Recipe/ method critique

[Beerswimmer]

I'll be brewing a "white wine" saison to dump onto a cake of 3711 and want to sour it up. Here's what I'm planning, please give me any input.

9lbs pale 2 row
2lbs red wheat
1/4lb acidulated malt

Nelson Sauvin hops

Mash grains @ 150 for 60mins, and boil for 15mins. No hops. Cool to 85F and rack into cleaned and sanitized igloo cooler mash tun, add 16oz of mango Goodbelly and leave covered for 4 days.

After 4 days do a standard boil adding hops and pour onto 3711 yeast cake. After fermentation is complete add white wine soaked toasted oak sticks for 1 week, bottle.

A simple soured saison?

 

[applescrap]

Cant comment on sour recipe or method, but when adding oak and wine, you dont need to "soak" the chips. You can add the wine at kegging / bottling to taste. I love that taste and it has become a new thing I am playing with. Every time you have wine, the beer changes. I've enjoyed adding it in the glass. Pros have to add wine through Oak because of law. Those laws don't relate to you as a home Brewer. The better the wine the better the results I think.

 

[Beerswimmer]

Well I did the mash as planned, I just started the boil a few mins ago. When I opened the cooler the wort was a sizzling ferment! Smells great! A bit of citrus, grains, and fruit.

ETA: the ferment was for real, OG was 1.035. I'll be adding some adjuncts in the next few days to get it to ~1.05

I sanitized the igloo cooler mash tun before and after the mash to try and eliminate anything unwanted. Well, it's/was wild I guess! No off flavors, so I'm ok. Now it's in an 80F room sitting on a big cake of 3711 and some Brett C.

 

[mitchard]

Should be interesting. When reading your first post, I was going to comment about using the cooler and say you might end up getting some unwanted buddies, but you beat me to the punch haha. Did you check pH at all or just wing it?

 

[Gnomebrewer]

4 days is probably too long for souring. Check the pH if you can, and boil when it reaches your target - my sours (three batches) have always taken 2 days to get to 3.5. You wouldn't want to go much below that.

Edit: I just read that it's sitting on Brett C - there was no mention of that in the original recipe. Did you go with the Goodbelly?

 

[Beerswimmer]

I always sanitize my mash tun before I use it, not that it's really necessary, and sanitized it before the wort went in. Plus I boiled the wort. I have a PH test kit, but it doesn't go low enough. So I just winged it. The Brett C is in there with the 3711 because it's the cake of my Sofie clone. I used 4 shots of Goodbelly mango. It's fermenting hard right now, smells like a normal beer through the airlock.

 

[Beerswimmer]

This morning the fermentation had slowed considerably. I took 2.5lbs of light DME and .5lbs of cane sugar and boiled them for 15 while making coffee, just poured it into the fermenter now that it has cooled. It should get my OG back into the 1.05 range since whatever alcohol the lacto made was boiled off.

 

[crane]

From my experience the lactobacillus in the good belly shots do not produce alcohol. I've never gotten a gravity drop when using it for kettle souring. I suspect that you picked up some yeast along the way that had enough time to take hold. 4 days is much longer than needed for souring with good belly. Especially that much of it. I only use one 4oz shot for a 5 gallon batch and I will get to my target PH within 48 hrs. Also given that you are using lactobacillus plantarum you do not need to maintain 100F or more temps throughout the souring process. For that reason I choose to sour in a carboy. It's a lot easier to keep wild yeast and oxygen out of a carboy than in a boil kettle or mash tun. I transfer into the carboy at 100F and let it free fall.