I'm about to do my first sour mash beer, a Kentucky common. It is only going to be a 3 gallon batch, so my total grain bill is 5 pounds. I plan on mashing/sparging 1.5 pounds of my base malt and souring for a couple days, then mashing the remaining 3.5 pounds of grains and combining the two runoffs in my boil kettle on brew day. I have 2 questions:
1.) for my sour mash, do I want to leave all my grains from the mash in there while I let it sour, or mash and runoff as usual and just sour the wort(with a bit of uncrushed grain for lacto)?
2.) Most of the sour mash references I have seen say to combine the sour mash with the main mash before sparging, but I am hesitant to pour the funky stuff into my main MLT. So I was planning on doing my sour mash in a 2 gallon beverage cooler I have, then on brew day mashing the remaining 3.5 pounds of grain in my regular MLT, running off the wort as usual, then combining that with the wort from my sour mash in my boil kettle. Is this OK, or is there some reason I need to combine before sparging? Any input is appreciated.
1.) for my sour mash, do I want to leave all my grains from the mash in there while I let it sour, or mash and runoff as usual and just sour the wort(with a bit of uncrushed grain for lacto)?
2.) Most of the sour mash references I have seen say to combine the sour mash with the main mash before sparging, but I am hesitant to pour the funky stuff into my main MLT. So I was planning on doing my sour mash in a 2 gallon beverage cooler I have, then on brew day mashing the remaining 3.5 pounds of grain in my regular MLT, running off the wort as usual, then combining that with the wort from my sour mash in my boil kettle. Is this OK, or is there some reason I need to combine before sparging? Any input is appreciated.