"Sour" beers not sour enough...

[StopTakingMyUsername]

So I had the opportunity to try a kettle sour last night that was made with very soft water. Despite the fact that it finished at pH 3.0, I found it only mildly tart. Nice beer, but not what I would have expected with pH that low.

My well water is pretty hard, with bicarbonate at 200+ ppm. I have a pedio-soured beer that is also at pH 3.0, and it is POWERFULLY sour... Degrease engine sour. Dissolve metal sour.

So back to OP's original issue, I really think it is a titratable acidity issue versus pH. This was an eye opener for me, in how much difference starting with soft versus hard water makes in perceived sourness at the same pH. I mean, it's huge.

Interesting. You said the kettle sour beer was not sour at 3.0 (lacto, I'm presuming), but that the pedio soured beer (at 3.0) is intensely sour.
If you used to same water/treatments for both, then that would sound like the issue is the LAB and the sourness it creates.

Another thing that I've found is that commercial lacto/pedio aren't really blowing me away.
I'm leaning more towards open fermentation and lacto combinations with the main source being grains thrown in a DME starter. Goodbelly seems to work pretty decent as well.

I've only done 2 beers with pedio so far (commercial WL culture). They are both ~5 mos old and not sour at all. Barely tart.
Meanwhile, my open fermentation beer is 6 mos in and face melting sour.

 

[millsbrew]

So I had the opportunity to try a kettle sour last night that was made with very soft water. Despite the fact that it finished at pH 3.0, I found it only mildly tart. Nice beer, but not what I would have expected with pH that low.

My well water is pretty hard, with bicarbonate at 200+ ppm. I have a pedio-soured beer that is also at pH 3.0, and it is POWERFULLY sour... Degrease engine sour. Dissolve metal sour.

So back to OP's original issue, I really think it is a titratable acidity issue versus pH. This was an eye opener for me, in how much difference starting with soft versus hard water makes in perceived sourness at the same pH. I mean, it's huge.

So do you think building from RO will always result in a weak sour level? Too bad they can't do a brulosophy on it.

Also, seems that bottle dregs would help build on sourness compared to just commercial offerings. Why wouldn't people add those to their secondary?

 

[troglodytes]

This is super interesting to me. I'm about to do a kettle soured gose and was going to start with RO water. My water is great for making ambers and dark beers, but for light colored beers I build from RO.

I'm thinking I won't do that this time and just use pH test strips with tap water and campden tablets as I'd like the sourness to be pretty solid.

 

[Agate]

Well based on my one data point (and we all know how well that works) I would say it's a definite maybe. It certainly takes more lactic acid to overcome higher levels of bicarbonate, and I believe that flavor threshold is based on ppm of the lactic acid ion. So more bicarbonate means more lactic acid to get to a terminal pH, which kind of implies a stronger acidic character.

Now I'm thinking of doing a duplicate batch, one with hard tap water and one with distilled. Could he as simple as one of the pH meters having a bad cal. At least it would minimize the variables.

 

[willnewton]

There is no mention of calibration of your pH meter. Is your pH meter calibrated? Is it calibrated before each use? How old is your meter probe? How do you store it?

I agree with several of the posters here. Your "sourness" perception and pH readings do not match with what I generally see reported or have observed myself.

My sourness perception to pH reading - 3.3 or lower is intensely sour, 3.4-3.7 is sour, 3.8 or higher is more tart than sour.

I think your meter is out of whack.

 

[bruhaha]

I am preparing to try my first lacto soured Gose styled beer. After reading all of these comments, I am afraid that I'll fail to produce a decent sour.

 

[Agate]

I am preparing to try my first lacto soured Gose styled beer. After reading all of these comments, I am afraid that I'll fail to produce a decent sour.

Don't let the comments here concern you - they're really quite simple once you go through it a couple times! What are you using for your lacto culture?

 

[Ztp]

I have about 50 gallons of different sour beers under my belt, and the best advice I can offer is to mash high (158-159 depending on recipe) harvest dregs from your favorite wild/sour offering, build it up, and continually pitch on top of the old yeast cake. That same community of microbes will continually (thus far) produce a sourer beer, quicker, and with more complex flavors each time you toss new wort on it. I tried using commercially available lactos and am finally getting some decent tartness a year after it was brewed. You have to be picky on which commercial brew you use though as some breweries condition with wine or champagne yeast. I chose De Garde and Jester King bottle dregs. I cannot speak for kettle souring, but I know commercial offerings tend to be one dimensional. My beers are well soured within two months at room temp, and only get better after some fruit additions.

 

[gometz]

I agree with Ztp above. My sour mix started off as de bom blend from Wyeast and I've added at least 8 different dregs over the past two years. The beers can be bracingly sour if I don't use oxygen, hops, or low temperatures to temper it. After a few months the beers are plenty sour, but I'll age them a bit longer for complexity.

