Lactos & Bretts for Quick Sour Farmhouse Ale (a la Goatpants)

[troglodytes]

My next brew will be done in about a month and I'm going to attempt my version of Derek Dillenger's Goatpants:

http://www.bear-flavored.com/2014/06/dry-hopped-sour-farmhouse-ale-recipe.html


This is going to be a light, dry, sour and fruity (citrus) farmhouse sour (0 IBU in boil, 4 oz Citra dry hop) that I want to be ready to go by this Spring. My goal is to use only dregs from commercial bottles to harvest a huge variety of microbes. I currently have 12-13 sours ranging from lambics, guezes, flanders, brett farmhouses etc. of which I'll choose to harvest from 4-5 select bottles and pitch along with WY3711.

Now the question is what do I target in a commercial brew for an easy drinking citrus heavy farmhouse. I noticed almost all the brett beers I have that actually list the strain it is Brett B, but it seems that Brett B could clash with the 4 oz of Citra dry hops I'll be adding. Is there a particular commercial brew that I should target that would provide microbes that can pair well with the citrus, or is there a source where you can see what microbes are in a commercial brew?

Just for the record my current commercial strains I was going to use are as follows, sound like a solid mix:

Bruery Hottenroth
Jolly Pumpkin Fuego Del Otono
Allagash Coolship Red
Allagash Hive 56
Night Shift Sheridan (Flanders Style Sour)

 

[RPh_Guy]

Jealous of all your bottles! If any of them are citrusy or fruity, those seem like the most reasonable choice to me because the yeast character probably won't clash with fruity hop character.

Since you're planning to have this ready within a few months I'd also recommend pitching a starter of one or more Lacto species that will be active at whatever starting fermentation temperature you will use (e.g. L. plantarum), just as Derek Dillenger did for his recipe. Otherwise the amount of sourness will probably be reduced or take much longer (via Pedio species). Just depends what you want.

-------FYI-------
"Most Brettanomyces cultures from brewer's yeast labs are classified genetically as B. bruxellensis or B. anomalus." - MTF

"Brett B" is B. bruxellenis (synonymous with B. lambicus), an entire species with as much or even more diversity than S. cerevisiae. ... so you can't really judge the yeast's character just by seeing that's it's classified as a strain of B. bruxellenis. As a parallel we can't say Saccharomyces in general clashes with a certain hop because a particular strain of a particular species of Saccharomyces produces banana flavor.

Just speculating here but I'd think that most producers of sour beers have house cultures/reservoirs which may contain dozens or possibly even hundreds/thousands of strains of microbes (e.g. barrel aged) and are probably not even be identified, so selecting a bottle based on a report even if you had one wouldn't be of much help. Furthermore there is no practical way to know which microbes made it into the bottle, whether those are the ones making the flavors you want, and whether they are still viable .... so IMHO dregs are a great way to collect a bunch of unique "bugs" to impart complexity but microbe selection is far from being able to be controlled with this source.

Cheers!

 

[troglodytes]

That's good info form MTF, I don't know I've ever thought of it that way. Well, I know the Hive 56 is a barnyard type funk but a very mild variety of it. I'll start with that and the Hottenroth and Coolship as they are both beers that scream for fruit. The Sheridan and Onoto are mystery's to me so I'll determine once I crack them and have a taste.

I was think of avoiding the purchase of any particular lacto and was just going to build a decent sample from the dregs prior to brewing. I know the downside to that is you don't raise a starter in the same microbe proportion as the commercial beer, but for this brew I don't mind that as what I end up with is going to be a mystery anyway.

Thanks!

 

[Craigmn]

As a warning, in my experience and from what I have read and heard, the Jolly Pumpkin bugs seem to take over. Every beer I have made or had with JP dregs in it all came out with a JP flavor. It's a really good flavor, but I just wanted to put it out there

 

[troglodytes]

Really good to know. Now I'm interested as to who wins out between Jolly Pumpkin and Allagash. The last coolship red I had was bright and super sour. It certainly seems less funky than other sours I have but the fruitiness with the raspberries resulted in an amazing beer, although I can imagine that due to it being a bright clean sourness it could hide behind something more funky. That bright sourness is more what I'm going for with my farmhouse sour, so I may keep the Jolly Pumpkin for a separate batch, something that will age longer and appreciate complexity.

