TandemTails
Well-Known Member
I started batch 1 of my solera project back at the end of October 2016. The recipe was a basic red ale. It was fermented for a week with us-05 and then I racked it onto the dregs from a previous sour that had used a Wyeast Lambic Blend smack pack. I also added the dregs from a couple sour beers and let it sit untouched for nearly 6 months until this week.
I pulled a sample to see how it was progressing and it has developed some really good sourness with some ever so slight acetic qualities like I'd expect in a flanders red.
I was curious what the pH was so I tested it and it came in at 2.86 which is extremely low. Is there anything I should do to raise this up into the low 3's? I was thinking maybe I should add some extra gypsum to the next round to hopefully prevent the LAB from producing as much lactic acid.
I was also planning on pulling 3 separate gallons off of the current batch and letting one sit on oak cubes, one sit on cherries and one sit on plums for a month or two. Now I'm afraid the acids in the fruit will lower the pH even more.
I pulled a sample to see how it was progressing and it has developed some really good sourness with some ever so slight acetic qualities like I'd expect in a flanders red.
I was curious what the pH was so I tested it and it came in at 2.86 which is extremely low. Is there anything I should do to raise this up into the low 3's? I was thinking maybe I should add some extra gypsum to the next round to hopefully prevent the LAB from producing as much lactic acid.
I was also planning on pulling 3 separate gallons off of the current batch and letting one sit on oak cubes, one sit on cherries and one sit on plums for a month or two. Now I'm afraid the acids in the fruit will lower the pH even more.
