Fermenter souring techniques?

[Grannyknot]

I'm currently in the planning stages for my next brewday and need some help & suggestions.

Plan is to do 10 gallons of ipa, split it into 2 fermenters, use American ale yeast in one and sour the other one. I'm not too crazy about Belgian yeast strains, so I've been trying to find the best technique for doing an American sour ale. My original intention was to ferment with a standard Cal Ale strain, then when it finished (around ~1.010), to introduce lactobacillus to eat up the rest of the unfermentable sugars, but I've been told that probably isnt enough sugar left to make a discernible difference and that pure lacto doesn't react well with hoppy beers. I've been told to try a blend like Roeselare as the primary fermenting strain, but I'm worried about the Belgian tastes coming through. I also looked at WY5526 Brett lambicus as a primary strain, but really not sure what I can expect, or if I need to use it in conjunction with something else.

Time is not an issue. And btw, I am trying to do something similar to Wicked Weed's Amorous IPA if you are familiar with that.
Any recommendations for souring in the fermenter or is this just not meant to be for the type of beer I am doing?

 

[DurtyChemist]

Sour ales are typically made using Lacto or Pedio and not Brett which is just a different species of sacchromyces. Also lacto doesn't like high IBUs and if you're making a pale ale recipe I don't think you'll be able to sour it unless you just use Lactic Acid to drop the pH to around 3.3.


Check out the Lambic and a Wild Brewing thread instead. You'll probably get some solid advice on a sour pale ale.

 

[burninator]

How about pulling out a gallon of unhopped wort and souring that with lacto. Then blend it with the finished IPA.

 

[tgmartin000]

You want a sour ipa? Something like that will probably require kettle souring. Run off your wort into the kettle. Sour for several days, then boil and hOp.

Or iit's a more traditional sour. ..make a huge lacto starter at 100 degrees. use several types of lacto. Make a low ibu beer, below 10 ibu. Mash high, like 154. Ferment for 2 weeks with the lacto, at 100. Add the yeast of your choice, at its proper temp. Ferment down, then add some brett L and dregs of your choice. Age for about 6 months.

 

[DurtyChemist]

Kettle sour is probably it. Let the lacto grow then boil it off to keep the sour flavor but hop it.


Problem with removing just 1 gallon is you'll need it REALLY sour (probably) to blend with 4 gallons and maintain sour. You might as well make a Berliner 5 gallon and sour it to taste then mix it 50/50 with your pale ale recipe to see if the hop flavor will even work with the sour tart. As stated above you want to be under 10 IBUs. Read American Sours and check out the Lambic forum.

 

[Grannyknot]

Thanks for the intel everyone. I actually never noticed that there was a wild & lambic forum section.

I think I mislead everyone by saying that I wanted to make a "Sour IPA". I'm not really looking to make anything sour like a Gose or Berliner. I think what I'm trying to make is a American wild ale (don't think bjcp has style guidelines for this). But, I'd like it to have a little bit of a sour flavor. This is why I've been looking at the different blends of sacc/brett/lacto.

I

 

[tgmartin000]

American wild ales are typically low in hops. My production method is as described above. Check out the book American sour beers.

 

[mabrungard]

Kettle souring is not ideal. Unless you have a way to keep oxygen away from the souring wort, you could easily have problems with other organisms or metabolic pathways that produce off-flavors. I recently soured a batch in a sealed, 5 gal corny and that worked very well since lacto does not produce much CO2. The soured wort was then boiled and pitched with yeast for the remainder of the fermentation. That beer was outstanding.