How low can you go? Supersour

[mats_ceder]

I came to think of the idea to brew a beer as sour as possible, and hopefully with a somewhat neutral character, to blend in to other beers to adjust the acidity.

Anyone got a good way to do this? What I'm thinking right now is maybe just doing an unhopped wort with DME, then adding pedio, hoping to get it down below pH 3.0. Then pasteurize it and keep in mason jars to add in small portions to beers that aren't sour enough.

Is there a better way?

 

[Qhrumphf]

Pedio on its own is a problem, massive diacetyl. Perhaps someone with more experience in this field would know the answer, but I'm not sure that blending it in to other beers would always be enough to either clean it up or dilute it enough to not be a problem.

 

[CorporateHippie]

Pedio on its own is a problem, massive diacetyl. Perhaps someone with more experience in this field would know the answer, but I'm not sure that blending it in to other beers would always be enough to either clean it up or dilute it enough to not be a problem.

agreed, you will need to have Brett with the Pedio unless you are going for a "movie-popcorn" ale. I have been doing sour-mashes lately, and usually keep out about 32 oz of the wort to use for blending. It works well. I just keep it in the fridge inside a sealed (sanitized) apple juice jug.

 

[chefchris]

I keep 2 lacto cultures continuously going. When it's time for me to add fresh wort to the culture I pour off the spent liquid into another fermenter and that's my acid/blending beer.

Your plan would work but I would use lacto instead of pedio.

 

[badlee]

I heard mention on the sour hour, of a very assertively sour beer fermented with just Pedio and Brett,which would then be aged and bottled OR used to blend in with beers where more sourness is needed.

 

[Johnnyhitch1]

Its called malt vinegar

Pitching a sour culture and leaving for open fermentation you can get pretty acidic by way of aceto infection.

 

[mnick12]

You can keep your sours at higher temperature to achieve a low pH.

I have a "lambic" that uses flaked rye instead of wheat, and it was fermented with some 2013 ecy20 and a wild culture, as of last week the pH was 2.6.

I think this is due to the weather, I live in az and the house temp is arounf 72-76F all year long. My guess is the bacteria just go bonkers.

As far as off flavors and what not, I do not detect any ethyle acetate or fusels, primary was tempurature controlled.

 

[fermentology]

Pedio will lower the acidity more then Lacto will, but it will only go so far. Pedio actually will continue to produce acid (depending on how much food it has) until it kills itself, so that's it's upper limit. If you want it to be more acidic then you will need to use acetobactor as it can survive lower pHs.

But as mentioned above, you'll need to have Brett or you'll get a diacetyl bomb.

 

[bloodysafety]

dont know how useful this may be to you but back in the day I fermented a bunch of celery, loosely following a recipie I found in an old book and that was the sour-est drink ever. Didn't even have a taste...just sour. :2cents: