Captain Damage
Well-Known Member
Note: I found and read this thread today before posting this. For whatever reason, it didn't show up when I searched before starting this experiment.
98 days ago (1/27/2013) I brewed a beer and pitched my sourdough starter instead of a conventional brewing yeast. I'm posting now because I just bottled four bottles. I'll continue to bottle a few every month or so.
The recipe is about as simple as they get:
3 Gallon Batch
5½ lbs 2 row
½ oz cascade @ 30min
Mash @ 154F for 75 min
OG: 1.060 IBU: 18 IBU/OG: 0.3
I pitched 150ml (5floz/5.5oz) of active sourdough starter which I'd been growing for about 4 months. It was grown from the Culutres for Health New England Sourdough Starter, which makes a tasty, but only very slightly sour bread. In retrospect, this was probably underpitching by quite a lot, but it did begin fermenting pretty quickly, if not as vigorously as a usual pitch of ale yeast.
The bottles I filled today have a single Cooper's carb tab in each. The FG is 1.004, yielding an ABV of 7.4% The beer tastes sightly sour, with no sweetness to speak of. It has no objectionable or spoiled flavor. It's hard to determine the pH since I don't have a meter. I have the test strips for both beer and wine and they both show the pH at the lower and upper limits, respectively, making the pH probably about 4.4.
I'll report back as this experiment continues.
98 days ago (1/27/2013) I brewed a beer and pitched my sourdough starter instead of a conventional brewing yeast. I'm posting now because I just bottled four bottles. I'll continue to bottle a few every month or so.
The recipe is about as simple as they get:
3 Gallon Batch
5½ lbs 2 row
½ oz cascade @ 30min
Mash @ 154F for 75 min
OG: 1.060 IBU: 18 IBU/OG: 0.3
I pitched 150ml (5floz/5.5oz) of active sourdough starter which I'd been growing for about 4 months. It was grown from the Culutres for Health New England Sourdough Starter, which makes a tasty, but only very slightly sour bread. In retrospect, this was probably underpitching by quite a lot, but it did begin fermenting pretty quickly, if not as vigorously as a usual pitch of ale yeast.
The bottles I filled today have a single Cooper's carb tab in each. The FG is 1.004, yielding an ABV of 7.4% The beer tastes sightly sour, with no sweetness to speak of. It has no objectionable or spoiled flavor. It's hard to determine the pH since I don't have a meter. I have the test strips for both beer and wine and they both show the pH at the lower and upper limits, respectively, making the pH probably about 4.4.
I'll report back as this experiment continues.