Sour Bier de Garde?

[Crinkle]

I've been planning on brewing a bier de garde for ever, but recently went to a belgian beer tasting event, and got the sour bug, so I figured why not sour the bier de garde?
On Thursday, I took 2 pounds of grain and put it in a 2 gallon cooler with a vegitable steamer false bottom (my old partial mash set up) added 165 degree water and put the cooler on top of my fridge.
Sunday I brought out the rest of my gear to brew the bier de garde. While doing my batch sparge, I did a small batch sparge on the 2 gallon cooler as well.
It was definately sour, the smell was almost over whelming. It did smell like a sour beer, and not the nasty horse blanket infection I had in a brew a few years back (I now understand the horse blanket analogy.)
I mixed the wort from both in the brew pot and did my 90 minute boil. I figured doing a sour beer this way would be the easiest so I don't contaminate my fermenter, kegs, etc.. pitched a germal ale yeast, and this morning it was steadily bublling away at 60 degrees.
I'm very curious to see how this one turns out.

 

[cervezarara]

I had the bier de garde bug a while back, so I'm curious, too. The horse blanket you're talking about comes from Brettanomyces (Brett) yeast, so you won't introduce any of that after having boiled the sour mash.

Keep us posted as to how this turns out!

Cheers!

 

[simcoe4life]

>>Sour Bier de Garde?<<

By all means, try to brew a full-on 10 gallon batch of this. I would do 5 gallons with Brett Brux and Jolly Pumpkin dregs and 5 gallons with Brett Brux AND Lacto (no commercial dregs) in the other. Let them go 14 months. Then send me two bottles.

Damn I might actually have to do this.

 

[Pivzavod]

Jolly Pumpkin Oro De Calabaza is all I have to say!

 

[starrfish]

subscribed.

watch the percent of sour in a Sour Bier de Garde. too much sour will knock it out of style profile (and will result in negative scores in competition). I bet it would still be good just out of style. I've been trying to find a % on sour mash to add to stay in style.

keep us posted! oro de calabaza should be a good reference... I just haven't found it local yet.

I like to brew to style when I can, and would love to take the beer judging class. reading as much as possible on styles.

 

[Crinkle]

Put this beer into a keg yesterday. I didn't taste it (I usually do when transferring, not sure why I didn't,) but it smells freaking awesome. I'll give it a week or two on CO2 before taking a little sample. I'll let you guys know how it is soon.

 

[jtakacs]

what yeast did you use?

 

[Crinkle]

Wyeast German Ale, not sure of the number off the top of my head.

 

[Crinkle]

Just a quick update. I tried the beer last night after a little over 3 weeks in the keg. It was awesome. The grain bill turned out to be exactly what I wanted, and god a nice sour taste too. In fact, it was a little stronger than the commercial beers I've had that were made with this technique. If anyone is interested, I can post a recipe later. I will definately do this beer again

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

I have had nothing but success with sour mashing. You have to believe the nasty smells will go away and turn into an enjoyable sourness.

 

[Crinkle]

yeah, the smell was pretty bad 1 week after kegging, I was pretty worried, but it was definately worth a few weeks wait