Sour Beer

[sockmerchant]

I have been on a huge sour beer kick as of late. Especially flanders red and oud bruin. Lambic's can be a bit more hit and miss for me.

A few questions

Are any (commercial) brewers in NZ venturing into there territories as yet? It would be awesome to see an NZ take on the these beers. They are a giant pain in the bum to brews though, so i wouldnt be surprised if no one has.

Does anyone on here do these? I have started a couple recently, but clearly it will take some time before i know if i did a good job. Would be awesome to do some bottle swaps in the future. 

Assuming someone has brewed some flanders style sours, have you used WLP665 Flemish Ale Blend? Impressions? How does it compare to wyeast Roesalari blend?

Cheers 

[Richard Jack]

I was here over easter: http://www.cantillon.be/br/3_1

Only just managed to stop myself from swabbing the walls for cultures... 

[Tilt]

Niice!  I'm assuming you took full advantage of the situation and had everything on the menu.

Any chance you got to speak to the brewer?  Any knowledge nuggets for aspiring sour brewers?

[Richard Jack]

I did indeed have everything I could taste there, and have a few 750s of some interesting dry hopped geuze thingies to try later. Not really any tidbits that could translate to the homebrew scale unfortunately. I loved their cooling tun though, wide shallow copper tun, in the dusty attic and open to the breeze, which they used instead of chilling and pitching yeast... I also noted that they seemed to be sealing up the barrels tight (ex french wine or occasionally cognac, no airlock) after a few days of open fermentation (also in the dusty attic) then a few more days with krausen spewing out the bung in the barrel - they say the pressure promotes the exchange with air through the wood. 

[sockmerchant]

Hope I get to go there one day. They make some very good beers. Pity they are so damn hard to find in NZ

[sockmerchant]

Currently drinking the 8 Wired Grand Cru. Not bad. A bit too oaky... but not bad. I'd prefer ( a lot) more sourness too. 

[Dougal]

Søren said that the Grand Cru isn't pasteurised, so expect that beer to sour and change with ageing.

[sockmerchant]

Yeah i think it will be a lot nicer in about a year. I'll need to acquire another bottle. 

I added his dregs to one of mine. So they can do some work :)

[Matt Smith]

Great thread. I was in the US in January and was able to try some awesome sours. My favourite place was a little known brewery called Cascade in Portland. They have a little pub serving a huge range of sours both on tap and "live" from the barrel. You could buy tasters for between $1 and $3 a pop, so it made for a pretty fun afternoon working our way through the lineup.

Other notables were Russian River and Jolly Pumpkin. I really like what Jolly Pumpkin are doing, all of their beers go through open ferments, varying times in their barrels that house their local micro flora, and it seems to work so well for such a wide range of styles and strengths.

I have some Jolly Pumpkin dregs growing in a flask at the moment that I'm trying to figure out what to do with. Toying with doing a blonde inspired by Russian River Temptation which I thought was sensational. Around 7 or 8%, either fermented with the dregs from the beginning, or with Ardennes yeast first then racked to the dregs, along with some Chardonnay soaked oak chips to mimic a used Chardonnay barrel.

[sockmerchant]

Tomorrow Today (I guess, seeing as its 1am now) I will be brewing a gose.

Having never had one, its hard to say if I'll like it. However, being a cross between a witbier and berlinner weiss, it sounds pretty tasty to me. 

Gose is a top-fermented beer style of Leipzig, Germany, brewed with at least 50% of the grain bill being malted wheat. Dominant flavours in Gose include a lemon tartness, a herbal characteristic, and a strong saltiness (the result of either local water sources or added salt). Gose beers typically do not have prominent hop bitterness, flavours, or aroma. The beers typically have a moderate alcohol content of 4 to 5% ABV. Because of the use of coriander and salt, Gose does not comply with the Reinheitsgebot. It is allowed an exemption on the grounds of being a regional specialty. It acquires its characteristic sourness through inoculation with lactic acid bacteria after the boil.

