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 when I add water to achieve 5ish gallons?

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

 

[dantheman13]

That's an interesting question. One thing you could do is blend samples of the sour mash with samples of a similar clean beer (heck, you could probably use Bud Lite or something) using whatever ratio your mash:top off water is. You can try the blend on day 1, 2, 3, etc. until it is at the level of sour that you want. These beakers can help you with the measurements.