Maybe I'll go pick up a bottle of Alohoweisse or similar and use that with the Coolship and Hive 56 as I know the weissebiers are great with fruit.

 

[troglodytes]

Ok, so I'm ready for my first mixed fermentation. I settled on:

Yeast: 3711 (built up from a bottle of my ginger saison)
Brett Dregs: Night Shift Sheridan, Allagash Hive 56
LAB Dregs: Night Shift Passionweisse, Allagash Coolship

Each of the commercial bottles were given 200mL of 1.020 wort and have been kept in an 85F chamber. All have pellicles, currently.

So here are my options on what I do next. Which would give me the best chance of a medium/medium-high level of acidity:

1) I obviously don't have enough of a cell count in the dregs mini-starters to match the optimum pitch rate for a 5 gallon batch of 1.045 wort, and I do want the beer to be more than just slightly tart. As this is a 0 IBU brew, I was thinking about making the wort, chilling to 80F, and then pitch all Brett and LAB dregs. Chances are there's minimal amounts of sacch in the dregs as well. I would hold the batch warm for 48 hours then chill to 65F and pitch a full pitch of 3711 at high krausen for the main fermentation.

or

2) Do option 1 but wait until I have done a full size starter with all of my brett and LAB dregs to greatly increase cell count first.

or

3) Pitch my 3711 along with all the dregs at the same time at 65F and after 3 days ramp over the next 2 weeks up to 80F.


I understand that a commercial blend would give me a better chance of souring, but this batch is going to be brewed with only microflora harvested from bottles. It's something I've wanted to do for a while, and this is a beer I'm going to be wanting to drink by the hot part of summer, so I think its a good batch to try this experiment on as it will be a short aged sour summer quaffer (hopefully).

 

[JLump]

Ok, I'm convinced. I think I'll brew this for my next beer. Seems like a good Spring beer. Thanks for posting this.

Anyone have any thoughts on using WY3724 instead of 3711?

 

[Craigmn]

I say pitch all 3 at once. The brewery bugs are usually stronger than the lab bought bugs. You should have a pretty sour beer from that. Good luck

 

[RPh_Guy]

Whatever you do I'm sure you'll get an interesting result!

Since you want it more sour I'd at least suggest stepping up your LAB counts with a buffered starter (20g CaCO3 per liter IIRC)... So I guess option 2.

 

[troglodytes]

Alright as of this morning everything is pitched. Rph_guy, I took your and built a starter for just the lab dregs.

I used the exact recipe as linked in the original post, but since i wanted something sour and not just tartness I decided that i would make something that if ready by summer would be awesome, but if it needs a year I wont be too sad.

That being said, here are the process changes i made. I mashed at 158F for an hour then raised to 172F for mash out /sparge for a little tannin extraction. Then i went no boil, just pasteurized at 185F. I then cooled to 85F and pitched just the lab starter as the wort cooled naturally in my cellar to give it head start. After 6 hours it was down to 68F and i pitched the Brett dregs and 3711.

Fingers crossed, I'll keep anyone interested posted on how this progresses. Sample tasted really good for such a simple grain bill. And I ended up with 7 gallons at 1.041 from only 9# of grain. I guess 0 hops means minimal brew house losses.

 

[troglodytes]

Update: I did a gravity reading a while back and after the krausen fell and it was at 1.010, so that's a promising amount of sugar left for the mixed microbes to munch on. I saw a pellicle begin forming (very thin) about a week and a half ago. I had a taste and to my surprise there was no sourness at all. From just my palate I would say the only tartness was from the lactic acid addition I did upon first pitching the bottle dregs' starters.

Hopefully given some time, there will be some sour development, otherwise I'm going to worry that the only remaining microbes in the dregs I pitched were brett. There's definitely a slight hint of the brett straw-like of flavor in the sample I drew, but otherwise its a very thin, clean (no funk) tasting beer. Let's hope aging changes that.

Also, as I posted elsewhere, this beer was supposed to be around 4 SRM but now that the yeast has dropped the color is very clearly a darker orange, my guess is its about 7 SRM. I at first thought oxidation, but the brett should be taking care of that issue.