Sour beer experiment - potential group project?

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I_used_to_brew
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Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2010 1:06 pm

Sour beer experiment - potential group project?

Post by I_used_to_brew »

I've wanted to brew a sour beer for a while. Mark G kindly gave me some dried out old hops a while ago. Old hops are essential in Lambic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambic style brewing because they help preserve the wort and provide tannin. I never quite got around to committing a whole brewday to a sour, so tried to come up with a compromise. Yes, I'm using sour and Lambic as general terms, this is BJCP free zone, I'll call it what I like....

My idea was that for my next brew I would increase the brewlength by about 8 litres. I would then draw off 8 litres from the boiler before any hop additions. The original brewday then proceeds as normal.

The reserved wort is boiled up with the aged hops in a pan on the stove, cooled (i just left it) and transferred to a fermenter ( I used a sanitised sieve). I split the wort between two demijohns, but you could use any fermenter you like. I had grand ideas of using a 'coolship' and attracting wild local yeasts but in the end I settled on using a bit of my sourdough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sourdough culture, which should contain a mix of Lactobacillus, Sacharomyces and Candida.

I am happy to supply aged hops and some sourdough culture. You can use some wort from whatever your next brew happens to be. You'll have to grow the culture on a bit/keep it alive - but it's easy.

I did my first brew with this method last weekend and it's fermenting away. Fermentation can be quite lenghty - months is not unusual, so if any of you have a brewday planned and can generate some spare wort and want to try this, let me know. If you can only spare 4 litres of wort, then still give it a go, that's potentially 6 bottles or so.

We could have a soudough beer sampling session later this year if we have enough participants. There will be a range of worts which will add interest as would varied boil times, caramelisation etc.
PMowdes
Posts: 489
Joined: Wed Nov 28, 2012 4:29 pm
Location: Bristol

Re: Sour beer experiment - potential group project?

Post by PMowdes »

Why not make a solera? Keep topping it off from time to time, might be an interesting way to make a low maintenance sour.
60 percent of the time it works every time.
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