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?
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?