New to Sour Beers!

[RollingStone]

Hello Everyone,

I want to brew a sour beer but I have no idea what makes it sour or how to do it. Could someone who knows about this help me out?

What in my mind is that I want to use some grapefruit peels to give some flavour to it. What do you think?

Looking forward for your help

Thanks

 

[dawn_kiebawls]

There are several nearly identical threads from the last couple of weeks in the 'Lambic & Wild Brewing' forum on here if you'd care to read through them. I don't want to come off like I'm brushing off your question or your interest in sours, but many people who know much more than I do on the subject have done quite a good job outlining and explaining the process and microbes involved.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/sour-beer-for-beginners.525392/#post-8450644

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/first-attempt-at-a-sour-help.655661/



These are a couple of the threads I was talking about. They should get you off to a great start! cheers!

 

[RPh_Guy]

Making sour beer is easy.
1. Use no hops.
2. Add Lactobacillus plantarum in addition to the yeast.
3. Ferment or bottle condition at 65°F or higher.

 

[cmybeer]

I made three sour beers a handful of years ago and yes it can be easy but time consuming. I used a roeselare ale wyeast combo blend which is saccharomyces, brett, lacto, and pedio (in other words, one brewers yeast to brew your beer and three souring agents to add the sourness and funk). You want to give it time to ferment way down because it will finish way dryer than a typical beer meaning that if you rush it into bottles you could get some explosions which is never good.

One more thing is your equipment. It's never a bad idea to have dedicated sour equipment for all your plastic hardware. You don't want to have an accidental sour IPA in the future.

 

[myndflyte]

Another way to do it is to kettle sour. Good information about it here: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Wort_Souring

Basically you sour in your kettle first and once it's down to a certain pH, you raise the temp to kill off the bugs, cool, and pitch normal yeast to ferment. It has a few benefits in that it sours pretty quickly and you don't need dedicated sour equipment because only your kettle is seeing the Lacto. You may not get some of the intricacies that you would from souring for an extended time but it's a way to get started with sours.

 

[Rob2010SS]

+1 to @myndflyte comment. Kettle sours are a nice introduction to sours and they're not as intimidating as they sound. Just allow yourself 2 or 3 days for the process. I usually will start my kettle sours on a friday night and finish them on a sunday afternoon, once the pH is where I want it.

These will just be clean, lactic sour beers. They won't be as complex as a traditional sour where you ferment with mixed microbes for 1 year or more, but they're still good, and you can get them pretty sour.

The other advantage is you can use hops in a kettle sour, as many as you'd like. There's no concern about IBU's because the lactobacillus has already soured prior to the introduction of IBUs.

The very first sour I did was the Dawson's Kriek kit from Northern Brewer. This is a good starting point and the beer comes out pretty delicious.

 

[RPh_Guy]