Sour Partial Mash

[SmCranf]

I have recently taken to sour beers, and am interested in making one of my own!

It seems that the best method for my set up is to do a sour mash (adding all the special malt and DME and then adding unmalted 2 row, keep temp around 120 to get the bacteria growing, then boil to kill the bacteria and continue as usual).

However I am a partial mash brewer, so my question is-

Should I make my partial mash (2-3 gallons) much more sour than I want my 5 gallons to be? Or should I assume the sourness will be spread out evenly throughout the 5 gallons as it is in the partial mash?

Thank you! This forum has been indispensable in my first year!

 

[SmCranf]

Almost 40 views and no ideas?

If it means anything I am leaning towards making it more sour and hoping the water will dilute it...

 

[goovaerl92]

Souring a smaller amount of the wort would probably be your best bet as it is much easier to control the temperature as well as to limit the amount of oxygen that gets in. There's also the question of whether or not you want to risk your entire batch becoming infected with something other than lacto, which is yet another reason to go smaller rather than larger. Another thing about souring with lacto is that it is kind of difficult to control exactly how sour it gets. Generally the longer you leave it, the more sour character you get out of it. However, (and maybe someone can correct me here) I think there is a cap as to how sour your mash can get. One last thing....since you partial mash and i'm assuming that you can't do a full volume boil, going with the smaller amount to sour would be much easier than finding a vessel to sour all 5 gallons.

Sorry this may be a bit convoluted but i hope it helps or at least confirms your idea that going smaller is better in this situation.

Cheers!

 

[tootal]

Maybe ask this in "Lambic & Wild Brewing " instead of here, might get more hits.