Souring a brown porter

[20grit]

So, I have a well liked brown porter. I've just brewed ten gallons of it and figured I'd pull a gallon and sour it.
The beer is a mix of MO, brown malt, dark chocolate, and Crystal. It has a nice chocolate flavor with a roasty chocolate note to it. Minimal hop character as it is straight fuggles. It is a few days old, and was started with Wyeast 1968.

All that said, I am having issues picking a yeast to try for my souring. I'm leaning the Flanders Red or Oud Bruin direction. Any opinions for such a beer?

 

[gbx]

I've used wyeast roeselare on a few porters and stouts. It worked well on the not so roasty ones. The baltic porter was great, the very low roasted brown porter (that was approaching a south brown) was great, the ones with a lot of black malt or roasted barley turned out really bad (smelling like the blue smoke from blown electronics). I had similar results with white labs brett C and wyeast brett B. The best results Ive had in a dark beer was from Orval dregs (edit: but nothing I've ever soured as a side project great enough for me to make it a regular practice)

 

[20grit]

I'm definitely leaning the roselare direction. Then I'm trying to decide if the year wait is really worth it for 1 gallon of beer. Which then starts to give me ideas about doing a solare method thing. Oh so many thoughts...

 

[spittybug]

If the purpose is simply to test out and see if you like the taste profile, just cheat with a couple of drops of lactic acid per pint. I brewed up a Guinness clone that is pretty close and the secret is the 2 drops of lactic/pint to give it just that ever so slight twang.

If you decide you like it, then I would certainly go with naturally made lactic as the bottled stuff does taste a bit different.......

 

[burninator]

For a gallon, I'd just add dregs from a bottle of your favorite bottle conditioned sour beer. One or two bottles should be plenty for that volume, and then if you like it, you'll have a nice yeast cake to use for a full batch in a few months.

 

[crane]

For a gallon, I'd just add dregs from a bottle of your favorite bottle conditioned sour beer. One or two bottles should be plenty for that volume, and then if you like it, you'll have a nice yeast cake to use for a full batch in a few months.

+1. I have 5 different 1 gallon jugs going now with various bottle dregs. Check out this thread from @almighty.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=189748

In addition this, check out this site. It's got a page listing all the bugs and Brett in various commercial bottles.

http://www.themadfermentationist.com

 

[crane]

Another reason to go with bottle dregs is that you can get quicker results than commercial pitches.

I have read that roselare can be rather lackluster on its first pitch and/or take a long time to develop the flavors. I haven't used it personally though. There are threads on here that discuss that particular blend.

I brewed a farmhouse ale last year and after 6 months it was rather bland and boring. I tossed in the dregs from a few bottles and within a couple of months it developed a nice sourness and mild Brett funk that made it worth bottling.

 

[505-Brewer]

Ive soured my brown porter with jolly pumpkin dregs. Became aggressively over time (sampling periodically) but awesome the whole way. Drank it all straight but being able to blend it back would be beneficial. I highly recommend brown porter as a dark beer base to sour.

 

[20grit]

Well, I pulled a gallon of my porter this weekend and have started pitching dregs. I went through madfermentationist's list and compared it to the website of a local shop. Picked up a bunch of bottles and have pitched from three, thus far. I'm hoping to keep pitching this week.

My porter did finish a bit drier than planned. Last time I made it, it finished out at 1.031, but had a very nice balance of flavors. This time it landed at 1.010 due to a lower OG. But, once things get going, and I get the whole Solera process, I'll add some more of the more nicely balanced batches.