and as a result the batch is already almost gone. But I did enter it in the Michigan Beer Cup competition to see what judges think. The results are going to be announced on Saturday.