My Flanders Red has gotten 2nd place and an honorable mention, and my eye tamarind sour just won 1st place. I plan on entering a gose and a Berliner into competition soon as well.

 

[StopTakingMyUsername]

Well, I've had success souring with open-fermentation. In fact, one of our experiments became TOO sour, like throat-burning and acetic sour.
Tried a beer with a commercial pedio pitch, but it's only about 5 months in, and not getting any sourness at all (Guessing pedio just takes a while).

Brewed another berliner and ran into the same problem.
Lacto source was Goodbelly probiotic and a 1L starter from grain (Held at 95-100 F for a couple days)

It's definitely not the PH Meter. I upgraded to the Milwaukee MW-102, calibrate it often, and it's been spot on for all of our beers prior to this one.
PH 3.3
Lightly tart when we took our first sample. My palate is dulled to sourness, so I understand that what is "sour" to me may be "intensely sour" to others.
The first sample was good. Enough tartness for me to consider it "sour", but just a quick punch of it up front, then it dissipated into other flavors.

Decided to rack it onto some raspberries yesterday, and in the process, I took another sample for gravity. FG consistent at 1.007, so I'm ok with that.

Tasted it: NOT tart in the slightest.
It was like, the same level of 'tartness' you'd get from yogurt or sour cream.
NOT "sour beer"ish in any way.


So now I'm really confused.
The PH readings are accurate. That I can guarantee.

The only things I can think of that somehow might dissipate the sourness is either O2 introduction (bit of a stretch) or maybe the dregs mix I pitched in is evolving into flavors that overshadow such a light, faint sourness from lacto-only?

I'm about to just forget about lacto. We've done about six of these lacto-only soured beers now and none of them have came out sour (or well, STAYED sour).
Such a waste.

 

[StopTakingMyUsername]

I have about 50 gallons of different sour beers under my belt, and the best advice I can offer is to mash high (158-159 depending on recipe) harvest dregs from your favorite wild/sour offering, build it up, and continually pitch on top of the old yeast cake. That same community of microbes will continually (thus far) produce a sourer beer, quicker, and with more complex flavors each time you toss new wort on it. I tried using commercially available lactos and am finally getting some decent tartness a year after it was brewed. You have to be picky on which commercial brew you use though as some breweries condition with wine or champagne yeast. I chose De Garde and Jester King bottle dregs. I cannot speak for kettle souring, but I know commercial offerings tend to be one dimensional. My beers are well soured within two months at room temp, and only get better after some fruit additions.

Great point.
I have a brett/cantillon/casey mix that I've used in a couple saisons, and the saisons are getting progressively more and more tart and lemony.
"Kettle Souring" is what we're doing on our berliners - we mash super low so the FG is insanely dry, say 146 F for an hour.
Runoff, sparge, and collect into another vessel. Add lacto and let sit 48-72 hours (or until PH is right). Heat that vessel up and boil for ~20 min to kill lacto and add hops.
Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong?

Oh, and I've spoken with Trevor from De Garde directly - he does use wine yeast to condition at times, so be careful with those dregs
.

 

[masonsjax]

If 3.0-3.3 pH doesn't seem sour to you, either the meter is off, or your perception of sour is non-existant.

You're not packaging the beer in a sea shell are you?

 

[ArkotRamathorn]

Well, I've had success souring with open-fermentation. In fact, one of our experiments became TOO sour, like throat-burning and acetic sour.
Tried a beer with a commercial pedio pitch, but it's only about 5 months in, and not getting any sourness at all (Guessing pedio just takes a while).

Brewed another berliner and ran into the same problem.
Lacto source was Goodbelly probiotic and a 1L starter from grain (Held at 95-100 F for a couple days)

It's definitely not the PH Meter. I upgraded to the Milwaukee MW-102, calibrate it often, and it's been spot on for all of our beers prior to this one.
PH 3.3
Lightly tart when we took our first sample. My palate is dulled to sourness, so I understand that what is "sour" to me may be "intensely sour" to others.
The first sample was good. Enough tartness for me to consider it "sour", but just a quick punch of it up front, then it dissipated into other flavors.

Decided to rack it onto some raspberries yesterday, and in the process, I took another sample for gravity. FG consistent at 1.007, so I'm ok with that.

Tasted it: NOT tart in the slightest.
It was like, the same level of 'tartness' you'd get from yogurt or sour cream.
NOT "sour beer"ish in any way.


So now I'm really confused.
The PH readings are accurate. That I can guarantee.

The only things I can think of that somehow might dissipate the sourness is either O2 introduction (bit of a stretch) or maybe the dregs mix I pitched in is evolving into flavors that overshadow such a light, faint sourness from lacto-only?

