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Sour question

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toddfore

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Made a sour using liquid lactic acid. Saw a post for a Berliner Weiss where probiotic capsules were used in the wort and kept at 100* for 48hrs. Question would be: since I don't have a way of keeping wort @ 100* for 48hrs, can Probiotic capsules be used after fermentation the same way as lactic acid? Thanks.

Todd
 
Normally for a quick sour beer like a berliner or a gose you want to start with souring and then move on to fermenting with brewers yeast. I understand people get good results with some of the probiotic caps at lower temperatures (even room temperature). The caps don't have acid in them they have bacteria..the bacteria will grow in sweet wort and produce acid...but likely they will not be happy in presence of alcohol.

Typical process looks like:

Chill wort to 90F and transfer to carboy. No head space, avoid oxygenation.
Pitch souring bugs and either keep warm or let drop to room temperature. Will sour faster if you can keep warm, but not critical.
Taste daily and when sufficiently sour return the beer to the kettle and bring to 180F-190F to kill the bacteria. Chill to 70F and ferment as you normally would with brewers yeast. This can be in a bucket or carboy with regular primary fermentation head space.

People like this process because it makes sure the finished product has no bacteria that might contaminate your bottling/kegging equipment.

Personally I let the bugs live and have a mixed culture of yeast and bugs that does fine at 70F.
 
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