Yeast Bay Sour/Funky stuff in!

[Wes440]

Looks like most of their blends are in stock!

I may try the Wallonian Farmhouse, it's been out of stock for awhile.

 

[youreanimpulse]

You won't regret it. I picked it up a month or two ago did a Grisette and now a Quad. Tasty stuff.

 

[505-Brewer]

Yep. Back in stock on Wednesday. I order 6 vials. Looking forward to some Saisons and sour beers. Good reviews on the web. Fun stuff.

 

[Biobrewer]

Anyone have any feedback on our sour blends (Melange and Sour Farmhouse Ale) that they'd like to share? They are the two cultures we haven't heard a lot of feedback about since we released them last August. Figured the 6 month mark is probably a time people are checking in on their beers. Cheers!

 

[Biobrewer]

Just replenished stock. Everything is back in except Melange Blend, which we will have back in 3/25.

 

[TAK]

Anyone have any feedback on our sour blends (Melange and Sour Farmhouse Ale) that they'd like to share? They are the two cultures we haven't heard a lot of feedback about since we released them last August. Figured the 6 month mark is probably a time people are checking in on their beers. Cheers!

I pitched Melange into my first sour project in November. So, it's only been a bit over 4 months now. I probably won't have any feedback for another 8 months, but I'd be real interested to hear anyone else's feedback to date.

 

[Biobrewer]

I pitched Melange into my first sour project in November. So, it's only been a bit over 4 months now. I probably won't have any feedback for another 8 months, but I'd be real interested to hear anyone else's feedback to date.

No reason not to give it a check! I think 4 months is a good time to check it out and see where it's at. I checked my last one at ~8-9 weeks and the flavor profile definitely hadn't developed a lot of complexity yet (which will come as the Brett starts up), but the pH was already down to 3.34.

 

[TAK]

No reason not to give it a check! I think 4 months is a good time to check it out and see where it's at. I checked my last one at ~8-9 weeks and the flavor profile definitely hadn't developed a lot of complexity yet (which will come as the Brett starts up), but the pH was already down to 3.34.

As much as I'd love to get in there and see what it's tasting like, I'm a big advocate of set-it-and-forget-it. I have the carboy filled right up to the narrowest part of the neck, and I plan on leaving it undisturbed until I'm thinking about kegging, which will be no earlier than 12 months. It's a bit if an exercise in self restraint.

 

[Biobrewer]

As much as I'd love to get in there and see what it's tasting like, I'm a big advocate of set-it-and-forget-it. I have the carboy filled right up to the narrowest part of the neck, and I plan on leaving it undisturbed until I'm thinking about kegging, which will be no earlier than 12 months. It's a bit if an exercise in self restraint.

To each their own! We actually had an interesting discussion about sampling sours for home brewers when I was on the Sour Hour with Jay Goodwin. Some people are of the "set it and forget it" mentality and others are more into tracking the flavor development. My opinion is if your process makes good beer, there's probably no reason to change it! Cheers, and let us know how it turns out!

 

[TAK]

I pulled a 3 oz sample tonight. Wow, it's great.

I recall going from the bucket, after a month of primary, into glass for aging, that it tasted astringent, a bit nasty. I wasn't really worried. A lot of that, I think, was bite from yeast and bugs in suspension. It was always in the back of my mind, though.

All that is totally gone now. I couldn't be more pleased for my first sour.

I've done some other mixed culture projects since this one, which actually had that same bite after primary, but I haven't tasted them since. I've also done a couple of kettle sours, which I was really pleased with, but the sour in those where one dimensional. They didn't have the elegance of a great sour.

I haven't been able to get my hands on a wide variety of great sours, but I have been fortunate to get a stock pile of The Crooked Stave bottles. This sample had that same elegance in the way the sour presents itself as the CS beers do. I'm not saying I made anything on par with those beers, but this beer made from TYB Melange is definitely rounding out with a superb, refined character.

Now the question is, do I let it ride still, or is it time to package?

 

[bovineblitz]

To each their own! We actually had an interesting discussion about sampling sours for home brewers when I was on the Sour Hour with Jay Goodwin. Some people are of the "set it and forget it" mentality and others are more into tracking the flavor development. My opinion is if your process makes good beer, there's probably no reason to change it! Cheers, and let us know how it turns out!

I've done both, and sampling has ruined a couple sours for me. Jay never brewed at the homebrew scale, sampling out of a carboy introduces far too much oxygen as compared to pulling a nail on a barrel so I don't think his pratical experience applies to the homebrewer on the 1-15 gallon scale. Tonsmiere was even hesitant to corroborate Jay's suggestion to sample all the time.

In my opinion, don't touch it for ~8 months, then try it at most every 2 months, and even then purge with CO2 if you can.

 

[m00ps]

Ive only done 4 sours so far, but each of them I bottled around 2 months. Im not sure how, but they were plenty sour and developed by then. I only took like 3 samples total over that time. They likely kept developing in the bottle but I was happy with teh taste at 2 months. They got much more sour than any of the beer I added dregs from. I cultured up the last one I did to hopefully have a fast-acting house sour culture.

 

[Biobrewer]

Thought we'd drop line here and let you all know we're all restocked with the funky/sour stuff on our website. We also started doing wholesale in the US, and a lot of the stores that started carrying us are stocking the sour/funky yeast. We started listing the stores that carry us on the Find Us page of the website.

Bovineblitz, I agree with your sentiment, over-introduction of oxygen can ruin any beer. Commercial brewers have a benefit with barrels in that they can toss a nail in there and introduce no oxygen when sampling.

m00ps, some sours certainly can turn around more quickly than others. There is a local brewer using our Farmhouse Sour Ale in a lot of barrels, and the turn around is a matter of months. Tastes great after 3 months, and the brewer was expressing to me the other day how happy they are the turnaround is that fast. I think it's a matter of process and organisms.

 

[secondbase]

Thought we'd drop line here and let you all know we're all restocked with the funky/sour stuff on our website. We also started doing wholesale in the US, and a lot of the stores that started carrying us are stocking the sour/funky yeast. We started listing the stores that carry us on the Find Us page of the website.

This is awesome news. Congrats on the expansion!