Just how big of a moron am I being here?

[Spelaeus]

So... local homebrew club has an upcoming competition. Guidelines are "anything rye based." I... Want to do something stupid. Really stupid. Immediate thought is a wild rye sour. Kind of to a roggenbier what a particularly potent berliner weiss is to a hefeweizen. Resistance is futile, the dumbassery will occur. Thing is, I lack both the funds and the time to do a full batch of this right now (need it done in just under four weeks). So... I'm thinking a small batch just to make this happen. Really small. And really simple.

Do a mini-mash of 7oz rye malt and add 10 oz of amber DME shooting for a 0.5gal ending boil. Cool, sprinkle in some raw rye malt and a little cheap US-05, top off with carbonated water (to purge oxygen quicker) to bring the volume up to 0.8gal in a 1gal container, add airlock or blowoff tube, see what occurs.

What say you, homebrew talkers?

 

[Hello]

I won't call you stupid because that's silly, but how do you do a quality sour in 4 weeks?

 

[Spelaeus]

I could be totally off base here having never done one before, but it seems like a simple lacto sour can usually be done in 5-6 weeks. I'm kind of hoping I can just get such a small volume done faster. May actually drop the gravity even lower, shoot for around 3%-4% abv... But otherwise, I guess worst case scenario I can't make the deadline anyway and have an otherwise purposeless cheap experiment going a little longer?

Edit: Scratch it, new game plan. Modified sour mash starter technique: Make 0.4 gal of lacto fermented wort from the rye malt, using the soda water to purge oxygen again. This ferments ~100F for 1.5-2 days. Make 0.4gal with the US-05 and the malt extract and ferment at ale temps for 1.5-2days, rack lacto brew into the US-05 brew and let mingle for the remainder of fermentation at ale temps.

 

[Flipadelphia]

I don't know, that was a bunch of words that I fell asleep while reading

 

[sumbrewindude]

I like the concept, not so sure on the execution -

If it were me - and I've been known to do silly things like this - I'd go with the rogginbeir base (equal thirds pilsen/wheat/rye), and sour mash it in a cooler or bucket for a couple days - eg, mash in at 155F, let it fall down to 105F naturally, and toss some grain in and add small amounts of hot water to keep it around 105F for a couple days.

I'd suggest using a couple 2L or 3L soda bottles cleaned out - then you can sink the bottles in a cooler with warm water and not funk up your cooler, change the warm water easily, and see how the souring process is going by squeezing the bottles to see how firm they're getting (and vent as required).

If you're using LME/DME, you can add it at the boil - just make sure to account for the additional gravity. Actually it wouldn't be the worst, as this way you could control how tart you wanted it. Boil it with a 60min addition for bittering and ferment out with whatever ale yeast you want.

More controllable this way, and it's not near as much time involved.

 

[Hello]

I don't know, that was a bunch of words that I fell asleep while reading

Then don't reply FFS. Really.


I don't know of a sour done in such little time but I've never done an intentional sour.

 

[Spelaeus]

Sunbrewindude: Only reason for the DME was not feeling like doing two separate mashes with the prior method. Just to make sure I understand, with your technique I would mash everything (doing all-grain in this case) and go for the full volume at once, and only lauter and boil a few days later after souring, then proceed as normal?

 

[sumbrewindude]

Sunbrewindude: Only reason for the DME was not feeling like doing two separate mashes with the prior method. Just to make sure I understand, with your technique I would mash everything (doing all-grain in this case) and go for the full volume at once, and only lauter and boil a few days later after souring, then proceed as normal?

Ah - that makes more sense. I was trying to figure out where you were going with the DME. If you're crunched for time go that route, otherwise I'd still just mash again - it's only 40min, but sometimes you just don't have time due to life, and I get that.

In the way I explained, I was doing a mini-mash (basicly a half of the recipe) as AG and then souring mashing in the bottles. You could do it in your cooler - lots of guys and gals do it - I'm just weird and like to keep my mashtun as non-funky as possible hence the 2L bottles.

That would give you half sour mash to add back into your boil. If you've never played with sour mashes and sours in general they can run away on you if you let them play too long in the heat. By doing the bottles separate, you can add them back in to the boil and control how sour you're actually making the wort. Boiling the sourmash stops the lacto, so you're in the clear to ferment out with a normal ale yeast but stlll have the tart of the lacto.

If it were me (again, I'm weird, and love to do silly things like this) I'd:

1) Sour mash half the recipe in the bottles for a few days until appropriately tart
2) Stick the sour mash in the pot, adjust water to a partial mash volume
3) Boil 15min and add DME to OG specs
4) Late hop the SNOT out of it with something dank and over the top. (CTZ/Citra) to get the IBU's inline.
5) Cool and pitch yeast.

This is real close to something I did, doing only a 15min boil on a full AG batch of Lithuanian Keptinis. It's on here(HBT) somewhere, a search should find it. In a nutshell, it was powerful and worked - but definitely got better with time; much less boozy after a few months.

Other equally silly options -
1) Sub in a lot of acidulated malt instead of just 2row and do a normal AG brew day (I'd recommend adding it during the batch sparge so you don't knock your pH into next Tuesday for conversion)

 

[Spelaeus]

Good stuff. I'm pretty new to brewing, just one brew under my belt so far. But microbiology is fun and the funky ****, it speaks to me. Thanks for all the advice.

 

[kingwood-kid]

I made a sour-mashed Berliner that I bottled in 11 days. I've never bottled anything else near so quickly. So it can be done. 100+ fermentation temps certainly speed things along.