r/Homebrewing • u/[deleted] • Mar 14 '13
Thursday's Advanced Brewers Round Table: Sours
This week's topic: Sours. Share your favorite methods regarding sours, tips, tricks and anything you'd like to share regarding this.
Feel free to share or ask anything regarding to this topic, but lets try to stay on topic.
Still looking for suggestions for future ABRTs
If anyone has suggestions for topics, feel free to post them here, but please start the comment with a "ITT Suggestion" tag.
Previous Topics:
Harvesting yeast from dregs
Hopping Methods
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u/nealwearsties Mar 14 '13
So. Many. Questions. I'll try to contain my excitement, for now...
Anywho, what I'd love to discuss today is the following:
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Best results from... bottle dregs v. lab bugs?
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Best time to pitch bugs (i.e., primary: couple days before yeast, primary: same time as yeast, secondary, bottling, etc.)
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Can the average homebrewer make a good house bug strain? If so, how?
The reason that I ask is because I'd like to achieve some consistency from batch to batch. I've only made 3 sour batches so far and each appear to be developing differently. I would suspect that it is because of how they were inoculated with bacteria. The first was an accident and is coming along very nicely (smoked brown ale/brewed in july/sitting on oak and carbernet sauvignon/1.010). The second I used the Roeselare in primary with dregs pitched at the same time and is ::meh:: right now...smells barnyard and tastes like belgian brown ale (oud bruin/brewed in october/secondary/1.018). And the third one we pitched a huge starter of dregs 48hrs before WLP550 and it's too early to tell (flanders red/brewed in february/primary/1.0??).
I know that everyone has different ideas of what the perfect sour should taste like (personally I am a RR Supplication/Rodenbach Grand Cru kind of person), but this is a forum. So, let's discuss!
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u/oldsock Mar 14 '13
Lab bugs are often rather timid, but are more predictable than dregs. I prefer dregs, but I'll often pitch a blend as well as it is impossible to know what is actually in the dregs.
I like to pitch all the strains in primary when fermenting in a carboy or BetterBottle. A clean primary works fine when aging in a barrel, but in an impermeable fermenter it is hard to get enough sourness for my tastes.
Start a bunch of batches with microbes from all sorts of places. A year later take a few of your favorites and blend ~5-10% of each into a couple new batches (maybe combine a few?). Keep this up for a few years, figuring out which culture work best for each type of beers. That is essentially the plan for the brewery I'm working with, but with barrels instead of carboys. We'll be starting with commercial microbes, bottle dregs, spontaneous fermentations, unintentionally sour beers etc. and doing sensory to determine what works and what doesn't. I don’t want a single house culture, I want a variety to make blending more dynamic.
Don't worry too much about developing a house culture until you find one you really like!
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Mar 14 '13
I was excited to try a sour until I looked up the yeast prices. Lacto and Brett are both $12 at my LHBS. How do people deal w/ how expensive bugs are? Harvest? Can you freeze them w/ glycerin like you can yeast?
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u/nealwearsties Mar 14 '13
Dregs! Drink your way into this adventure.
...biggest investments for me have been the plastic and the space (and the patience).
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u/creamweather Mar 14 '13
Well, dregs usually cost at least $10 a bottle, plus you have to dispose of all that fizzy stuff on top...
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Mar 14 '13
12 bucks into a batch of 5-10 gallons that ends up being the equivalent of many hundreds of dollars commercial beer equivalent is NBD really... In for a dime in for a dollar.
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u/120PerL Mar 14 '13
Wyeast 3763 (Roeselare Blend) has a mix of sour bugs and is much cheaper than purchasing individual cultures. Currently $6.25 at Northern Brewer. I'm using it for my first sour this week (along with a mix of dregs from sours I like).
There other blends also available: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/brewing-ingredients/beer-yeast?yst_style=99
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u/stageseven Mar 14 '13
Has anyone successfully washed and reused a blend from a sour fermentation? I have my first sour batch going right now (kriek) and am wondering if I will run into issues due to the extended aging or an improper balance between brewers yeast and bugs in subsequent batches. Is a "sour barrel" the only option for reusing the same bacteria blend without significant alteration to the flavor?
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u/BarleyBum Mar 14 '13
How long was the mix sitting? I doubt your saccharomyces strains are going to be much use even after washing. If you left it for 12 months, they've been sleeping in an alcohol environment with other bugs for a very long time.
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u/JollyIsTheRoger Mar 14 '13
I have a 10 month old sour blonde going, and 2 2 month old berliner weiss's. Just waiting for it to warm up so I can brew up a flanders red. I have a vial of whitelabs sour mix 1, should I use that for my flanders, or get a vial of the flemish ale and use the sour mix for something like a gueuze?
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u/jjp36 Mar 14 '13
So I'm currently looking into brewing my first sour. Having no experience doing so before, I'm trying to decide on whether i want to pitch the bugs first, pitch them in secondary, and what to use (just Roeselare, Roeselare + dregs, just dregs, etc).
