wbuffness
Member
How long did it take to sour? I have 2 brews going (5 gal ea) with it since January and just wondering when I should start checking them. One is a Brown Ale and the other is a Tart of Darkness clone.
Anyone use ECY20 before?
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I tasted mine made with the December release after about 2 months and it wasn't very sour, just very lightly tart. That's pretty young to taste, but I had an opportunity to taste it so I did so out of curiosity. Lots of isoamyl acetate early on! Not sure how long past batches have taken to sour for other people. I am pretty set on letting this sit at least a year, perhaps 18 months.
Here is my video playlist for the beer so far if interested.
Here is my video playlist for the beer so far if interested.
Soilworker
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I have two beers going with ECY20 right now, a West Flanders Red and a Golden Sour. I racked them off primary after 1 months and 1.5 months respectively and I tasted them. I was surprised at how tart and slightly sour they were already. It was certainly more sour than many commercial sours available out there already. That was a month ago and I haven't tasted them again yet. That being said, they were tasting pretty young and had some funky aromas that I think needed time to settle out. Some of the various brett strains (Brett Naardensis in particular and I'm sure some others, plus pedio can throw quite a bit diacetyl) can give off some "off-flavors" and need about 6 months to a year to cleanup. I suspect I will let both of these go for at least a year. They both have sat at 70F pretty much constantly.
Coff
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Ive used ECY20 (and 01) a bunch of times, every time I have gotten a sour beer pretty quickly, 3-4 months or so. But its really not worth tasting these beers until they are 6 months old, I guess if you really want to get an idea of how it progresses over time then you can but around 6 months you can start to get an idea of what the finished beer will be like.
jnacey
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have you bottled these at six months or do you still let them sit for the 1-1.5 years?
I would be surprised if Coff bottled any of his ECY20 beers as early as 6 months. Check out his Solera project on his blog with ECY20 for example.
I made a bunch of beers with the ECY20 vial I bought last year. I'm going to leave the ones that just received the blend for at least 10-12 months, but I also pitched some into saisons I made at the time, and I bottled one of them (~4 months old) last week. It took on a really nice sourness at about 3.5 months (it was lightly tart before that), and I'm hoping the aromatics from the brett will increase as it ages in the bottle.
Coff
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Yea, never bottled that early. 10 months old was the soonest I had ever bottled, that was with Bugfarm 3 and it was a highly fermentable Saison wort.
Yeah, I've got a second generation sour yeast cake that is nearly 2.5 years old now that soured a brown ale in 2 months. I'll be blending it with a clean raspberry brown ale in a chilled keg (the sour brown will be 5 months old when I blend them). I still think that age would improve the sour beer, but I plan on doing a Solera with it, so next year I might benefit from the aged complexity of the Brett.
I am starting to rethink the old adage that on the first pitch of a commercial blend like ECY20 you should age the beer for 1-2 years. I mean, you could pre-sour the wort with lacto or a sour mash, then pitch the ECY20, and effectively have something very similar to these "quick sour beers on second generation yeast cakes". The beer would be sour, and probably lack the complexity of a 1-3 year old sour beer, but it would be good and sour enough to do some blending with.
The risk here is that if your pH gets too low, the Sacch in the blends might be so stressed that it produces off flavors. I think that we as sour brewers, although we think outside of the box a lot, don't tend to risk our ECY20 cultures like this. Perhaps it's too much risk to advise new sour brewers to take this route (I've read Tonsmeier hint towards this). Thoughts?
TNGabe
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How long it takes to 'sour' isn't important. How long it takes to reach maturity is. Plan on waiting at least 12 months. I've got two ECY20 beers. I thought the first one was pretty pedestrian at the one year mark so I added some Bambic dregs hoping for improvement. I started adding dregs to the second one around the 6 month mark after tasting the first.
wbuffness
Member
Thanks all for your input. I was wondering if I should taste after 3 months. But after reading all your comments, I know I am in it for the long haul. I just CAN'T WAIT to try my first 2 sour beers. I hope for the best and a year seems like eternity. Since I brewed in January, I will probably try them in November and if I'm satisfied, maybe, just maybe, I can have one for Christmas or NYE.
Yep, welcome to sour brewing.
While you wait for those to age, make a Berliner Weisse in 3 months told hold you off!wbuffness
Member
Might have to!!! Thanks for the idea!
Coff
Well-Known Member
Gabe brings up a good point, these beers need age to come together and round out the flavors of the beer, not to just be sour. The bugs, especially in ECY20, all work on their own schedules and there really is no way around waiting it out. If I could find that chart from Wild Brews I would post it.
I do not think that using ECY20 in a beer that youre trying to turn around in 3-6 months is a great choice. For me I would steer clear of pedio if youre looking at that timeframe for a quick turn around.
I agree with this 100% for beers where ECY20 is doing the bulk of the fermentation. But I think that where its being used as part of a mixed fermentation in something like a saison there's something to be said for bottling and at least beginning to taste a little earlier than 12 months (with qualifications about FG and heavy bottles). I pitched small amounts of my ECY20 along with saison yeasts, not because I wanted to make a distinctively sour beer (although I have got some sourness) but because this was the cheapest way to get the whole range of ECY brett into a beer. And because I was looking for more contribution from brett than pedio, it made sense to bottle earlier and get the brett under pressure. (The gravity is so low at this point that I doubt the pedio will make much of a contribution---I wonder if the sourness I've got so far didn't come from the L.Brevis). I don't expect the beer to come into its own for a few months, but I like tasting bottles along the way.
Anyway, like I said, I don't mean to be disagreeing with what people have said about the OP's question, just pointing out that there's different ways to use a blend like ECY20.
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