Kettle sour probably got infected- with yeast. what to do?

[SanPancho]

got a bit lazy this time. was hurrying to leave town and didnt take notes like i should have. got lazy and didnt chill either. mashed, ran it to 160, then let it cool down pitch temp overnight. tossed in bugs, then hit the road for few days.

finally got around to finishing today. its sour. 3.36 or so. but after boil, and adding .5# lactose, its still only at about 1.025 or so.

so i either had the worst mash conversion in my lifetime. or yeasties got in there somehow.

no notes on gravity of mash. so cant verify one way or another. and have a hard time believing i was that far off target OG. so likely a yeast infection.

smells good, tons of hops and nice sourness. but not sure its worth even fermenting this one as it looks like not quite half the gravity points are from the lactose.

this will be like a 1.5% sour hop bomb. or i just toss and it start over. the wife is preggers, and i could maybe see her being able to drink a not-quite nonalcoholic beer on this one.

what to do.....

 

[RPh_Guy]

You can add sugar to hit whatever ABV you want.

 

[bucketnative]

Brew another batch and blend.

 

[SanPancho]

sugar is a horrible idea.

blending is a good idea, although it seems that for this brew, that isnt really gonna work either as i think it through. i'd need to get something mashed and boiled into the 1.090 range to be able to blend them to something in the 50ish OG range. plus have to wait another couple of days for the souring.

at that point i might as well just do the new batch. rather drink one batch the way i want it that have to drink down two batches that didnt come out right.

since i'll need to sour again, i guess i'll go ahead and ferment this one out, at 1.022 i cant imagine it should take more than 2 days or so. in fact, i might just spund it from the get go and see what happens.

worst case i toss it, best case the wife likes it and gets to drink something beyond crappy NA beer or that crazy expensive hop water from Lagunitas.

 

[JimRausch]

What was your expected OG? Assuming you didn't mess up the grind and mash, then if your OG was in the, let's say 1.060 range, then any yeast that may have got in there and fermented it down to below 1.025 would produce alcohol and CO2. Is there CO2?(foamy) You might have more alcohol in there than you think. Judgment call, but I think I might pitch whatever yeast you had planned and see how low you can drive it. Or you could spend the $$ and send in a sample to White labs to analyze your ABV. It's a tough call.

 

[bucketnative]

Blend at packaging, no need to wait for the other wort to mash, boil, and sour.

 

[SanPancho]

If I blended without souring it’d probably wind up around 3.7 to 3.9. Tart, not sour. Still doesn’t solve the problem of having two batches of so so beer instead of one batch of what I want.

The kettle foamed like crazy. But the bugs evolve CO2 as well so not definitive. I just really don’t think my mash was that far off. Either way, gravity is what it is. Any alcohol would have boiled off so it’s a bit of a moot point.

I went ahead and pitched into it. Figured it’ll be done in 2-3 days and then maybe a small dry hop. Just gonna write it off as a 1.5% sour hop bomb for the pregnant wife. Tell her I meant to do it.

 

[JimRausch]

Any alcohol would have boiled off so it’s a bit of a moot point.

Oh, sorry I missed that you boiled it. That would change things. I guess your plan is basically making lemonade when given lemons. Pun intended. Good luck!

 

[SanPancho]

More of a cherry citrus-ade. Sour, with a good dose of amarillo, dorado and lemondrop in kettle. Some lactose for residual sweetness. Smells great. But yeah, basically a soft drink.