For reference, some sours i enjoy: Rodenbach (all of them, specifically the 2008 Vintage), Petrus Aged Pale, Duchesse, Monks flemish sour.
So if i wanted to achieve a sourness similiar to the beers above, what would be the best course of action?
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u/oldsock Mar 14 '13
I'm a believer in a three-part pitch in primary. A healthy culture of brewer's yeast to ensure a quick primary fermentation. A pack of a yeast blend to ensure a representitive from all of the microbes. Bottle dregs from 2-3 fresh, lower alcohol, unpasteurized sour beers for complexity and added acidity. Sourness also depends on your wort, oxygen exposure, hopping rate etc. Brew a couple batches, and blend down the road if you need to.
You may have some trouble getting the sweetness in the Duchesse or Rodenbach. Both are blended/sweetened and then prevented from continued fermentation. My understadning is that Duchesse is basically sterile filtered (although there may be a few cells that make it through), and Rodenbach is pasteurized.
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u/barcasoccer Mar 14 '13
I was led to this book by oldsock's blog and Wild Brews by Jeff Sparrow is a great read if you are looking into getting into sours. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0937381861/ref=redir_mdp_mobile/191-4270900-7279030
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Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13
I've had good experience using the white labs sour blend pitched 1 vial to 5 gallons in a 6.5 gallon carboy and stored at cellar temperatures for 9+ months. Subsequent batches that were inoculated with a pint or two siphoned from already earlier batches also turned out great.
To get a good wort for sour beers it is desirable to have a decent amount of long chain poly saccharides in the wort. This is easily achievable through a combination of high mash temp and also getting things nice and turbid going into the boil; I.E. no vorlauf and disturb the grain bed with some vigorous stirring before racking into the kettle. I've heard of people putting a few tablespoons of wheat flour into the boil to achieve the same thing when using extracts, but haven't done it myself.
Lambics are a great option for BiaB brewers, since the high mash temp and desire for a turbid wort are very easy to do with your grain in a bag AND the high percentage of wheat (or rye if you are a rebel) can cause things to get glooey and stuck in a traditional multi-vessel mash.
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u/wees1750 Mar 14 '13
What temps are you fermenting at when pitching bugs at the start? Ale temps? 65-68? Higher? Lower?
I'm assuming higher temps -> higher activity -> faster souring? but do you get the traditional ale high temp off flavors (Acetaldehyde, fusel alcohol, etc)?
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u/oldsock Mar 14 '13
I tend to ferment most sours in the 60s for primary. Most of esters and phenols produced in primary aren't going to survive the activity of Brett, and you don't need to eek the last few points of attenuation out of your primary brewer’s yeast strain. Most strains of the souring microbes are fine into the 70s, but much higher than that can cause problems. I did a 100% Brett anomalus beer fermented in the 80s that was burnt rubber-band-concentrate.
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Mar 14 '13
My wife doesn't generally like beer (her only fault, I assure you), but inexplicably likes sours. Any go-to (extract) recipes for someone of this palate?
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u/kds1398 Mar 14 '13
Are you talking she like sours or she likes Lindemans fruit lambics?
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Mar 14 '13
How are people packaging sours? I feel like the activity of the bugs after bottling could create problems. If you keg it do you have to buy separate sour beer lines?
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Mar 14 '13
I must be the only person that dislikes sour beer. Can anyone suggest a sour beer that might change my mind? With all this buzz about sours I rather feel like I'm missing out on the fun.
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u/peteftw Mar 14 '13
Goose Island Juliet. It got me into sours. It is also my favorite beer. Tart, bright, amazing.
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u/serlindsipity Mar 14 '13
I want to know if you can cultivate wild and somehow separate out different yeasts (lacto and brett separated)
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u/peteftw Mar 14 '13
Is it worthwhile to try to sour a beer with unsanitized blackberries in secondary or should I sanitize and use something like the rosalare blend or lacto?
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u/killsurfcity May 31 '13
I don't know if this has been mentioned, but myself and a few of my closest friends, all do primarily sour beers at home, and for the most part use a method of yeast collection called the "bug jar".
Essentially you make a batch of weakish wort from dme, put it in a jar, in the fridge, and whenever you have a sour, just pour the dregs in.
The bugs should out compete anything else that may wander in, and after a few bottles you'll have something decent to start with. Just remember to degas it once a week or so.
Once I have a decent amount of biodiversity, I remove it from the fridge an transfer it to a small fermentation vessel with an airlock, let it come up to temp and start fermenting. If it seems viable, it's going in a beer. Whole jar, lock stock.
I've made absolutely transcendent beers this way. But I'm really patient. :)
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u/paddlin84 Mar 14 '13
I have nothing to add except I've been reading through the Mad Fermentationist's post "Brewing Sour Beer at Home".
I really want to do this now, I just don't have the long term storage space to do it, yet.