"Sick" wort after a sour mash...

[kbindera]

I recently did a sour mash as an experiment and wound up with might be called "sick" wort. The end result was ropey/gooey wort. It didn't taste or smell half bad. Wondering if I should just cut bait here. Thoughts?

Here's some background
I took four gallons of 1.034 wort from my mash, cooled it down to around 100F, dropped in a handful of acidulated malt, flushed with CO2, duct taped the lid on the pot, put a fermwrap heater around the pot and let it sit in my warm garage for two days. Temp was stable at over 90F the whole time. Wound up with a gooey mess.
I boiled the wort for 15 minutes. 1.031 wort went into my fermenter. Pitched ale yeast (WLP090) and saw active fermentation for a few days, with a nice krausen, that dropped as expected. Still have a gooey mess of beer. I pitched in a bit of Brett Brux that I had laying around. I see zero fermentation activity after over two weeks. I have also been dumping dregs in now and then. The consistency has not changed.

Anyway, thought I would get some feedback before it goes down the drain.

 

[Warthaug]

You didn't keep your sour mash hot enough, and as a result a bacteria that produced exopolysaccharides (bacterial snot) was active in your wort*. These carried through to your wort which is now goopy. Ideally, you want to be over 100F/39C; preferable in the 104-108 (40-42C) range.

*some "wild" strains of lacto may also make exopolysaccharides, but I've not heard of this happening at high temperatures

You may be able to rescue this with a big pitch of brettanomyces;they can break down exopolysaccharides, although I don't know how long this will take.

Bryan

 

[kbindera]

I've heard that pedio can make these long gooey chains too and Brett is required to clean them up.

Hopefully it will do the job here.

Thanks for the feedback.


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew