Lacto Souring Temps

I'm attempting a lacto sour using malted grain added to the cooled mash to promote lacto souring. I've gotten zero results as far as flavor in 24 hours of souring. My indoor temps are around 60 ...... I often let them fall as low as the low 50's out of personal preference.

Clearly these temps are not high enough for lacto, so I move it to the stove top and stirring steadily raised it to 80, and replaced the saran wrap covering that lays on top of the liquid. I'm concerned about undesirable bacterial activity that might happen at the lower temps, and assume that at 80 things should come alive.


Any wisdom out there on this? I'm trying to sour the mash for a saison with just a hint of sour to it. This is of course pre-boil.... the grain is still in the wort. Below is a brief outline of my recipe. It's intended to be a "lawnmower beer", at 4.25% and an understated Saison character and a touch of sour.......which really doesn't make it a legitimate "lawnmower" class beer. I want it to be an easy drinking flavorful refreshing beer with enough alcohol to be satisfying, but not overwhelming. Most of my beers leave me buzzed up after one bottle.


Lightly Soured Saison ( Lawnmower Saison )

fermented with Lalemand Belle Saison

Grain bill includes 50% 2 row, 26% malted wheat, and 12.5% each rye malt and Munich 20
Hops are Zythos, split between equally 20 min and 1 min additions for 30.5 IBUs


target OG 1.044
target ABV 4.25%
SRM 5.6
IBU 30.5


H.W.

You really should be in the 90 to 120 range for a lacto sour mash. I use a cooler (my old 10G mash tun) and pitch around 120 or so. Every 24 hours or so, I add boiling water to maintain the temps above 90. For this reason, I mash a little thin up front and that helps keep things in check for the grist ratio. For a light sour, you probably don't need much time...24 to 36 hours should be sufficient, I would think. Also, using a commercial lacto strain really helps get a bit more consistency and helps jump start the process a fair bit more. Hope that helps!

What are you using to do the sour mash in?

revco said:

You really should be in the 90 to 120 range for a lacto sour mash. I use a cooler (my old 10G mash tun) and pitch around 120 or so. Every 24 hours or so, I add boiling water to maintain the temps above 90. For this reason, I mash a little thin up front and that helps keep things in check for the grist ratio. For a light sour, you probably don't need much time...24 to 36 hours should be sufficient, I would think. Also, using a commercial lacto strain really helps get a bit more consistency and helps jump start the process a fair bit more. Hope that helps!

What are you using to do the sour mash in?

Click to expand...

Thanks........... Heating it up and adding more grain jump started things. I'm a little over 90 now, and I can already taste some sourness......... a bit too subtle yet though. I'm hoping that by tomorrow AM it'll be ready to rock and roll....... Sour and bitter in my experience can be warring flavor elements. It's difficult to guess where to cut it off. I may drop my IBUs down from 30.5 to around 18 or so....more typical for a saison.... I guess I'll decide that during the boil. The problem with these projects is that it's difficult to imagine where the beer will be after fermentation. Take the sweetness away and the bitter and sour are going to really pop. My bittering addition isn't until 20 min from the end of boil so I'll have decision time.

I do plan to take a pre boil PH test so I have a baseline for next time.

H.W.

Be careful tasting the wort before you know there has been a drop in pH, especially when holding it at room temp. Your stomach might not take too kindly to other bacteria.

tagz said:

Be careful tasting the wort before you know there has been a drop in pH, especially when holding it at room temp. Your stomach might not take too kindly to other bacteria.

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I'm not sure how to carefully taste wort ;-) ............. Seriously, this is probably very good advice. I didn't take a baseline PH test, and I probably should have. How low should the PH drop before it's safe to taste it?


H.W.

You really want to get the temp up to 110, to minimize production of butyric acid (vomit smell). Grain has a lot more than just lactobacillus.

It will be tough to stop it with a 'touch of sour', once souring starts, it goes rapidly.

A better way would have been to sour a half gallon of wort with pure lactobacillus (White-labs, Wyeast, Probiotics, Yogurt, etc) and when sour, add as much of that as you need to get to your desired sour level. Just don't use any hops in it.

Calder said:

You really want to get the temp up to 110, to minimize production of butyric acid (vomit smell). Grain has a lot more than just lactobacillus.

It will be tough to stop it with a 'touch of sour', once souring starts, it goes rapidly.

A better way would have been to sour a half gallon of wort with pure lactobacillus (White-labs, Wyeast, Probiotics, Yogurt, etc) and when sour, add as much of that as you need to get to your desired sour level. Just don't use any hops in it.

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The problem is that I want hops........ I'm seeking an understated sour flavor. This isn't a "sour beer" in the conventional sense. The souring is intended to add complexity, not to dominate. Your advice of souring a percentage make sense. I can easily maintain about 95F. So far there are no unpleasant odors........... It has a lovely clean yoghurt odor........ The problem as you pointed out is when to stop the process.

The most recent taste test shows it's heading in the right direction. Tomorrow AM will be the "electric koolaid acid test"....... come what may it's going to boil about 6:00 AM. I intend to take a PH before boiling to give me a baseline.

This by the way is BIA-Bucket........... I'm mashing in a stock pot and will filter with a brew bag....


H.W.

Are you doing a sour mash or kettle sour? They are two different processes.

I like to keep kettle soured wort no higher than 115f and no lower than 100f. As someone else mentioned, grain has quite a few different microbes. However, the bacteria responsible for butyric and ISO-valeric flavors are generally aerobic. So de-aerating your wort in a kettle sour is key in preventing these off flavors.

In a sour mash, you can't really control this aspect.

d_striker said:

Are you doing a sour mash or kettle sour? They are two different processes.

I like to keep kettle soured wort no higher than 115f and no lower than 100f. As someone else mentioned, grain has quite a few different microbes. However, the bacteria responsible for butyric and ISO-valeric flavors are generally aerobic. So de-aerating your wort in a kettle sour is key in preventing these off flavors.

In a sour mash, you can't really control this aspect.

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This was a sour mash. I was doing BIAB without the bag, and with 75% of my total preboil water in the mash. I then poured through the bag into my boil kettle, and dunk sparged with the remaining 25% of the water. My PH came out at 4.2, before sparging and should be pretty close to that after boil off.

I'm not sure how there is a significant difference between sour mash and kettle sour.... The only real difference seems to be that the wort is sitting on the grain in sour mash, and has been lautered and sparged for a kettle sour.

H.W.

You will probably have better luck making a starter rather than doing a sour mash. If you want to grow Lacto keep this in mind:

1. Its anerobic, so fill the starter beaker to the top and use an air lock. You don't want aerobic bacteria (like Acetobacter) to grow

2. Lacto prefers a warmth of 35-40C (95-104). at 30C, it's happy and so are a lot of other microorganisms.
So my suggestion is to keep it hotter, say 45C (112F). A few degrees makes a big difference, so keep your temperature as close as you can to that range. Lacto doesn't like 45C so much, but other bacteria like it less, so it give the Lacto an edge.

3. It can take a few days. You want to perform the "smell" test. If it smells nasty, you may have other bacteria, so don't use that starter. If it passes the smell test, then go ahead and pitch it.

4. A sour mash will be short, exposed to Oxygen, and probably result in other bacteria adding their particular (unwanted) flavors. You can try, but if you don't like it, you have a dumper before you even add the yeast.

Arc is spot on!

I make a starter with base malt using a bottle with a thin neck to minimize headspace. I add a handful of malt to a starter at 120, as mentioned above and keep it as close to 100 as possible (this is easy in the winter time pushed right up against my heater).

I also don't taste it for several days (three at least) so that any harmful microbes are deterred by the acidity. No point risking an infection through this great process.

So far I've let it go as much as a week, strain and store in the fridge. This is then pitched into the wort as usual. To prevent an overly lacto sour, I've always boiled the brew at its preferred taste point (and added hops then as they will hinder the bugs). Since I've only added brett in this method the boil helps to keep some simple sugars around before the bacteria eat it all down. I haven't made a pure lacto culture yet.

It definitely is not a dumper..... It has the distinctly lemony sour taste of lacto, but I may have taken it too far. The entire time it was souring, I had saran wrap laying right on the surface excluding air. I ended up in the mid 90's........ I don't have a temp controlled chamber for this sort of thing. The kettle was sitting over the pilot light on my gas stove and wrapped heavily in insulation. It's about time I built some sort of temp control chambers for mashing and fermenting........ I see some wild temp swings.

I may try the starter next time I do a sour............but a 2.5 gallon brew with only 4 pounds of grain in it isn't much more than a starter anyway .... I have $3.17 total cost in my grain bill on this brew. 2 row cost me 46 cents a pound, Munich a dollar a pound, and my other grains $1.75. Is it worth messing with a starter?

H.W.

Owly055 said:

I'm not sure how there is a significant difference between sour mash and kettle sour.... The only real difference seems to be that the wort is sitting on the grain in sour mash, and has been lautered and sparged for a kettle sour.

H.W.

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The difference is how you're able to process the wort prior to lacto inoculation. In a kettle sour, you can boil the wort for 5-10 mins to kill off any undesireable microbes. Boiling also helps deaerate the wort. Scrubbing with CO2 through a stone helps even more.

Then, you can proceed with a pure lacto culture from a supplier or make your own culture. Or you can simply pitch grain. While there are an infinite number of wild microbes on grain, deaerating your wort and keeping it in lacto's preferred temperature range ensures that the lacto is doing its thing rather than other bugs.

Most of the cheesy or butryic flavors I've tasted in sour beers have been from a sour mash.

d_striker said:

The difference is how you're able to process the wort prior to lacto inoculation. In a kettle sour, you can boil the wort for 5-10 mins to kill off any undesireable microbes. Boiling also helps deaerate the wort. Scrubbing with CO2 through a stone helps even more.

Then, you can proceed with a pure lacto culture from a supplier or make your own culture. Or you can simply pitch grain. While there are an infinite number of wild microbes on grain, deaerating your wort and keeping it in lacto's preferred temperature range ensures that the lacto is doing its thing rather than other bugs.

Most of the cheesy or butryic flavors I've tasted in sour beers have been from a sour mash.

Click to expand...

I will try a "kettle sour" next time, but I'm inclined to do the grain pitch and control things by excluding air rather than buying a culture.

H.W.

Owly055 said:

I will try a "kettle sour" next time, but I'm inclined to do the grain pitch and control things by excluding air rather than buying a culture.

H.W.

Click to expand...

Once you pitch your grain or culture, make sure you lay down a hefty layer of CO2 on top of the wort. Then seal your kettle if possible.

as another BIAB guy , i have to disagree with you on your approach. if you're going to sour, you're either going to do it fast or slow. if slow, then you'll basically be happy with lacto and brett doing the deed over a few months. fine.

but if you want to do it fast, then you're really relying on just lacto and sach yeast. so i dont understand why you would say you dont want to use a commercial starter. to me that's like saying you are only going to ferment with yeast from the dregs of a beer bottle. its possible, but why bother?

i've tried using yogurt, my berliner weisse tasted yogurty. ive tried using grain- wasnt very fast, didnt get very sour. lacto delbreicki was alright, but neither fast nor very sour, and lacto brevis was awesome. great clean sour taste in 48 hours, tons of sediment to harvest for next batch. lacto b is what the big boys use for fast souring, and in my limited experience- its the best.

if you're doing small batches (my last was 1.5 gallon) then i know it seems crazy to spend 7 or 10 bucks on a culture. but i think its definitely worth it. and if you sour in a carboy or corny, you can harvest the lacto for your next batch. i harvested a full pint from only 1.5 gallons of soured berliner weisse. you could probly harvest from your kettle with a siphon if you dont want to transfer wort back and forth.

the following is the "best practices" for fast souring for commercial brewers. (info is from a seminar our brewer took on souring a few years ago.)

"kettle" sour method. mash as usual, then into kettle with no hops and boil for 10-15 min to de-aerate and sterilize wort. lacto can in fact metabolize aerobically, but so can some other nasty stuff. and any yeast/lacto/etc always kicks off faster when they dont have to compete. so boiling is a two-for-one way to de-aerate and sterilize.

another way to avoid nasties is to drop pH of wort to around 4.5 before pitching lacto. (pH drop is one of lacto's weapons against competitors)

pitch from 90F to 100 or so, and keep it over 100 but below 118F and you avoid the nasty stuff. best range is 110-115F. this also speeds up the souring alot.

pH is best way to judge your level of sour. from 3.9 to 3.6 seemed to be the range most brewers at his conference liked.

SanPancho said:

if you're doing small batches (my last was 1.5 gallon) then i know it seems crazy to spend 7 or 10 bucks on a culture. but i think its definitely worth it. and if you sour in a carboy or corny, you can harvest the lacto for your next batch. i harvested a full pint from only 1.5 gallons of soured berliner weisse. you could probly harvest from your kettle with a siphon if you dont want to transfer wort back and forth.

Click to expand...

I suggest using the packaged culture and making a starter with it, then saving some of the starter (call it the Extra) and putting it in the fridge. Then next time you want to make a sour, make a starter from your Extra saved sample.
And repeat the process. You can get multiple uses from one starter that way. Maybe at some point you want to toss it and buy a new culture pack.


I see you suggest acidifying down to 4.5 instead of 5.0.
Is there a taste difference between acidifying down to 4.5 compared to 5.0, then adding the Lacto and having it drop the pH to 3.6 - 3.9?
Does the Lactic acid you add (to drop the pH the additional amount) from pH 5 to 4.5 affect the taste?

SanPancho said:

as another BIAB guy , i have to disagree with you on your approach. if you're going to sour, you're either going to do it fast or slow. if slow, then you'll basically be happy with lacto and brett doing the deed over a few months. fine.

but if you want to do it fast, then you're really relying on just lacto and sach yeast. so i dont understand why you would say you dont want to use a commercial starter. to me that's like saying you are only going to ferment with yeast from the dregs of a beer bottle. its possible, but why bother?

i've tried using yogurt, my berliner weisse tasted yogurty. ive tried using grain- wasnt very fast, didnt get very sour. lacto delbreicki was alright, but neither fast nor very sour, and lacto brevis was awesome. great clean sour taste in 48 hours, tons of sediment to harvest for next batch. lacto b is what the big boys use for fast souring, and in my limited experience- its the best.

if you're doing small batches (my last was 1.5 gallon) then i know it seems crazy to spend 7 or 10 bucks on a culture. but i think its definitely worth it. and if you sour in a carboy or corny, you can harvest the lacto for your next batch. i harvested a full pint from only 1.5 gallons of soured berliner weisse. you could probly harvest from your kettle with a siphon if you dont want to transfer wort back and forth.

the following is the "best practices" for fast souring for commercial brewers. (info is from a seminar our brewer took on souring a few years ago.)

"kettle" sour method. mash as usual, then into kettle with no hops and boil for 10-15 min to de-aerate and sterilize wort. lacto can in fact metabolize aerobically, but so can some other nasty stuff. and any yeast/lacto/etc always kicks off faster when they dont have to compete. so boiling is a two-for-one way to de-aerate and sterilize.

another way to avoid nasties is to drop pH of wort to around 4.5 before pitching lacto. (pH drop is one of lacto's weapons against competitors)

pitch from 90F to 100 or so, and keep it over 100 but below 118F and you avoid the nasty stuff. best range is 110-115F. this also speeds up the souring alot.

pH is best way to judge your level of sour. from 3.9 to 3.6 seemed to be the range most brewers at his conference liked.

Click to expand...

I appreciate your suggestions, well thought out and based on your own experience and that of others. The results I got in terms of flavor this time were excellent, and if I modify my method next time, it will be to go to the kettle sour rather than sour mash. I don't plan on making a lot of sours, and have no intention of spending the ten bucks or so for a lacto culture with shipping to sour a brew with a $3.17 grain bill..... it makes no economic sense to me. Lactobacillus of various types is everywhere. L. brevis and L. plantarum naturally occurring are used in producing sauerkraut, long brine pickles, etc, and have for centuries been used with no controls except temp and exclusion of air with good success. I will endeavor to control environmental conditions to encourage the lacto ferment, but I'm NOT going to buy a culture. Like any culture, it requires care and feeding. I've made yoghurt, kefir, kombucha (acetobacter), sour dough, and other yeast, and bacterial cultures since I was a child. I have little fear of spoilage bacteria based on personal experience that goes back to the 60's......... You can tell by the smell weather you have positive spoilage, or negative spoilage. Consistent results are nice, but unless I develop a passion for sours to an extent that justifies maintaining a culture of L. brevis, I'm not going there. Take a look at the Lambic brewers using wild yeast and bacteria cultures via open fermentation, and grandma's home made sauerkraut. I'm frankly not afraid of the microbes in our environment, with a very few exceptions like botulism....... which is not even remotely in the picture here.


H.W.

ArcLight said:

I suggest using the packaged culture and making a starter with it, then saving some of the starter (call it the Extra) and putting it in the fridge. Then next time you want to make a sour, make a starter from your Extra saved sample.
And repeat the process. You can get multiple uses from one starter that way. Maybe at some point you want to toss it and buy a new culture pack.


I see you suggest acidifying down to 4.5 instead of 5.0.
Is there a taste difference between acidifying down to 4.5 compared to 5.0, then adding the Lacto and having it drop the pH to 3.6 - 3.9?
Does the Lactic acid you add (to drop the pH the additional amount) from pH 5 to 4.5 affect the taste?

Click to expand...

@arclight- my recollection is that 4.5 is acidity level that keeps a group of nasties in check so lacto doesnt have to compete with them. it was mostly for sanitary reasons, i dont think it was done for taste. i cant recall ever personally tasting the wort at 4.5 before i pitch lacto, so i couldnt speak to that. if you used actual lactic acid to drop the ph then i guess you might be able to notice a soured flavor. but i also use phosphoric acid which isnt supposed to impart any flavor, so maybe i wouldnt even notice if i did taste it.

@Owly55- as per arclight above, the commercial culture can be divided into multiple batches. so it doesnt cost $10/batch of beer. more like $10 over 3-4-5 batches depending on size of your brews. and im not sure why you state that you would have to keep a culture alive with "care and feeding" like it cant be left alone. i've pitched a half vial- put rest in fridge- then taken it out, warmed it and used it again. i didnt have to babysit it or anything like that. doesnt seem like a big deal. based on your post i get the feeling your opposition is more along the lines of a quest for "all natural" methods. which is fine, that's your style. but it makes me curious how you go about fermenting beer without a commercially produced strain of yeast. do you just let your beer naturally ferment? use bottle dregs of a beer you enjoy? to me that's brave.

as for the intent to keep things sanitary, nobody mentioned botulism, i'd think for most of posters here its just a case of trying to make sure you dont waste your beer by letting it get an infection (vomit, fecal, stinky feet) and having to pour it down the drain. tossing a bad batch of beer always bums me out. even if its only a $3 grain bill. its really the time/mental energy/effort you put into brewing a beer that hurts to lose.

Owly - My suggestion would be as follows: make a 2 liter starter, cool to 120, add 1/4 teaspoon of lactic acid to drop pH to <4.5, add a cup of 2 row, top off with seltzer to purge O2, and top with airlock. Keep it as warm as possible. After about 3-4 it will be very sour. Add to your full batch boil. 2 liters of very sour wort in a 3-5 gallon batch might get you where you want. Plus if the starter doesn't taste the way you like, you don't lose a whole batch.

tagz said:

Owly - My suggestion would be as follows: make a 2 liter starter, cool to 120, add 1/4 teaspoon of lactic acid to drop pH to <4.5, add a cup of 2 row, top off with seltzer to purge O2, and top with airlock. Keep it as warm as possible. After about 3-4 it will be very sour. Add to your full batch boil. 2 liters of very sour wort in a 3-5 gallon batch might get you where you want. Plus if the starter doesn't taste the way you like, you don't lose a whole batch.

Click to expand...

Good advice I think........... Water under the bridge at this point. I have a "shandy" saison in my fermenter now....... A lovely lemon flavor, it dropped from 1.055 OG to 1.010 in 48 hours!! It seems to be pretty well settled out, no more visible action, but I expect it to drop another half a point. The sour is not at all excessive, but it overwhelms the saison flavors and the hops...... I'm hoping that things meld a bit more. I may dry hop using Calliente and Motueka.


H.W.

tagz said:

Owly - My suggestion would be as follows: make a 2 liter starter, cool to 120, add 1/4 teaspoon of lactic acid to drop pH to <4.5, add a cup of 2 row, top off with seltzer to purge O2, and top with airlock. Keep it as warm as possible. After about 3-4 it will be very sour. Add to your full batch boil. 2 liters of very sour wort in a 3-5 gallon batch might get you where you want. Plus if the starter doesn't taste the way you like, you don't lose a whole batch.

Click to expand...

How sour will the starter get?
If you want a Berliner Weisse in the 3.6 - 3.9 range, then wont you need the 2 liter starter to drop to a pH of 2.6 - 2.9? If you want a more sour Berliner Weisse you need the starter even more acidic.

Can Lacto get it that low?

ArcLight said:

How sour will the starter get?
If you want a Berliner Weisse in the 3.6 - 3.9 range, then wont you need the 2 liter starter to drop to a pH of 2.6 - 2.9? If you want a more sour Berliner Weisse you need the starter even more acidic.

Can Lacto get it that low?

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Compared the 4.6 reading I got from my PH meter after calibration ( post boil ), and the sourness I have, PH readings in the mid 3s sound like they would have real pucker power!! This is not really "sour", just tart with a nice lemon flavor. It already overpowers everything else as the dominant flavor. The idea was to get a really subtle background sourness, and this is anything but............ But I believe the results will be good.

H.W.

ArcLight said:

How sour will the starter get?
If you want a Berliner Weisse in the 3.6 - 3.9 range, then wont you need the 2 liter starter to drop to a pH of 2.6 - 2.9? If you want a more sour Berliner Weisse you need the starter even more acidic.

Can Lacto get it that low?

Click to expand...

The OP was looking to make a light sourness in a saison, in which case the above method might be the way to go. If your doing a Berliner I would think you'd need to sour a larger portion.

For a single data point, the lacto starter I just made (using an stc-1000 and a crock pot) got down to the high 2s.

tagz said:

The OP was looking to make a light sourness in a saison, in which case the above method might be the way to go. If your doing a Berliner I would think you'd need to sour a larger portion.

For a single data point, the lacto starter I just made (using an stc-1000 and a crock pot) got down to the high 2s.

Click to expand...

holy moly- that's gotta be super sour. i think straight lime juice is in the 2's, isn't it? wow.

i'd also vote for the sour-from-starter method for something like a saison. or maybe even just blending with some pre-soured mash, as im guessing it'd be a delicate dance to get it just a bit soured without becoming the dominant aspect like owly55 seems to have seen happen. at least with the blend you could gradually add until it seems to be in the neighborhood, let it sit for few hours to work itself in, then taste and adjust again if necessary.

as for a berliner weisse in the mid to high 2's, that's super sour. i'd guess that's too sour for what bw is "traditionally" supposed to be which is a tart, light summer refresher. one thing to note is that germans consider it odd to drink bw on its own, its almost always got a squirt or two of something sweet in there- lemonade, 7up/sprite, elderflower liqueur, fruit syrups, or just crushed fruit.
although i couldnt tell you how sour (pH level) their version is on its own. anybody have any idea?

