When life gives you lemons....

[Setesh]

I learned an important lesson today after racking two beers into secondary. ALWAYS TASTE YOUR STARTERS! I've made countless starters and after a while I got lazy and stopped tasting them to see if they were OK. Now I have 2 sour beers that were not supposed to be sour. One is an American wheat beer that I just racked onto fruit so no biggie there as the sour might actually be nice! The other is a Fullers ESB clone, and while it doesn't taste bad at all now, it is slightly sour. I've never made sour beers before, and as I understand it they can get much more sour over time. As I see it I have three options:
1. Pour the beer down the drain, which I'm just not going to do unless the stuff becomes undrinkable.
2. Drink it young while the sour is not that pronounced.
3. Create a new style of ESB (Extra Sour Bitter)

Are there any other options? Any of you out there who make sour beers on purpose have a suggestion on what to do that might make this a great beer? Something to add? Something to blend it with? Just trying to make something nice out of this failure. Honestly it doesn't taste bad if you can get the idea out of your head that it's supposed to be a Fullers clone.

So what made my beer sour? Since nothing in my process has changed I don't think it was poor sanitation I think it was my magnetic stir bar. After tasting my sour beers (both of them were made with the same stir bar but different yeast strains and in different primaries) I was checking everything out and noticed my stir bar has a crack in the teflon coating about 3mm long. This is my only guess as to what could have caused the sourness. I always boil water in the flask to sterilize it and pour the cooled wort strait into the flask. I always the stir bar in a cup of StarSan while I'm boiling up some wort for the starter. I use an air filter on top of the flask during fermentation. The cracked stir bar is the most likely culprit i think.

 

[kawickstrom]

I havent been breweing for too long, but I have ended up with a couple brews that were sour and both times the fermantation temp got a little on the high side.

 

[Pivovar_Koucky]

I'll bet its the stir bar too. A crack in the coating would definately give the bacteria a place to hide from the starsan. Also, you should get rid of the stir bar if the coating is cracked. I don't know what the core material is, but it is probably soluble in wort.

 

[Setesh]

I havent been breweing for too long, but I have ended up with a couple brews that were sour and both times the fermantation temp got a little on the high side.

The temp never got above 70 which is fine for that strain. I would think that bugs would like the higher temps and might get a little more of a leg up on the yeast the higher the temps go. Again, I don't have any experience with bugs so I'm not sure.

 

[Setesh]

I'll bet its the stir bar too. A crack in the coating would definately give the bacteria a place to hide from the starsan. Also, you should get rid of the stir bar if the coating is cracked. I don't know what the core material is, but it is probably soluble in wort.

Your post got me curious, what IS inside this little pill. So I cut it apart and here is what I found

By setesh2000 at 2010-09-08

It's rusted, which is obviously a very bad thing, and what's worse it smells like rotting lettuce. "Well there's your problem right there!"

 

[BogusOwnz]

Hang on to that fruit one. I brewed a raspberry wheat that I bottled back in may and it has just now gotten to not only a point of drinkability it is really really good and I get asked from friends to rebrew.

 

[Setesh]

Hang on to that fruit one. I brewed a raspberry wheat that I bottled back in may and it has just now gotten to not only a point of drinkability it is really really good and I get asked from friends to rebrew.

That sounds really good! I really like the Great Divide raspberry. Do you mind sharing the recipe and how you prepared and applied the fruit? I used a frozen berry mix and peaches in mine. Just thawed them out and mushed them up really good in the bag, then dumped them into a secondary and racked on top of it. I used 2lbs per 2.5 gallons of beer. 2.5 on peaches, 2.5 on mixed berries.

 

[BogusOwnz]

6 pounds of Wheat LME
8oz of carapils
1 oz of tettnang 60mins
1oz of hersbrucker 5mins
Wyeast 1010

5 pounds of pasteurized raspberries in secondary after 2 weeks bottle/keg

 

[Setesh]

6 pounds of Wheat LME
8oz of carapils
1 oz of tettnang 60mins
1oz of hersbrucker 5mins
Wyeast 1010

5 pounds of pasteurized raspberries in secondary after 2 weeks bottle/keg

Excellent! That'll be next on my list.

Thanks!

 

[BogusOwnz]

I will say if and when I brew this again after two weeks in secondary I will rack again and cold crash for a week. I bottled these rig after secondary and there were raspberries everywhere even floating in bottles it was a mess. Now there is just a bunch of sediment in the bottles and if not poured with a ton of care is a pain in the ass. I keg now and feel a 2nd racking would take care of the raspberry attack that will happen with this ratio.

 

[Setesh]

I will say if and when I brew this again after two weeks in secondary I will rack again and cold crash for a week. I bottled these rig after secondary and there were raspberries everywhere even floating in bottles it was a mess. Now there is just a bunch of sediment in the bottles and if not poured with a ton of care is a pain in the ass. I keg now and feel a 2nd racking would take care of the raspberry attack that will happen with this ratio.

Do you think it would be sufficient to use a sanitized strainer or grain bag on the outlet side when racking into a bottling bucket? Maybe even let it sit for 30 minutes or so before bottling or are the pieces too small? I was wondering about that on the ones I just made, there are peices floating everywhere and I'm bound to pick a lot of them up.

 

[BogusOwnz]

Strainer would actually work perfect. Just siphon onto strainer above bottling bucket or keg.

 

[TheCircuitBox]

Make lemon beer...

 

[Setesh]

Make lemon beer...

I'm surprised it took 13 posts to get there!

 

[passedpawn]

You should boil your stir bar. In the flask.

BTW, I LOVE sour beers. Dump some sour cherries in there and some brett, or pick a bacteria, and let it go for a while. What a great opportunity. Lucky!

 

[Setesh]

You should boil your stir bar. In the flask.

BTW, I LOVE sour beers. Dump some sour cherries in there and some brett, or pick a bacteria, and let it go for a while. What a great opportunity. Lucky!

My fear was that it might degrade the coating and cause this very problem if I subjected it to boiling. Have you had good luck with that? Also, this ESB clone calculates to 42 IBUs, isn't that a bit much for fruiting/souring? The only sour beer I've had is Framboise so you'll have to excuse me if that's an ignorant question.

 

[Scut_Monkey]

My fear was that it might degrade the coating and cause this very problem if I subjected it to boiling. Have you had good luck with that? Also, this ESB clone calculates to 42 IBUs, isn't that a bit much for fruiting/souring? The only sour beer I've had is Framboise so you'll have to excuse me if that's an ignorant question.

Stir bars are designed to be boiled and autoclaved. Works great for me.

 

[Setesh]

Stir bars are designed to be boiled and autoclaved. Works great for me.

I think the one I got from MoreBeer was one of the cheapy ones that are supposed to be disposable. I'll get a 'real' one this time, one with a pivot point that might be quieter in operation as well.

 

[Setesh]

Well, I pulled about 12 ounces off and tried 6 different fruit purees in 2 ounces of beer each. A few were tasty but it absolutely married with the raspberries, so now I'm going to have a sour raspberry beer. Will try to remember to update when I first try one.