Crazy idea: blend vinegar w beer...

[JeffOYB]

I might try that. Has anyone? Instant sour?

 

[cswis86]

Unless you want your beers to taste like vinegar I'd advise against it. Vinegar is acetic acid whereas as most sour beers use Lactobacillus which produces lactic acid. I've use acidulated malt at about 10% of my grain bill to get a little tartness in a gose I made but it's not the same as doing a true sour fermentation.

 

[dmtaylor]

I would only try this on purpose in a Flanders. You could probably get away with it in the Flanders style. But don't expect everybody to love it as much as you might.

That said, I have successfully used a splash of vinegar to acidify my MASH a couple times, and it works, and with no detrimental effects.

In any case, you just don't want to overdo it... and it would be VERY easy to overdo it. Once you've added too much... well I hope you have a need for several gallons of salad dressing!!

 

[DrKnow]

Good examples of sour beer do NOT taste like vinegar. Period. Vinegar, acetone, solvent type aromas or flavors are signs the beer is bad and needs dumped. I get tired of being burned by breweries putting out this kind of garbage and charging $20+ a bottle for that kind of garbage. Remember the old Seinfeld episode where they were talking about "good naked" and "bad naked"? It's the same thing here. There is "good" sour/funk and then there's the bad kind. But drink whatever you want.

 

[JeffOYB]

I've had at least one Duchess of B beer with superstrong vinegar taste. To the point where it was bad. The seller did say to return it. But I've had sours with modest vinegar flavor that seemed part of the intended profile.

I wasn't thinking of brewing w vinegar but of adding a bit to a glass of low-hop beer as a mixer.

I just tried it! I have an Amber beer that I just added a bit of balsalmic to -- kinda tasty! I'd say I put a tsp into a half cup of beer.

...Then there are "drinking vinegars."

 

[tiredofbuyingbeer]

I don't think this would be a good idea as a time-saving way to make a sour. (Not that I know much about sour beers, but lactic and acetic acids definitely taste different.)

But... there are drinking vinegars that people mix in cocktails. So acetic acid isn't intrinsically foul as a component in some drinks. Maybe there's some sort of fermented malt beverage that it would work in. You'd just have to be trying to accomplish something different than one of the traditional varieties of sour beer.

 

[radwizard]

I don't think this would work out well in terms of an "instant sour".
I think you could add vinegar to gain an acetic character (Flanders styles), in an already traditionally soured beer that was lacking acetic character.

 

[madscientist451]

I've made some ciders that are too acidic for my taste, but mix 50/50 with a plain homebrew like a cream ale or a SF Lager and its pretty tasty and quaff-able.

 

[Sharona]

I recently started drinking a low carb beer and found the taste to be to plain for me since I am used to drinking IPA’s. I added a dash of organic vinegar to the beer and it did not taste bad at all. In fact, it actually tasted pretty good!! It added something that was missing from the beer.

 

[Pennine]

I have a batch of kombucha going whenever I am in the mood for a sour I just splash a bit into a beer.

 

[phinfail]

I have made a few beer vinegars and then made shrubs (fruit simple syrup but vinegar instead of water) from the vinegar. I tried adding a bit of the shrub into a light lager and it was remarkably close to a fruited kettle sour. I think there is some merit to this approach if you're trying to make kettle style sours. And for people poo-pooing acetate over lacto sourness, just use a small amount of diluted lactic acid instead of vinegar (or both).