Souring a Golden Strong

[pericles]

Tomorrow I'm brewing a Belgian Golden Strong with the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles. The recipe calls for three pounds of simple sugar - in order to get a clean fermentation of the maltose, I usually reserve the sugar until after fermentation is already well underway, and then add it to the fermenter in a half-gallon of cooled boiled water. I've had good success with this technique.

I'd like to sour half of this beer with brett and pedio, but am concerned that the low F.G. - the book predicts about 1.07 - will leave few dextrines for the bugs to work on.

What I'd like to do is to fully ferment a six-gallon batch (without the sugar). Once active fermentation has ended, I'll divide the batch in two: half will stay in the primary vessel and half will go into a five-gallon stainless steel secondary fermentation vessel.

The half that stays in primary I'll rouse gently, keep at room temperature, add half the sugar, let it finish fermentation, keg, and serve as a small batch of golden strong.

The half that goes into stainless I'll crash cool to get most of the yeast out of solution. Then I'll add the other half of the sugar, and pitch pedio and brett. anomylous to sour it. There should be plenty of oxygen available, because the secondary vessel I'm using is 5 gallons and there will be 2 gallons of headspace. Hopefully the pedio and the brett will get to the sugars before the remaining yeast can wake up.

My concern is that, even after crash-cooling, there will still be so much yeast in solution that it will consume the simple sugars before the critters have a chance to get started. I'd ordinarily deal with the problem by brewing a starter and pitching an active culture, but I've heard that that's not a good idea with critter blends (because doing so will throw off the ratios). Does anybody have any experience or suggestions?

 

[SenorPepe]

You know, I'm pretty much talking out of my ass so take it with a grain of salt, but isn't there a complex sugar, maybe maltodextrin or lactose, that sacch doesn't ferment but the critters do?

 

[pericles]

isn't there a complex sugar, maybe maltodextrin or lactose, that sacch doesn't ferment but the critters do

Yes - the critters will eat the long-chain starches that the yeast leave behind. What I should have mentioned in my original post is that the intended FG for the beer is 1.06, which is so low that there won't be many long-chain dextrines left for the bugs to eat.

 

[SenorPepe]

Gotcha. Just thought I'd catch ya if you were missing the obvious. Carry on. Out of my league here.

 

[wonderbread23]

I fermented a Golden Strong, crashed the primary once it hit 1.020 and then added Brett Brux. Best beer I've made to date (and I've made a number of great award winning beers).

 

[Tinga]

Can you just add in some lactose to the bugged batch before you pitch the bugs?

 

[DannPM]

I would be wary about any possible remaining lactose in the beer doing that just because that kind of mouthfeel and taste would be mildly unpleasant in something like a golden strong.

 

[ChemEMc]

You might want to make the beer with all grain (add extra base grain instead of the sugar, well, maybe not all of the sugar) and mash high. The bugs should take it down dry by eating the extra dextrin's that the yeast cannot. This way you don't have to worry about whether the yeast is in suspension or not.

But this wouldn't really work if you wanted to have half as a normal golden strong...

And a note on cold crashing: I have made cider by cold crashing and racking off the yeast (see the cider section sugar experiments sticky) and that successfully stops the yeast from eating the simple sugars in the cider, so I would bet cold crashing then adding the bugs will work fine.

 

[Calder]

Mash high to leave a high FG. The addition of sugar will not make any difference to the FG ....... but if you replace the sugar with malt, that will make a difference.

Idea. Brew the normal half as you noted, but for the other half, add 2 lbs of LME (or 1.5 lbs DME). That should add a couple of points for the Brett to work on.

 

[mhenry41h]

I just finished a Saison that I funked with Brett. Of course, funking a beer and souring a beer are two different animals. However, I pitched my Brett with my Saccro in order to allow the Brett some simpler sugars to work on. This strategy was highly effective because at 1 month you could start tasting the Brett. At 5 weeks it was an obvious character , and at 6 weeks very pronounced and wonderful ( very similar to the Brett character of an Orval) (Brett B). My experience with Brett is that side by side pitching is very effective.

Oh, I second Calders sentiments of mashing higher...I'd say 154 would be respectable)