Kettle Sour, Not Sour?

[DasBaldDog]

So, this is not my first beer, but my first kettle sour.

Did the mash, on Friday using a 75/25 Pilsner/Wheat recipe. Did a 15 minute boil at the end to sanitize, wort chilled to 130*f.

Moved the kettle into my brew room, preacidified with lactic acid to 5.0 PH, placed on insulation, etc and pitched 15 capsules of a 10-strain probiotic that came highly recommended to me. This was approximately 5 pm Friday.

6 pm Saturday, checked PH with strips (yes I know) and pulled a tiny sample, PH showed 3.5-4.0 but did not taste sour at all, none. Temp had dropped to 78*f, placed seedling mat under kettle.

6 am Sunday (6/21/20), PH was 3.0-3.5 and had a FAINT sour taste.... like baby's first Gose. Temp was 91*f. Pitched another 5 capsules of the probiotic.

This morning 5:30 AM 6/22. PH and taste remain unchanged. Temp was up to 93*f.


- So, Yes I know about PH strips but until I had get a good PH meter and understand how best to use/maintain it, I've had luck with PH strips in chemistry experiments before. It should also still be able to give me a difference determination even if not accurate (should be acceptably precise).

-Yes I know that 130*f was too high to pitched the bugs, the probiotic I used had some strains that MilkTheFunk shows are being okay north of 120, but I was mainly interested in the L.Plantarum which likes 90-95 best.

-Which is why I repitched 5 more capsules at the L.Plantarum preferred range.

-Why didn't I do a bacteria starter? Because I was supposed to be in possession of the probiotics on Wednesday but did not get them until 11 am on Friday about half an hour before we had scheduled to start the brewing, decided to pitch heavy instead waiting for next weekend (estimated pitched rate was 14million per ml, actually more but I wanted to overcompensate for the fact that the pills were a blend of strains).



So the concern, we are now 60+ hours past initial pitch and 24 hours past re-pitch and the wort is BARELY sour. I realize that everyone's taste is different but while I LIKE sours, no one has accused me of being super in love with them and I think that I should be able to taste increases in tartness as well as the next person.


Thoughts? Questions? Right now the plan is to let it set until 5/6 am tomorrow and check again, perhaps the new 5 pills have a lag phase (I have read the Plantarum typically does, especially if the 130*f killed/hurt the original plantarum)

 

[Jag75]

I've never done a kettle sour so I really cant say . Hope it works out for you . If you want an easy sour brew a co pitch . Easy and foolproof.

 

[yoop89]

With a kettle sour it is hard to determine how sour it is by taste. There is alot of sugar in your wort at this point and will mask the sourness. It is probably as sour as it is going to get so I would probably move on with what you were planning on doing at this point!

In the future if you are interested in really easy sours look up the co pitch method. Super easy and you can retain some yeast flavors if you want depending on when you pitch each. Just cant use any hops to start.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/fast-souring-modern-methods.670176/

 

[DasBaldDog]

With a kettle sour it is hard to determine how sour it is by taste. There is alot of sugar in your wort at this point and will mask the sourness. It is probably as sour as it is going to get so I would probably move on with what you were planning on doing at this point!

In the future if you are interested in really easy sours look up the co pitch method. Super easy and you can retain some yeast flavors if you want depending on when you pitch each. Just cant use any hops to start.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/fast-souring-modern-methods.670176/

Ahh.... that's a good link to read.... Very interesting. We tried the kettle sour because of concern regarding cold-side contamination. I didn't want bug-specific fermenters, kegs, etc.

Might actually do it for this beer, go ahead and do the boil, pitch yeast and more L.Plantarum. (Need to boil to burn off the excess water and mash-off-flavors going on).

I wondered about the taste with the lactic acid but every kettle sour thing I found all say "taste, taste, taste".

 

[DasBaldDog]

I've never done a kettle sour so I really cant say . Hope it works out for you . If you want an easy sour brew a co pitch . Easy and foolproof.

I had not heard about this method, I only recent discovered the kettle sour concept. The risk of cold-side contamination was the thing keeping me from doing any sours at all. The concept of the double-boil wasn't something I was super happy about but it was do-able.

