Tangy Saisons..

[Limestone_Cowboy]

I'm getting prepared to brew a last batch with some wlp670 yeast that I've been reusing lately. There's three in secondary now, the first having a prominent pelicle and brett flavors developing. The other two I would say are more typical saison, no pelicles or detectable brett contribution.

On this last batch I'd like to go a different direction, so I've started a partial sour mash with 10% percent of the grain bill for a Sunday brew. I'm repurposing some grains that I had already planned for an APA.. 2-row and C20.

What I'd really like to acheive is a pronounced tang, but not a complete sour beer. Where I'm plotting and planning here is at what temp to mash the rest of the grains. The other 3 were 148 to 151 and are obviously really dry at this point. I don't neccesarily need this one to be dry, but I would like a degree of sweetness to balance the partial sour. And I have C20 kicking around in there (10% of bill). I've never done any sour mashes, partial or otherwise. Anybody have any guess or input wrt to a good mash temp here? My gut is telling me higher, but I don't want to end up with a goofy saision. Hopping with Amarillo and a little bit of Cascade laying around. It'll be an APA-Sour-Saison I suppose.

 

[vroom]

I am not an expert, but I have been doing a few sour mashes, actually sour worts lately. I generally mash, sparge and then set aside my wort to sour before doing a boil. 12 hours is pretty tart, 40ish hours makes a pretty sour wort. I am however pitching a lacto strain into the wort, using grains to sour may give different results. Souring a portion of the wort or mash may actually yield the results that you are looking for as you can blend your two worts together.

Souring the mash or wort won't actually drop your FG, since the bugs are killed when you boil, so you will only need to change mash temp if you pitch extra critters with your saison yeast.

Hope this helps.

 

[Limestone_Cowboy]

It does, because I was going to add the partial sour at the end of my regular mash and I hadn't considered blending to taste, so to speak. I found a post from a couple weeks ago this morning in the all-grain section that concerns the topic. The poster had mashed in the 140's and thought that was too low for a good balance, suggesting in hindsight 156. Given the residual sugars I'll already have from the C20, I'm thinking about splitting the difference and shooting for 153-154, and blend from there. Gotta learn somehow. Thanks.