Never done a proper sour...

[FatDragon]

I've got it in my head to do a sour with the dregs of a couple bottles I've been sitting on for a while, and I've got a few wacky ideas to go along with it. Tell me I'm crazy or tell me I'm a genius, but mostly just tell me what to do.

Here's the score:

I've got three bottles that I may use to inoculate. Two are sours from Texas breweries (Black Jesus by Texian and something else I don't recall offhand) and one is Boulevard's 2015 Saison Brett which I may or may not use depending on advice and taste (I'm not a fan of excessive barnyard funk if that turns out to be the flavor profile).

I live in China and can generally only get dry yeast (or bottle harvest). I'm assuming I'll need to start with primary fermentation on a Sacc strain before adding dregs. I'm hoping to brew relatively soon and start souring before I leave for a month and a half in July and August, and I could let it sour at the crazy hot summer temps in my apartment or in a fermentation chamber.

I don't have a lot of experience with non-kettle sours other than mass-produced fruit lambics, so I don't know what I necessarily like or don't like. What I've had, I've generally enjoyed. I could go light or dark, light or strong, but I'm leaning towards something darker and stronger for a couple reasons:

Why strong? I don't have the space or the stable housing situation (annual apartment lease) to keep a sour pipeline, so when I let a beer age for upwards of a year, I like it to be something that I'm only going to crack once in a while.

Why dark? Here's a funny story:

I'm not very consistent with my batch sizes. Sometimes they come out way too big. When that happens, I toss a gallon or so into a separate jug and let it ferment on its own. I also sometimes forget about that gallon or so of beer and leave it on the shelf for a year or longer. I've got a gallon of a dark caramel amber ale like that, along with about a liter of runoff from a freeze-concentrated barleywine, in my fridge. I've got this crazy idea to use all of that for the sparge water for an off-the-wall, big and complex brew. Why? Because why not?

Really, why not? If I need to be talked down on this crazy idea, talk me down. If I'm onto something (or you just want to watch someone else do something foolish rather than doing it yourself), encourage me.

Either way, I'm looking at making my first proper sour sometime in the next month or so. Should I go the boring route and make a relatively safe blonde? A sour Doppelbock? Rebrew my barleywine and toss bugs in it? A go-big-or-go-home blacker-than-Vantablack sour imperial stout? Who wants to help me make this happen?

 

[doomy86]

Why not start a sour solera? I think that would be ideal for the small space.

 

[FatDragon]

Why not start a sour solera? I think that would be ideal for the small space.

I've actually thought of this and might consider going that route with this brew, but I'm worried about temp control. I don't have a place where I could consistently keep it cool during the hot months or warm during the cold months - running an AC/heater year round in even just one room would cost tons in electric costs and I don't have space for a fermentation chamber for a long-term project like this.

Actually, all of those concerns ought to be just as relevant to a one-off sour. How important is temp control in sour brewing after the initial Sacc fermentation?

Also, I assume whatever I brew should be mashed a bit high to leave some stuff that the Sacc can't ferment. How should I choose my primary Sacc strain, though? By flavor? Attenuation? Would a combo of high mash and low attenuating Sacc leave too much sugar for the bugs and end up too sour or funky?

I have done some reading, but I'm still at a bit of a loss because I don't really know what direction I want to take this in.

 

[doomy86]

What temps are we talking about? daily maximum minimum? I assume you don't have a cellar.. Have you thought about using an old fridge or freezer?

 

[FatDragon]

What temps are we talking about? daily maximum minimum? I assume you don't have a cellar.. Have you thought about using an old fridge or freezer?

Over the summer it often runs 35-40C in the brew room. My ferm chamber is currently a wine fridge that will be occupied through the summer and maintains about 10C below ambient at best. My wife is considering allowing me to replace the ferm chamber with a chest freezer big enough for a couple brews that would actually hold proper temps in the heat, but it's unlikely before we leave for the summer.

 

[doomy86]

That's definitely too hot. I guess that wine fridge is a thermoelectric one. They are very inefficient and rarely cool over 10C below ambient. I would get a real compressor fridge/freezer asap, it will even save you energy costs by replacing the thermoelectric one.

 

[brewmeister13]

I've got a gallon of a dark caramel amber ale like that, along with about a liter of runoff from a freeze-concentrated barleywine, in my fridge. I've got this crazy idea to use all of that for the sparge water for an off-the-wall, big and complex brew. Why? Because why not?

Really, why not? If I need to be talked down on this crazy idea, talk me down. If I'm onto something (or you just want to watch someone else do something foolish rather than doing it yourself), encourage me.

