Dealing with Roselare's First Pitch Blandness

[ArkotRamathorn]

So reading quite a few threads on sour brewing and the accepted knowledge that first pitch roselare is relatively "bland" on its first out of packet pitch. So I am contemplating things to combat that blandness, of course I will be looking for sour beers at my local bottle shops to have dregs on hand to pitch.

My next option I was looking at is creating a small starter on brew day. Not to pitch the entire packet in, just a small amount of the smack pack. I would make a 500mL starter and I'll pitch a tiny bit of the smack pack into this, the rest of the smack pack will go into the beer. After 48 hours or so I'll step up the starter and hopefully build up more of the slower reproducing bacteria. Then I can save a tiny bit of the stepped up starter to create another small starter (I do this with regular yeasts so I can keep 'fresh' yeast rather than washing yeast out of the fermenters, not based on anything science, I just prefer this way). My entire plan is to build up more of the souring micro-organisms and pitch those into the beer to pitch large populations of these guys and decrease the potential "bland-ness".

Sound like a decent plan? With the starters, should I leave them for several days before stepping up to give a longer chance for the bacteria to compete and increase their populations? Can you even cold crash a starter of bacteria? I was going through the 'dregs' list posted here and I really cant find many in my area that I can grab, most of what I can find is pasteurized so I was hoping to combat this by doing starters that throws off the "blend" of roselare.

 

[haberlet]

Nope- sacc. will outpace other bugs in my experience if you do a delayed starter of sorts. If you make a starter with Roselare, I'd figure your finished product may end up more 'bland'.

My experience is that Roselare isn't particularly bland- it just doesn't produce sufficent acidity for Flanders Reds and Lambic-esque styles. Solid Brett character, actually.

My advice?

1) Ramp up the temperature. 75+ for the first week or two, minimum. This will greatly improve acidity.
OR
2) Sourmash
OR
3) My suggestion- Make up a tiny culture of 1.025 with table sugar (not DME) and dump in a handful of base malt kernels. Step this up a few times and you'll have a very healthy lacto culture that'll really improve the acidity. It sounds like a lot of effort, but 30 mins tops. You could pitch the lacto culture first at 70-90 F, wait a day or two, and then pitch Roselare, or both at the same time.
OR
4) Brew a low gravity oudbruin first, or an American farmhouse, pitch the Roselare, and rack the product off after a month or sooner. You'll get a mildly tart beer that could be quite good and your second generation will have much stronger acidity.

That being said, you could save a small portion of the Roselare culture for another batch. My bet is you'll have far better and more consistent luck by continually repitching on your house yeast cake and creating a family tree, of sorts. Rack off the cake whenever your ready for another batch and you're good to go; first batch will continue to funkify.

-T

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

Nope- sacc. will outpace other bugs in my experience if you do a delayed starter of sorts. If you make a starter with Roselare, I'd figure your finished product may end up more 'bland'.

My experience is that Roselare isn't particularly bland- it just doesn't produce sufficent acidity for Flanders Reds and Lambic-esque styles. Solid Brett character, actually.

My advice?

1) Ramp up the temperature. 75+ for the first week or two, minimum. This will greatly improve acidity.
OR
2) Sourmash
OR
3) My suggestion- Make up a tiny culture of 1.025 with table sugar (not DME) and dump in a handful of base malt kernels. Step this up a few times and you'll have a very healthy lacto culture that'll really improve the acidity. It sounds like a lot of effort, but 30 mins tops. You could pitch the lacto culture first at 70-90 F, wait a day or two, and then pitch Roselare, or both at the same time.
OR
4) Brew a low gravity oudbruin first, or an American farmhouse, pitch the Roselare, and rack the product off after a month or sooner. You'll get a mildly tart beer that could be quite good and your second generation will have much stronger acidity.

That being said, you could save a small portion of the Roselare culture for another batch. My bet is you'll have far better and more consistent luck by continually repitching on your house yeast cake and creating a family tree, of sorts. Rack off the cake whenever your ready for another batch and you're good to go; first batch will continue to funkify.

-T

I think option 4 appeals to my sense of simplicity, I will probably still make a tiny starter so I can keep a relatively "new" pitch of roselare on hand if I ever need to do a reset.

I was hoping that eventually the stepped starters the bacteria would start to outcompete the sacch but I'll end up just doing the beer I planned this weekend then bottle the Brett cherry cider I have going and use that fermenter to finish this first generation (then I don't need to worry about the Brett infecting something I don't want Brett in).

Would pursuing bottle dregs be a good plan to diversifying the population? Going home for Christmas and they have far better bottle shops and I think *maybe* I saw jolly pumpkin stuff there last time.

 

[k47k]

Make the first batch normally. If u plan to repitch and keep the culture going you may eventually end up with a beer that is too sour. You can use the first bland batch for blending.

 

[haberlet]

I think dregs are never a negative addition but I think their importance and contribution is largely overstated. Your pitching a smackpack with 50+ B cells at least.. Dregs will probably be outcompeted initially but the most resilient and profusive bugs will have some impact on the first batch and even more so on subsuqent batches. I'd say it's a crap shoot but a great excuse to drink some sour beer. They definately have their place in building a consistent house culture.

Because the bottled beer is probably 18-24 months and most if not all the sacc has autolyzed, you could definately make a small starter for a bigger contribution.

