Looking for advice, unable to replicate past (sour) beer

[p_p]

Hi, I am a beginner sours beer brewer looking for advice.

I managed to brew a really nice sour and have been unable to replicate the results ever since.
I am looking for some hints or recommendations on what I could try next.

I harvested the dregs from a couple of bottles of a commercial beer I enjoyed and made a starter using a stir plate. The initial volume was 200ml and I stepped it up twice over about a week. Before each step I let is sit still overnight and decanted. At the end of the process I ended up with volume of yeast slightly below to what you find in a commercial vial.

The original commercial beer is very funky and moderately tart so I imagined the yeast was a blend of brett, sacharo and lacto. I pitched the culture directly into an all grain wheat/barley wort I prepared.

Fermentation started straight away and the beer sat in a plastic bucket for about 3 weeks before getting transferred to glass carboys where it stayed there for about 3-4 months. A pellicle formed both in primary and secondary. The beer may have been exposed to some oxygen during secondary considering the airlocks dried out at some point (no more than 1 week though).

Beer got bottled and sat in bottles for 4-6 months until drunk. The beer did great in competition and I personally think it is my best. What makes this beer special is the very interesting funk it developed, which is present in the commercial version and was very prominent in my brew.

The commercial beer I used is Rooting Around Summer, from Wild Beer Co.

I tried repeating the process using yeast I saved from the first batch (and stored in the fridge), dregs from my own bottles and dregs from commercial bottles. In all cases, I have not got much or any funk at all, the resulting beer has been good but has not come close to what the first brew was.


What could have happened during the first brew that made the beer so funky that is not happening now? What could I have changed that made the yeast not to develop the funk?

I initially thought it could be way I treated the yeast prior pitch. Now I am more inclined to think it may relate to oxygen exposure though I know this yeast will spit lots of acetic acid if too much oxygen is present (or there may be acetobacter in the pitch).

I emailed WBC to ask for advice on how to treat their yeast, but I did not get any reply. Hopefully they didn't get upset for harvesting their yeast.

Anyway, thanks for reading and any tips would be appreciated.

 

[cactusgarrett]

To me, it seems like you've done all you can, but I'm just going to barf up my random thoughts:

I harvested the dregs from a couple of bottles of a commercial beer

Good start. Keep in mind, though, that in performing a starter you are likely throwing off the bug balance, so you'll never quite achieve what that commercial beer is in the first place.

using a stir plate.

I've been meaning to look into the necessity of a stir plate when propagating sour cultures. My knee-jerk reaction is to not use them (I don't for my acid shock starters) for fear of oxidation.

...moderately tart so I imagined the yeast was a blend of brett, sacharo and lacto.

If it's only moderately tart, the commercial beer might contain no lacto, but pedio (with long-term aging).

The formation of a pellicle is in response to oxygen. I'm surprised you saw one during the 3 weeks of primary fermentation (sacc related?). However, if you're not getting the funk you want, the pairing with an early pellicle might suggest that maybe there's ONLY brett/lacto/pedio in the commercial beer. As expected, there isn't much by way of the website, but it does state it's a wild ale derived from local terrior, so there could be some merit to the Brett+bugs idea. They maybe could be using a separate strain of sacc for bottling, and you cultivating that could be throwing off the whole yin-yang.

If you're bottling, you could also bottle with Brett - that should help develop a more funky flavor as time goes on, as well.

I didn't see anyone in the past have a go at this beer on the Milk The Funk facebook page, but maybe hit them up specifically about this?

 

[IslandLizard]

but I'm just going to barf up my random thoughts:

Now that's some perfect phrasing!

And turned into a pretty comprehensive list of suggestions.

All I can add: Many mixed fermentation sours tend to be one of a kind, especially for homebrewers. Savor the moment when you hit it right. Keep good notes on what you do and with some dexterity and luck, you may get close again.

Heck, I can't even replicate some old recipes I did 5-7 years ago, and those were clean beers with readily available ingredients. Process is more than 50% of the beer in many cases.

 

[cactusgarrett]

Many mixed fermentation sours tend to be one of a kind, especially for homebrewers.

One of the things I love love LOVE about the sour/wild aspect of homebrewing - always chasing that lightning in a bottle.
I think the closest a homebrewer can come to repeatability is by utilizing a pitch schedule with lab cultures. For example:

• Day 0: 1 pack of sacc
• Day 21: 1 pack of Brett mix + 1 pack of Lacto
• Month 6: 1 pack of Pedio

Even then, the trade off is likely to be quality, as the better tasting mixed fermentation beers are a result of inclusion of commercial dregs and/or blending. But that immediately makes reproducible difficult, if not impossible.

 

[Amadeo38]

All I can add: Many mixed fermentation sours tend to be one of a kind, especially for homebrewers. Savor the moment when you hit it right. Keep good notes on what you do and with some dexterity and luck, you may get close again.

Heck, I can't even replicate some old recipes I did 5-7 years ago, and those were clean beers with readily available ingredients. Process is more than 50% of the beer in many cases.

One of the things I love love LOVE about the sour/wild aspect of homebrewing - always chasing that lightning in a bottle.

My thoughts exactly. I like to live by the philosophy of the Rare Barrel brewery, but with the added language for me that it’s more like a “rare combination of everything went accidentally the perfect amount of wrong and right to create a beer that has that extra something.”

I happened to have this happen on my second long-term mixed fermentation and haven’t quite hit it right again.

I do agree that the starter/stir plate procedure for your initial bug pitch is likely the area that you’ll have to attempt to replicate exactly again, which will be difficult given that it’s hard to know if the commercial beer you’re buying even contains the same bug mixture from batch to batch.

My “house culture” is a blend of several white labs sour/funk vials that were on the expired/half-price shelf at my LHBS along with dregs of two Jolly Pumpkin wild ales. I save dregs from each batch I brew, but the subsequent beer is never the same. Such is (the sour) life!

 

[p_p]

Thanks for the replies and suggestions!