SanPancho said:

holy moly- that's gotta be super sour. i think straight lime juice is in the 2's, isn't it? wow.

i'd also vote for the sour-from-starter method for something like a saison. or maybe even just blending with some pre-soured mash, as im guessing it'd be a delicate dance to get it just a bit soured without becoming the dominant aspect like owly55 seems to have seen happen. at least with the blend you could gradually add until it seems to be in the neighborhood, let it sit for few hours to work itself in, then taste and adjust again if necessary.

as for a berliner weisse in the mid to high 2's, that's super sour. i'd guess that's too sour for what bw is "traditionally" supposed to be which is a tart, light summer refresher. one thing to note is that germans consider it odd to drink bw on its own, its almost always got a squirt or two of something sweet in there- lemonade, 7up/sprite, elderflower liqueur, fruit syrups, or just crushed fruit.
although i couldnt tell you how sour (pH level) their version is on its own. anybody have any idea?

Click to expand...

I will brew another saison of virtually identical grain and hop bill shortly, and blend. It was a mistake to think I could control the outcome the way I did the brew. 72 hours into the brew, at .010, I'm racking to a different fermenter, and I'll put non-soured version of Serendipity Saison on the yeast cake of the previous brew. The blending will give me 3 different saisons. The soured version, the unsoured version, and the blend.

I drank the hydrometer sample from yesterday this AM, and once past the first sip, it was pretty good, but it lacked the saison character I'd hoped for. First sip, the sour slapped me in the face, but after a couple more, it was just refreshingly tart. Considering the PH of 4.6, I wouldn't expect it to be very sour at all....... It's definitely moderate, but not the "hint" of sourness I'd hoped for.

H.W.

tagz said:

Owly - My suggestion would be as follows: make a 2 liter starter, cool to 120, add 1/4 teaspoon of lactic acid to drop pH to <4.5, add a cup of 2 row, top off with seltzer to purge O2, and top with airlock. Keep it as warm as possible. After about 3-4 it will be very sour. Add to your full batch boil. 2 liters of very sour wort in a 3-5 gallon batch might get you where you want. Plus if the starter doesn't taste the way you like, you don't lose a whole batch.

Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more. This is what I do after others advised avoiding potentially getting an off flavor in 5 gallons. Sometimes the flavor is lemon-like, sometimes it is sharp, the variations I attribute to what takes off on the grain I pitch. I haven't had a bad batch yet, but a liter starter is less a loss should it not work out.

I haven't used commercial cultures yet because the homebrew shops where I live are expensive (15-17 dollars) and I also share the interest in building cultures.

I appreciate the seltzer trick, what a cool idea! I usually leave no headspace but I will try this next round. I will be bottling today with a beer that was sour mashed with this method.

Today I combined the sour with a plain saison I had brewing..... which had "hit secondary"... after tasting the combination in a glass. The result is exactly what I was seeking....... aside from being well above "lawnmower" ABV.


H.W.

The advice of members here can be invaluable. I unfortunately often strike out on my own before consulting this font of knowledge, sometimes with less than ideal results.

My recent Serendipity Sour Saison had the makings of a failure, but due to good, well informed input turned out to be a very good beer that was almost exactly what I was looking for. It has just the hint of sourness I wanted to complement the Saison funk of the Lallamand Belle Saison yeast without being overpowering. It's a crisp and refreshing beer with a good hop presence. It missed the target as a "lawnmower beer", but it's not Whoop
Ass either. The aroma in the glass is green apples.

