Just wanted to share this in the spirit of sour beer "shortcuts". Anybody else stumbled across good yeast from commercial beers that can get you a quick sour beer?
I did a little experiment that came out pretty well. The goal was to step up yeast from two beers (Crooked Stave Vieille & Jester King Mad Meg), blend them together and make a five gallon batch. I chose those breweries mainly because we don't get a lot of bottles from them where I live, they taste great and have great reputations as far as yeast harvesting goes. The only Jester King beer I have ever been able to get is Mad Meg. It's a little high in alcohol, but oh well. I chose Vieille in part because it's pretty low in alcohol. Regardless, I was able to get good stepped up starters from both.
This is different then what I usually do with dregs, which is to just toss them right into the fermenter straight out of the bottle in an ad hoc way.
Anyway, I have a very pleasing sour beer, three weeks after pitching these guys into primary. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I saw very active primary ale fermentation for about 5 days. Temp was pretty steady in the high 70's the whole time. There is not much funky flavor, just a really clean tartness at a level that I would have expected to take much much longer to develop. When I tasted it one week in, there was a slight tartness, but not much. At week 3, the tartness was right there and I got into the keg straight away.
This was a 6 IBU beer with:
61% Belg. Pils.
31% Vienna
5% CaraPils
3% Acid Malt
OG: 1.043
FG: 1.008
I did a little experiment that came out pretty well. The goal was to step up yeast from two beers (Crooked Stave Vieille & Jester King Mad Meg), blend them together and make a five gallon batch. I chose those breweries mainly because we don't get a lot of bottles from them where I live, they taste great and have great reputations as far as yeast harvesting goes. The only Jester King beer I have ever been able to get is Mad Meg. It's a little high in alcohol, but oh well. I chose Vieille in part because it's pretty low in alcohol. Regardless, I was able to get good stepped up starters from both.
This is different then what I usually do with dregs, which is to just toss them right into the fermenter straight out of the bottle in an ad hoc way.
Anyway, I have a very pleasing sour beer, three weeks after pitching these guys into primary. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I saw very active primary ale fermentation for about 5 days. Temp was pretty steady in the high 70's the whole time. There is not much funky flavor, just a really clean tartness at a level that I would have expected to take much much longer to develop. When I tasted it one week in, there was a slight tartness, but not much. At week 3, the tartness was right there and I got into the keg straight away.
This was a 6 IBU beer with:
61% Belg. Pils.
31% Vienna
5% CaraPils
3% Acid Malt
OG: 1.043
FG: 1.008
