Planning acid beer for blending

[goodwood]

So I am enjoying my first blend very much. I had a barrel character that was a tad strong. So I took a try with blending. Fantastic.

Anyways, I want to look ahead for the future. I want to create an acid beer for blending. I am in the height of our heavy brewing season so I want to make 15-20 gallons of beer for the simple use of blending in a year or two.

You think the easiest way is to use a demijohn? It will be a few bucks cheaper, and save on space. Steel is out of the question as I can't justify spending the money for aging.

So what I am thinking of is a highly lactic sour beer to pull a gallon or so from when blending in the future.

 

[CadillacAndy]

You're planning on brewing 15-20 gallons of extra acidic beer just for blending, or you want to brew 15-20 gallons to age and have a portion of that be super sour? It really all depends on the volumes you plan on brewing and keeping around. I know commercial breweries keep "acid" beer around for blending, but on a smaller homebrew scale it would be easier to up the acidity with a bottle of lactic acid. You already have complexity if you're using lacto, brett, pedio, etc, so it's not like you're trying to sour a Munich Dunkel by just adding lactic acid.

 

[goodwood]

You're planning on brewing 15-20 gallons of extra acidic beer just for blending, or you want to brew 15-20 gallons to age and have a portion of that be super sour? It really all depends on the volumes you plan on brewing and keeping around. I know commercial breweries keep "acid" beer around for blending, but on a smaller homebrew scale it would be easier to up the acidity with a bottle of lactic acid. You already have complexity if you're using lacto, brett, pedio, etc, so it's not like you're trying to sour a Munich Dunkel by just adding lactic acid.

We are a group of 3 so we have quite a bit of sours and brett beers. Personally, I have been doing at least 1 batch of different grain bills for souring or different brett experiments. 5-10 gallon batches. Buying grain by the full bag and having a mill really amped our homebrew production up.

About 2 years ago we starting brewing batches like this so we already have a bunch of beer for blending, or not blending. Some of the beers will have fruit.

So basically if I get a bulk storage system set up, in a year or so we will have another layer of beer to blend with. I am also thinking a solera would be great to keep feeding it every time we take some off if we do a bulk size batch. I think a giant 65 gallon wine barrel would be too much so that's why I was thinking a demijohn.

I was looking on craigslist and found what looks like a converted stainless steel drum. The listing says 43 gallon but the pictures were not good. I need to call him and ask how the seal is. It looks like he was using it for open ferments of wine.