There was no real way to measure or quantify sourness...... and nobody offered one. That's an avenue yet to be explored. My hope was that PH could equate in sort of relation to IBUs, and if PH is a legitimate measure of sourness, I believe that it could. The hoppy versus malty chart could have it's equivalent of sour versus malty, and with an IBU equivalent for sourness we could predict the results with some accuracy....... A pipe dream perhaps.

The advice to hold the IBUs down to around 10 was the first really good piece of advice, and I modified my hops bill at the last minute, hopping heavily in the last few minutes of the boil to get a good hop presence without the IBUs. This advice "saved the day"

The other excellent piece of advice was to sour a percentage, and mix to taste. I ended up more or less doing this, by brewing a second non-sour brew and mixing 50/50 which worked out about right. I expected to have left over of either one or the other. Next time I will make a small brew of intensely sour beer (1 gallon), and mix to taste with a 2 gallon brew to give me somewhere between 2 and 3 gallons total.

The third piece of good advice......... which I will ignore because of cost, is to use a commercial culture......... At about $7, and not available locally, the cost of the culture would exceed the rest of the grain and hop bill. If I were doing a lot of sours, I would consider it.

The fourth piece of advice I will experiment with next time is sour wort instead of sour mash.......... This would probably work well with the split batch, perhaps just using DME.

I have about 5 gallons of Serendipity Saison, so I won't be brewing it again anytime soon.


H.W.

Temp discussion is in line with my practice (120º). My addition is that I mash in a keg. That way, you can purge the head space with CO2 and avoid the negative affects of an oxygen rich environment. Dearation, and controlled temps make sour mashes super easy and controllable.

Boerderij_Kabouter said:

Temp discussion is in line with my practice (120º). My addition is that I mash in a keg. That way, you can purge the head space with CO2 and avoid the negative affects of an oxygen rich environment. Dearation, and controlled temps make sour mashes super easy and controllable.

Click to expand...

I used a stainless steel stock pot with saran wrap right on the surface of the liquid to exclude oxygen.........


H.W.

I’ve got a hibiscus gose recipe I’m wanting to try since I have plenty of hibiscus blossoms in my back yard. The owner of one of the local breweries suggested kettle souring so I figured I’d read on further here. As I read more, it seems my electric RIMS system might be better suited for sour mashing than I thought.

My mash tun is a 70 qt Igloo with a suction manifold and I have a return head for mashing as well as a sparge head. The difference is the mashing head directs wort upward in a gentle stream in the grain bed vs. the typical shower from a sparge. I can adjust the copper tube of the return line to keep it right on top of the grain bed or even below the surface, if I wanted.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

Do a normal mash routine with protein rest for 20-30 min then infusion at 148 for one hour. Rack off the wort to the boil kettle, boil 10-15 min, rack through my chiller into a purged corny which will come out at +/- 80F in the summer here. I can pitch the additional grain, sparge head is brought into contact with top of grain bed, cover the grain bed with plastic wrap, purge with a CO2 line, then push the wort from the keg back to the grain bed with CO2.

It seems like this would void as much O2 as possible.

I can set my PID to maintain 115 or so and leave the circ. pump on. It should maintain +/- 1F, so I can draw a sample every 12 hours until it’s reached the sourness I desire. I even thought about just running the circ. pump every 6-8 hours with my RIMS tube powered up as my garage ambient temp is about 90F right now in the summer heat. Biggest temp drop would be in the RIMS tube or plumbing, but that would be an anaerobic environment anyhow.

The brewer I talked to suggested pH 3 to 3.5 would be good for a sour.

Thoughts or suggestions? I’m in the same boat as the OP- the $14 cost for bacteria is off-putting to me and I like the idea of experimentation- that is so long as I know no one will get sick

ZOMBIE THREAD WARNING!

:rant:

Ok. I've read this while post and I get getting really....stinky lemon cheese aromas before I boil! I remember some saying the death and vomit smell are normal until after the boil. This was a Berliner recipe with lacto de. At 100*f. What the heck??

Death & vomit smell is bad.

Lemon cheese, probably not so bad.