Newbie Sour Help!

[ChadChaney]

Ok, I Love Sours, fell in love last year at GABF with the Russian River goodies and then at a tour of New Belgium, I was able to taste La Folie at 3 different stages, awesome. So I want to brew/create something soon. Before that happens, i would like some advice on my Sasion, posted this question and got no answers in the recipe area, so I am hoping you guys can help. I want to make a Sasion using Pilsner, wheat, oats and a bit of acid malt. Herein lies the question, will the acid malt give me a little tartness/sourness, and if so, how much should I use? I already have the malt, so a sour mash will have to wait till next time. Shooting for about 9lbs of base malt and smaller additions of the cereal grains and fermenting with the WL Sasion DuPont strain.

Next question/issue. I have a second running batch from a Rye IPA, took the 4 lbs of grain and teabagged the daylights out of them and then added a bunch of leftovers to it, some amber and light DME. Added Cascade and some other hops but added 1oz of cascade during the chill, from 150-100, just to see what I would get. Been in carboy for 4 weeks, checked on it today and saw a thin milky film on the top and some un-popped bubbles, popped the top and BAM, SOUR! Any idea what this may be? I can post a pic tomorrow, but wow, smelled almost like candy-fruity-sour. I hope it is a good sour, lol, maybe I can blend it with another beer, say a brown, for something nice, as long as it is a "good/safe" infection. I know this is not a lot of info, but any hints would be greatly appreciated!

 

[TheBaconator]

I actually haven't ever brewed with acid malt. I've heard from other folks in my homebrew club its not quite the same as actually souring your wort. Not that it's bad necessarily, think hot chocolate with water instead of milk. They both work, one's just not quite the same.

In terms of your sour question there are a lot of variables not detailed there. What do you mean by 'teabagged the daylights out of it', did you sanitize your carboy well, did you pitch an adequately sized starter, what were your 'leftovers' etc..

The main thing that sticks out to me though is adding cascades during the chill. This is when your wort is most vulnerable to infection and you need to keep anything and everything you can out of there. Even when you dry hop you wait until fermentation is done so there is a bit of alcohol in the beer to stave off infection.

In terms of 'good/safe' infection, there are no known pathogens that can survive in beer. So it may not taste good but it won't hurt you.

If you do blend it, ferment out your other beer completely and try to get it as dry as possible. Use a very well attenuating yeast. Otherwise when you blend the two the funk will eat the sugars in the other beer and make it sour too.

 

[Carter5112]

They say you'll generally need 8 to 10% Acid malt to be noticeable in the beer and I think upwards of 20% some people have done. I have used it a couple times at around 5% and picked up a small of amount of tartness I'd contribute to it.

Using it in a style such as Saison or any Wheat beer to add just a touch of tartness can be a good idea. If you're looking for full out sour, say Berliner Weisse, then I think you'll need bugs for that. Adding straight Lactic Acid is about the same as using the malt. I added the malt just at the end of my mash to not whack up my pH but YMMV.

 

[Calder]

I've never added more than 5% acid malt in a beer and have not noticed it. The only reason I use it these days is to lower the ph in Brett beers.

For your 'soured' batch, I suspect you got some contamination from adding the hops at such a low temperature. They say hops are a natural preservative, but I bet there is some unfriendly bacteria on them. How log after adding the hops, did it take to get decent fermentation activity.

The reason we sanitize is to reduce the amount of contamination/bacteria to a level where the yeast has a chance to compete with it. Bacteria will work faster than yeast in nice wort, so we generally pitch a large amount of yeast. If you had a long lag time and added some contamination, it may have had a chance to take hold.

Dry hopping is different. The beer has alcohol, which prevents most bacteria from multiplying.

 

[ChadChaney]

Ok, thanks for all the input. As for all the details I did not post; I used the second runnings from a partial mash rye IPA, do not have the grain bill handy (on another pc) but the amount of grain was about 3-4 lbs, I also added 2 lbs amber DME and 1 lb of pilsen DME. i did sanitize everything extremely well, did not make a starter as this was a last minute idea after seeing the left over grain bag. As for the teabagging, I took the already mashed grains in the bag and steeped them at about 152* or so and dunked them repeatedly, then I took some of that wort from the pot and rinsed the grains about 5 times, lastly sparging them with about a half gallon of 180* water. I used that as my starting wort. I am not sure what made me add the cascade at that temp (1 too many HopSlams?) thought it might work for flavor/aroma, lol bad idea. I pitched a packet of Notty that I had laying around. Fermentation was good and normal, no lag, nice temps, etc.
My wife is really excited this might turn out to be a good sour, I have my expectations in check. I think it looks like the start of a "good infection", brett, pedio or lacto. Smells really sour, I will sample tomorrow and see what it tastes like. If it is one of those, how can I tell which one, should I warm it up to move the process along?