How to sour mash homebrew (AKA: sour beers for impatient homebrewers)

[joshesmusica]

From my research, a pH of <4.5 will help prevent any of the unwanted bacteria which can ruin your mash.



The reason I pulled it off the bed was to cool the wort rather than letting it fall over 24 hours or so. I was able to chill the wort to 90F which coincidently brought the grain bed down to 120F from 170F. It needed to be at 120F or below to pitch my un-mashed grain to seed it with lacto.

Gotcha. I'm biab in my pot, and I prefer acidulated malt over acids.

So can I just add enough of that to drive the ph down?

And then I cool in my sink and can prolly get down to 120 in about 7-8 mins. So I guess I wouldn't need to take the grains off the wort?

 

[conan71]

Gotcha. I'm biab in my pot, and I prefer acidulated malt over acids.

So can I just add enough of that to drive the ph down?

And then I cool in my sink and can prolly get down to 120 in about 7-8 mins. So I guess I wouldn't need to take the grains off the wort?

Keep in mind, I&#8217;m a total newb at sour mashing but I think that&#8217;s a pretty solid approach:

Get your pH below 4.5, temp to 115-120 for seeding with fresh grain. Once your grain is in the mash, put plastic wrap on the grain bed and seal best you can against the kettle wall, put your lid on and maintain your heat for two or three days. If you have a drain valve or sample port, even better. Use it to check your pH every 24 hours. When I took my sample last night I tossed it after getting my reading. For obvious reasons of o2 introduction and possible other infection it would not be a good idea to put the rest back in the pot.

One other tip I&#8217;d read was not to drink sour mashed wort until it&#8217;s been either pasteurized or boiled as there could be other food poisoning type organisms in there until it&#8217;s fermented to a point of at least 2% alcohol. I dipped the tip of my tongue in last night to get a sense of the sourness and immediately rinsed. I don&#8217;t care to risk being up all night with stomach/bowel issues!

 

[conan71]

Success! After 48 hours, the mash was at 3.48 pH, so I pulled the lid on the MLT and inspected the bed. No off smells other than a sourish straw smell I was expecting, no slime or anything like that. I raised the temp to 170F and fly-sparged with 170F water to the fill line in my boil kettle for a 5 gal batch.

It’s extra work, but I may be hooked on sour mashing!

 

[Rhaop]

Success! After 48 hours, the mash was at 3.48 pH, so I pulled the lid on the MLT and inspected the bed. No off smells other than a sourish straw smell I was expecting, no slime or anything like that. I raised the temp to 170F and fly-sparged with 170F water to the fill line in my boil kettle for a 5 gal batch.



It’s extra work, but I may be hooked on sour mashing!

Very nice, my first kettle sour went for about 36 hours i had some big bubbles forming under the saran wrap, i'm glad I didn't wait any longer because the post boil gravity sample was super sour, used about 4 oz of acid malt for mash ph and use 10% of the grain bill with acid malt to add the bacteria which was about 14 oz uncrushed acid malt

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1437596189.460095.jpg

 

[Brewrifle]

Ended up having to restart my Instant Pot sour mash. 36 hours in and I got this slimy goo as you can see in the pictures and the PH didn't drop at all with 2 cups of unmilled pilsner malt. Set the PH to 4.4 with lactic acid as well. We'll see how this batch goes for Sundays real brew day.

I couldn't tell if it was a pellicle trying to form under the plastic wrap because it was only seen where there was bubbles in the wrap.