 

[Jag75]

I had not heard about this method, I only recent discovered the kettle sour concept. The risk of cold-side contamination was the thing keeping me from doing any sours at all. The concept of the double-boil wasn't something I was super happy about but it was do-able.

Check into it . Way easier. No special equipment needed either .

 

[yoop89]

I use just L. Plantarum(1 cap/gallon) and co-pitch. It sours nicely, is very predictable and is extremely hop-intolerant. I have not had any sour "infections" of my normal ales and lagers using the same two carboys.

Just a normal pbw wash after fermentation and a starsan soak prior to filling.

 

[DasBaldDog]

I use just L. Plantarum(1 cap/gallon) and co-pitch. It sours nicely, is very predictable and is extremely hop-intolerant. I have not had any sour "infections" of my normal ales and lagers using the same two carboys.

Just a normal pbw wash after fermentation and a starsan soak prior to filling.

Out of curiosity, what is the cell count on each of those caps?

 

[yoop89]

They are 10 billion CFU caps, so roughly 2.6 million/ml @ 1 cap/gallon

 

[yoop89]

They've gone up in price a bit since I bought them but these are the ones I got. Recommended from threads I was following at the time and they do not disappoint.

Swanson Probiotics

 

[myndflyte]

As someone already said, there's a lot of sugar in there that masks the sour (think adding sugar to a grapefruit). If it's down to 3.5, I think you should just proceed to the actual fermentation step. Also, if it's down to around 3.5, it's not going to go much lower: Lactobacillus. As an example, Omega's strain doesn't really get lower than 3.2.

 

[jclark248]

So, this is not my first beer, but my first kettle sour.

Did the mash, on Friday using a 75/25 Pilsner/Wheat recipe. Did a 15 minute boil at the end to sanitize, wort chilled to 130*f.

Moved the kettle into my brew room, preacidified with lactic acid to 5.0 PH, placed on insulation, etc and pitched 15 capsules of a 10-strain probiotic that came highly recommended to me. This was approximately 5 pm Friday.

6 pm Saturday, checked PH with strips (yes I know) and pulled a tiny sample, PH showed 3.5-4.0 but did not taste sour at all, none. Temp had dropped to 78*f, placed seedling mat under kettle.

6 am Sunday (6/21/20), PH was 3.0-3.5 and had a FAINT sour taste.... like baby's first Gose. Temp was 91*f. Pitched another 5 capsules of the probiotic.

This morning 5:30 AM 6/22. PH and taste remain unchanged. Temp was up to 93*f.


- So, Yes I know about PH strips but until I had get a good PH meter and understand how best to use/maintain it, I've had luck with PH strips in chemistry experiments before. It should also still be able to give me a difference determination even if not accurate (should be acceptably precise).

-Yes I know that 130*f was too high to pitched the bugs, the probiotic I used had some strains that MilkTheFunk shows are being okay north of 120, but I was mainly interested in the L.Plantarum which likes 90-95 best.

-Which is why I repitched 5 more capsules at the L.Plantarum preferred range.

-Why didn't I do a bacteria starter? Because I was supposed to be in possession of the probiotics on Wednesday but did not get them until 11 am on Friday about half an hour before we had scheduled to start the brewing, decided to pitch heavy instead waiting for next weekend (estimated pitched rate was 14million per ml, actually more but I wanted to overcompensate for the fact that the pills were a blend of strains).



So the concern, we are now 60+ hours past initial pitch and 24 hours past re-pitch and the wort is BARELY sour. I realize that everyone's taste is different but while I LIKE sours, no one has accused me of being super in love with them and I think that I should be able to taste increases in tartness as well as the next person.


Thoughts? Questions? Right now the plan is to let it set until 5/6 am tomorrow and check again, perhaps the new 5 pills have a lag phase (I have read the Plantarum typically does, especially if the 130*f killed/hurt the original plantarum)

I did a kettle sour a while back with a Flanders recipe. Turned out a bit too sour for me as PH was target at 3.2 I believe but didn’t start boil soon enough to kill of the bacteria. Anyway I used a Wyeast bacteria to sour and yes a pH devise is a lot nicer to use.