I'm about to just forget about lacto. We've done about six of these lacto-only soured beers now and none of them have came out sour (or well, STAYED sour).
Such a waste.

I'll start by saying that I've tried using a lacto starter meant for yogurt and had, sub-par results. I don't know what it was, I am a thrifty person so I really like repurposing one thing to perform another task. Something about the lacto starters meant for yogurt just don't seem to work (at least for me, I think I've read others having good results).

Next point, its tough to have enough lactic acid to make a beer bracingly sour. I think the carbonic acid plays a major role in making a lacto only beer become more sour. I think this may explain partially why your transfer sample didn't seem that sour (carbonate it heavily and the lactic acid will pop a great deal more I believe).

Lastly come back in a month or so on the raspberries. I transferred my Flanders red on top of 5lbs raspberries and 2.5lbs black berries, it was moderately funky but not sour. I think at 2.5 months on the fruit I went back and pulled a sample, very sour, then carbonated a 12oz sample, and it literally blew mine and SWMBOs mouths out, we *love* sour beers, and I had to run downstairs and open another beer to blend into the glasses. The fruit sugars will probably give you a good chunk sour, also the raspberries are so acidic on their own they'll bend the beer more towards acidity.

 

[MrFancyPlants]

I have only attempted one sour(no hops), but I pitched lacto planterum from good belly coconut water. I gave the lacto a 12 h headstart when the brew was cooling in an ice batch but the temperature was still around 90f. Then the ice bath stayed cool during unseasonably cool weather, so the S-05 took a while to take off. The batch turned out quite tart and fruity even though it was only malts in the mash. I did throw in a hand full of ale-hoof into the boil for kicks.

 

[StopTakingMyUsername]

If 3.0-3.3 pH doesn't seem sour to you, either the meter is off, or your perception of sour is non-existant.

You're not packaging the beer in a sea shell are you?

Chalk it up to palate, I guess.
I think Russian River, Cascade, Side Project, Casey, De Garde, etc all have a pretty pronounced 'sour', so I am able to pick it up - it just may not be as intense as it is experienced by others.

Others like Jester King (varies), Cantillon, Rare Barrel, etc I get little to no sourness from. Not saying I don't enjoy those - but the sour is not the spotlight of the beer - they're often much more complex or centered around whatever fruit/grape/etc.

I'll also add that I have a "tasting panel" of friends, and consensus is usually pretty unanimous on these berliners.

Next point, its tough to have enough lactic acid to make a beer bracingly sour. I think the carbonic acid plays a major role in making a lacto only beer become more sour. I think this may explain partially why your transfer sample didn't seem that sour (carbonate it heavily and the lactic acid will pop a great deal more I believe).

Yeah. Most of them we've dumped before carbonating, so I guess we'll see if this one "sours" up once carbed!

 

[worlddivides]

Others like Jester King (varies), Cantillon, Rare Barrel, etc I get little to no sourness from. Not saying I don't enjoy those - but the sour is not the spotlight of the beer - they're often much more complex or centered around whatever fruit/grape/etc.

YIKES! "Little to no sourness" from Cantillon and Rare Barrel? I think there might be something wrong with your taste buds (seriously, I'm not joking). I've had a ton of beers by both of those breweries, and all of them were not just sour, but bracingly sour.

 

[StopTakingMyUsername]

YIKES! "Little to no sourness" from Cantillon and Rare Barrel? I think there might be something wrong with your taste buds (seriously, I'm not joking). I've had a ton of beers by both of those breweries, and all of them were not just sour, but bracingly sour.

Well, again, personal subjectivity aside, I always have several people taste the beer to be sure.
And again, consensus was unanimous that there was no tartness to the berliner.

 

[Ztp]

Great point.
I have a brett/cantillon/casey mix that I've used in a couple saisons, and the saisons are getting progressively more and more tart and lemony.
"Kettle Souring" is what we're doing on our berliners - we mash super low so the FG is insanely dry, say 146 F for an hour.
Runoff, sparge, and collect into another vessel. Add lacto and let sit 48-72 hours (or until PH is right). Heat that vessel up and boil for ~20 min to kill lacto and add hops.
Maybe that's what I'm doing wrong?

Oh, and I've spoken with Trevor from De Garde directly - he does use wine yeast to condition at times, so be careful with those dregs
.

That's good to know. I have one consistent De Garde yeast cake that has produced the best beers, and others have been less than stellar. I wonder if it is natural condition versus wine yeast additions? I may have to dig into it and see if certain series use wine yeast or not.

 

[Ztp]

Well, again, personal subjectivity aside, I always have several people taste the beer to be sure.
And again, consensus was unanimous that there was no tartness to the berliner.

What has your final gravity been on these beers?