It does however sound like a bad one would be freakin gross... hope it works out :)

I have opted to use a pure lactobacillus culture (wyeast) instead of using grain to infect the wort etc. Being new to the style I want to reduce the chances of something going awry.  I picked up some nice coriander from Farro. The usual supermarket stuff is gross. I will give the lacto a day or two on its own before pitching the yeast. Should give it a decent amount of sourness. 

Wish me luck! 

[sockmerchant]

A month or so ago, the idea of doing a faster flanders ale came to me. I am quite sure this must have been attempted before, so… I am not exactly certain its possible. Hopefully this will get me in the ballpark. Getting a decent sour in a one or two month time frame is worthy goal.

The gist of the idea is to sour the beer quickly using Lactobacillus, and to ferment it using Wyeast’s  Brettanomyces Lambicus. Their brett lambicus is supposed to give the cherry pie flavour that makes up a big part of what i enjoy in Flanders style beers.

About a week ago I made up just over 1 gallon’s worth of wort using dme (1.045) and chucked some grains into it. I kept this at around 30-35C for a week. At the same time I have been stepping up a starter of Wyeast Lacto. When i brewed the gose a few weeks ago i pitched a tiny part of the Lacto into a flask and have been stepping it up since then.

I have been having a hard time deciding on how i want to approach the souring. To use a commercial lacto pitch, or to do the sour wort/mash thing? I went (mostly) with the former.

I decided to use slightly less water in my sparge, and added the gallons worth of sour as all buggery (but very clean otherwise) soured wort to the rest of the wort bringing the total target volume in the fermenter up to 23L.

I kept the IBU down to just below 10 to keep the lacto going. I intend to boil some hops later on (hop tea) to bring the bitterness up some more. I heave heard all kinds of calculations that state this adding bitterness with hop tea is a foolish endeavor, but my personal experience indicates otherwise.

Anyhoo…. post boil the wort already has a mild tartness thanks to the gallon of sour wort and to a lesser degree accidulated malt. So, I pitched the Lacto starter and Brett lambicus together. I did not make a starter for the brett and i did not aerate. My thinking is that the brett will have quite a long lag phase (as brett tends to) which will:
a) give the lacto time to do its thing some more
b) provide more of the cherry brett flavours on account of being more stressed.

I consider this whole thing an experiment, so we shall see what comes of it. This is the recipe i used:

Quick Brown Fox
Flandersish Redish Brownish Ale

Recipe Specs
—————-
Batch Size (L): 23.0
Total Grain (kg): 6.300
Total Hops (g): 16.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.061 (°P): 15.0
Final Gravity (FG): 1.011 (°P): 2.8
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 6.50 %
Colour (SRM): 19.4 (EBC): 38.2
Bitterness (IBU): 9.3 (Average)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 70
Boil Time (Minutes): 60

Grain Bill
—————-
4.000 kg Golden Promise Malt (63.49%)
1.000 kg Vienna (15.87%)
0.500 kg Caramunich I (7.94%)
0.250 kg Acidulated Malt (3.97%)
0.250 kg Cane Sugar (3.97%)
0.250 kg Special-B (3.97%)
0.050 kg Black Malt (0.79%)

Hop Bill
—————-
16.0 g Styrian Golding Pellet (5% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (0.7 g/L)

Single step Infusion at 64°C for 60 Minutes.
Fermented at 20°C with Wyeast 5526 – Brettanomyces lambicus & Wyeast 5335 – Lactobacillus

If the brett does not ferment it through completely due to too much stress, I will pitch a starter of brett trois as well. I will give it a month or so before making this decision however.

When primary fermentation starts to wrap up I will add some oak cubes that have been soaking in pinot for a month or so.

[Matt Smith]

Nice! Whereabouts did you get the Brett Trois?

[sockmerchant]

I asked peter from brewshop.co.nz to get me some in along with brettanomyces claussenii