Where do you tend to land on IBUs?

[goodolarchie]

I've played with all kinds of hop arrangements, especially heaps of aged/lambic hops of supposedly 0% AA. I've done more generous aromatic additions of cascade, saaz, styrian golding, etc. I've had continuous-mosiac brett-primary pale ales turn out wonderful. The consistent advice of accomplished pros for aspiring mixed-ferm makers is "add more hops". With that in mind, I've gone back and forth for years trying to get consistency out of my favorite lacto (generally L. Brevis) and pedio (generally P. Damnosus) to produce a consistent, subtle, but still present acidity - and the main lever for that seems to be with IBUs. But I've seen the same strain go off the deep end with 4 IBUs - basically tangy dump-worthy souring stock - and produce essentially no lactic acid (or pH drop) at 6 IBUs. It seems 4-6 is a very touchy area for lacto in particular.

So I'm curious how you all play with hops in your mixed-ferm beers (particularly LAB beers, not just brett). Where do you generally land in Tinseth calculated IBU's? Do you run into the same hair-trigger issues or do you have a favorite LAB strain that can take 8-10 IBUs?

 

[Gnomebrewer]

I can't add much from my own experience - my first long-aged sour (not including fast sours) is not quite one year old and isn't in bottles yet.....but....I guess this is why blending is so important? I did get confused when brewing Flanders reds (my favourite style) that the BJCP lists it as 10 to 25IBU, but many sources say to keep IBU's under 10. What IBU can Pedio work with?

 

[henchman24]

I don't know the exact science behind it, but I don't think it is strictly to do with IBUs. I can't state anything with science behind it better than the Milk the Funk wiki on the subject.

Anecdotally, I've had to 'train' some of my cultures to take hops. My first commercial pitches tend to not handle more than an ounce or two of any type hops (even aged) in a 5 gallon batch for the first 2 or 3 generations. After that some strains start slowly building up some tolerance and I can progressively add more and more. I have one culture that is at least in its teens generation wise, and I can throw 30-35 calculated ibus of semi fresh hops at it and still sour. It consistently produces great beer, but that took a while to build up and has had about every dreg you can throw at it dumped in. Still most of my cultures tend to wimp out with more than 2-2.5 oz in a 5 gallon batch. I always add towards the end of my (short) boils just to try to keep any IBUs down.

 

[goodolarchie]

Anecdotally, I've had to 'train' some of my cultures to take hops. My first commercial pitches tend to not handle more than an ounce or two of any type hops (even aged) in a 5 gallon batch for the first 2 or 3 generations. After that some strains start slowly building up some tolerance and I can progressively add more and more.

I've found the very same, especially with the blended cultures that are difficult to prop evenly. They will be mildly tart initially, on 2nd / 3rd gen they will go gangbusters, you get the most lactic beer you'd never want to drink again. I've found some very potent LAB strains from dregs that can sour well into 15 IBUs. I've taken to just maintaining separate brett cultures and relying on either Solera or pitching known dregs for souring.

 

[goodolarchie]

I can't add much from my own experience - my first long-aged sour (not including fast sours) is not quite one year old and isn't in bottles yet.....but....I guess this is why blending is so important? I did get confused when brewing Flanders reds (my favourite style) that the BJCP lists it as 10 to 25IBU, but many sources say to keep IBU's under 10. What IBU can Pedio work with?

Flanders can get a lot of their TA from Acetic acid, which brett can produce in the presence of micro-oxidation (e.g. barrels, or breathable bungs). Too much oxygen is playing with fire because there's a lot of other undesirable byproducts, and it's usually balanced with lactic to not be purely vinegary.

One way I've found that works in a carboy is to let a strain like Roeselare cool a bit after it's primary, watching the airlock to allow a few bubbles of oxygen to ingress before you stabilize the temp. You'll know it worked because you'll see a pellicle in fairly short order. There's always some amount of oxygen that can get through the bung/plastic as well.