I can't stress it enough, if you want a sufficiently sour product from first generation of Roselare, leave it in the warmest possible location in your house, or use a hearing blanket for the first week. It'll greatly improve your sour beer and prevent you from complaining about an otherwise solid blend later.

-T

 

[Dirty25]

I don't think roselare is bland at all. I have made 5-6 beers using it directly pitched and a few in secondary. The direct/primary ferments were great. It got pretty good in about 12 months. The secondary pitches were not as sour (not a bad thing) and took longer to become perfect but turned out good. If you want a super sour beer make belinerweiße if you want some complex flavorful beer use roselare or lambic blend.

If your roselare pitch isn't sour enough ferment it warmer or add some fruit and let the bugs eat those sugars.

 

[bovineblitz]

I don't really agree with this 'conventional wisdom'. The two times I used it I really should have blended the resulting beer to reduce the acidity a little bit.

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

If your roselare pitch isn't sour enough ferment it warmer or add some fruit and let the bugs eat those sugars.

I was thinking of adding raspberry purée in a secondary and transferring on top. Try and keep low headspace.

Lucky find though, a fresh bottle of Oude Tart from Bruery. Supposedly fresh bottles have Brett and bacteria so I'm gonna crack that and pitch the dregs in a small starter and try and nurse that to life. If I get activity try and make a big starter.

 

[Dirty25]

I don't really agree with this 'conventional wisdom'. The two times I used it I really should have blended the resulting beer to reduce the acidity a little bit.

The couple times I used it with fruit it came out super acetic. i did a Flanders red aged 1 year on wild German blackberries. This beer came out super sour and is hard to drink a lot of. I have given most of it away in growlers to my friends. I am more of a fan of more restrained "sours" like lambic, gueuze/geuze, and fruit lambics

 

[idylldon]

I'm currently drinking a bottle out of a 30-gallon oatmeal stout that was fermented with Roselare for 1.25 years with 30lbs of cherries added 1/2 way through. I've never really been a huge fan of sours but I must say this one really tastes great--not too sour and not too fruity. I'm really pleased with how well and balanced it came out. I bottled it a few weeks ago and used CBC-1 as the priming yeast since I got quite a few packets at the MBAA conference back in October. It carbed up in about a week at an average temp of 70F.

Cheers,
--
Don

 

[bovineblitz]

The couple times I used it with fruit it came out super acetic. i did a Flanders red aged 1 year on wild German blackberries. This beer came out super sour and is hard to drink a lot of. I have given most of it away in growlers to my friends. I am more of a fan of more restrained "sours" like lambic, gueuze/geuze, and fruit lambics

That's not really the fault of the blend, it sounds like it was exposed to too much oxygen.

 

[Dirty25]

That's not really the fault of the blend, it sounds like it was exposed to too much oxygen.

It had minimal exposed to oxygen. It primary fermented in a 6.5g carboy with roselare. I then racked it a 6g carboy onto over 10lbs of wild blackberries and let it age for a year. The fermenter had no headspace, airlock was kept full. The blackberries got it really sour...My ToD clone was done in the same timeframe and procedures (minus fruit) and it came out much more approachable. Everyone likes the Flanders but me, however I am more of a lambic drinker then Flanders/oude bruin drinker.

 

[haberlet]

It had minimal exposed to oxygen. It primary fermented in a 6.5g carboy with roselare. I then racked it a 6g carboy onto over 10lbs of wild blackberries and let it age for a year. The fermenter had no headspace, airlock was kept full. The blackberries got it really sour...My ToD clone was done in the same timeframe and procedures (minus fruit) and it came out much more approachable. Everyone likes the Flanders but me, however I am more of a lambic drinker then Flanders/oude bruin drinker.

Two (well many more) kinds of sour. If it's acetic (vinegary), it's most likely the fresh blackberries. Same thing happened with my first sour ever on wild blackberries. The fruit was carrying the bacteria and turned your batch into malt vinegar.

If it's a lactic sourness, it just means the berries provided enough consumables later in the fermentation (high bug count) to produce pronounced acidity. Or it just aged through well.

It seems like you call it acetic, and then just call it "really sour". If the batch did go with acetobacter, it'd be very challenging to drink. Even though acetobater drops the pH and creates acidity, it's definitely a very different kind of sourness, so tread carefully with the descriptors.

People always blame acetic character on oxygen permeability. Unless you're aging for two years in a Home Depot bucket, you're probably dealing with another issue. Look at your sanitation system first IMO
-T

 

[sweetcell]

Nope- sacc. will outpace other bugs in my experience if you do a delayed starter of sorts. If you make a starter with Roselare, I'd figure your finished product may end up more 'bland'.

agreed.

My experience is that Roselare isn't particularly bland- it just doesn't produce sufficent acidity for Flanders Reds and Lambic-esque styles. Solid Brett character, actually.

indeed, Roe is great for oud bruins which aren't supposed to be super acidic.

3) My suggestion- Make up a tiny culture of 1.025 with table sugar (not DME) and dump in a handful of base malt kernels. Step this up a few times and you'll have a very healthy lacto culture that'll really improve the acidity. It sounds like a lot of effort, but 30 mins tops. You could pitch the lacto culture first at 70-90 F, wait a day or two, and then pitch Roselare, or both at the same time.

culturing lacto from grains is hit-or-miss. there is lacto on the surface of grains, along with a lot of other bugs that you might not want. could result in diaper-poop aroma. a better option is to get a "pure" lacto culture from a probiotic, yogurt, etc.