Don't do it. I'm assuming it's finished beer. If it is, you'll end up with oxidized beer before you even really start. Ever tasted a starter liquid? I imagine that's about what it would taste like if you used a finished beer as your sparge water. If it's wort, then that's another story. I think it's Palmer that does a batch where he mashes, drains the mash, dumps out the spent grain and adds in new grain and mashes again with the first batch's wort as the mash water. That would be feasible.

Also, I'd keep temps down on this. I have a sour chamber that's holding at 60F year round right now. After doing a controlled experiment of keeping one commercial sour out of refrigeration in my garage for over a year and another in the fridge, I found just how important temp control and lower temps on sours can be. It was gross.

Here's a good reference if you are interested in pursuing sours: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Main_Page

 

[FatDragon]

Might be time to fast-track that ferm chamber, then. I've got my eye on a cheap chest freezer that will hold three of these or a couple buckets/carboys, plus room for a couple smaller ones on the shoulder above the compressor, and I've already got an STC-1000 wired up for temp control.

Any recipe advice? I'm open to just about anything, though I'm a bit attached to the idea of using that leftover beer for kicks and giggles unless it's going to ruin my beer.

 

[FatDragon]

Don't do it. I'm assuming it's finished beer. If it is, you'll end up with oxidized beer before you even really start. Ever tasted a starter liquid? I imagine that's about what it would taste like if you used a finished beer as your sparge water. If it's wort, then that's another story. I think it's Palmer that does a batch where he mashes, drains the mash, dumps out the spent grain and adds in new grain and mashes again with the first batch's wort as the mash water. That would be feasible.

Also, I'd keep temps down on this. I have a sour chamber that's holding at 60F year round right now. After doing a controlled experiment of keeping one commercial sour out of refrigeration in my garage for over a year and another in the fridge, I found just how important temp control and lower temps on sours can be. It was gross.

Here's a good reference if you are interested in pursuing sours: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Main_Page

Made that last post before I saw yours. You're probably right about the oxidization thing, I'd thought of it too but I needed someone to slap me in the face with it to give up on what I thought was a rather smashing idea. I'll give the caramel amber a taste to see if it's worth bottling or maybe cooking with, and I'll probably toss the barleywine runoff. It gets to be a bit disappointing when my "revolutionary" ideas turn out to be bad ones, but if they were good ideas, they would probably already be common practice, so it makes sense.

The Milk the Funk wiki has been helpful, but I don't know sours or brett beers that well (limited opportunities to try them in China) so sometimes it's hard to know what information is relevant to my situation and what doesn't fit my needs.

 

[doomy86]

Are you visiting shenzehn sometimes? the last time i was there we found a newly opened bar with an unbelievable beer fridge, they had incredible imported beers from belgium and the states, sours included. What was even more incredible was the prices. My friend could not believe they were real before he tasted them. And real they were indeed.

They also have some nice small craft breweries there. It is probably to far from where you are but the craft revolution is definitely happening there..

 

[jtratcliff]

You could always do a "normal" sour and the use the other beers to blend with it... I watched a "Beer Geeks" where a famous US brewery (can't recall which at the moment) had taster that would mix and something like 7 different batches to get the right flavor for the released beer...

 

[FatDragon]

Are you visiting shenzehn sometimes? the last time i was there we found a newly opened bar with an unbelievable beer fridge, they had incredible imported beers from belgium and the states, sours included. What was even more incredible was the prices. My friend could not believe they were real before he tasted them. And real they were indeed.

They also have some nice small craft breweries there. It is probably to far from where you are but the craft revolution is definitely happening there..

I haven't been in Shenzhen since 2011 and with a wife and new baby, I don't have the luxury of unrestricted travel like some people I know (a buddy spent a week last month traveling Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong hitting every brewery and craft bar he could find, then did the same thing in Shanghai earlier this month). We've got a few local breweries and a couple craft bars here in Wuhan (I've brewed with one of the brewpubs and have a standing invitation to brew there pretty much any time I have a decent recipe and a free day), but sours are still tough to find - one of the brewpubs has a fridge full of famous NEIPAs and Russian River sours that the owner imported by hand (i.e. in his luggage), but they're in the $60-$100 range EACH! I'm sure there are others if I were to look, but I get out to a bar once or twice a month thanks to a busy work life, a homebody wife, a new baby, and zero-tolerance drinking and driving laws.

The craft beer revolution is definitely happening here. It's still in its infancy, but it's not going to go away. In a way, I'm glad it's taken so long, though - if craft beer were big here four years ago, I wouldn't have started brewing.