I posted a week or so ago re: a sour I was going to brew. Originally, I was going to ferment on a yeast like Bastogne and then add WLP's belgian sour mix. Some of you talked me out of it due to sacc being in the sour mix. I held off on the brew due to me not being totally comfortable on my approach. I did the bad thing of reading some other sites ( http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/attempting-supplication-clone-220141/index4.html ) and they were also talking about brewing a primary on a regular yeast and then adding the sour mix and then adding fruit. some were even hitting the wort with a primary yeast, transfering it to brett for 3 months and then adding the sour mix. I've never used the belgian sour mix. just wondering what advantage there is to either way. thoughts?
I think the big question is "How Sour/Wild do you want your sour wild?" If you ferment to 1.020 or lower, the bugs will have 1.020 (or lower) worth of sugars to eat, and they will do their thing. If you want it more sour and wild, pitch the sour mix as the only "yeast"; the bacteria and Brett will start to do there thing earlier and grow faster since there will be more sugars, amino acids, nutrients, oxygen (for Brett, the others won't use it) and such for them to use in reproducing and working, giving you more sour and wild character. Mad Fermentationist says that he always hits his bugs at the beginning along side his Sacc strain, and when using blends like the sour mix, even adds dregs upfront with it and while it ages for more complexity. So, to answer your question, I will ask you a question... "What are you wanting from the finished product?"
I am not sure if I heard this from a podcast or read this - Souring bugs won't survive/function in a beer with an abv above 6%. So if this is going to be high og add the sour bugs at the beginning. Don't get talked out of something. We are homebrewing and experimenting. You can decide for yourself if you made the right steps.
I always pitch a healthy culture of brewer’s yeast along with my bugs in primary. The White Labs Sour Mix has some Sacch in it, but I wouldn’t be comfortable relying on it to get primary going in a timely manner. There are too many variables for a simple reply other than that. There are plenty of breweries that do clean primary ferments and still get loads of sourness and funk (Russian River for instance). Alcohol tolerance is variable, but commercial Lacto/Pedio strains are good to at least 8% (many Bretts are fine well over 10% ABV, which is wine they are a common wine spoiler). So it is really a combination of microbes, wort composition, pitching rates, timing etc. In my experience the commercial bugs are wimpy, which is why I pitch them in primary.
Originally, I was going to try my hand at a lambic. Then i realized that I wasn't in the mood to do a turbid mash (or something similar), so i was going to attempt a sour. I was going to ferment it for 3-12 months and check on its progress. if it was souring nicely, i was going to transfer it to a secondary with 1 oz of oak chips, some sour cherries (pitted) and possibly some dried red currants and watch it progress. I'm looking for a relatively complex and nicely soured beer with a present element of funk. it would be amazing to have something as complex as Fantome (which won't happen, I know) but having something sour along the lines of Cantillon would be great (even with a tad more funk) . hope that answers your question.
so would you consider pitching 1 vial of, for example, Bastogne, with 1 vial of WLP sour mix? zero starter, just pitch 'em straight? i was really hesitant to do a starter with Sour Mix and was going to straight pitch it.
I wouldn't do a starter with the mixed culture, but I almost always make a starter with my brewer's yeast. There is probably more leeway with sour beers, but also more risk with the huge investment of time if fermentation doesn’t go well.
If that is what you want a dual ferment (Sacc and sour) from the beginning is the route to take. Also, if you are looking for more funk, leave it in primary for the long haul as the Brett will consume some of the by products from the autolizing Sacc yeast and give it more character. As OldSock said, the commercial cultures are wimpy, so add a couple bottle dregs of Fantome and dregs from some Cantillon as well if you want some of there characteristics. You aren't bound to what the WY or WLP peeps give you, put what you want in there with it. I've had good success with RR dregs, and JP too.
I sampled my 3 month old Honey Raspberry Weiss yesterday. It was pitched with wyeast 1010 and the dregs from a JP tasting we had a couple weeks earlier. I fed the dregs 3 days before brew day to make sure they were viable. At the 6 week mark I split the batch and put 1/2 on raspberries and added the dregs from a Beatification batch 5. While it is not as funky as I would like, it has a really nice sour aspect. I like the direction that it is going.
so if i really want it funky, i should stick to the WLP vial and maybe add some dregs to it? i also have a yeast cake of brett that i'd love to utilize. just debating the reason to drop a brewer's yeast vial/starter in with the Sour Mix
Up to you. OldSock says starter of Sacc w/ sour mix. I know of other who have just pitched sour mix, others still who have done sour mix and dregs. Big pitch from the Brett cake and the sour mix, no additional Sacc might work well too, but I'd ask OldSock bout that one before going with it.
I'm no expert on sour beers, but I brewed one a few years ago and took the simplest rout possible, I simply pitched a pack of Wyeast sour mix. No separate sacc strain, no clean primary ferment, no bottle dregs, just the sour mix, and the beer fermented out great and was plenty sour and funky. Take that FWIW.
using logic and not experience, i'd think this: by dropping the wort with a "flavourful" yeast (e.g. abbey yeast, bastogne) at the beginning, you may introduce more yeast-forward flavours, for good or for bad and decreasing funk/sour if you do the WL sour mix on its own, it will do the job if you want to, you can add dregs of your favourite sour to augment what you have going on (and I'm guessing that I'd drop that after 3 months or so just so the Sour Mix can start to do its thing) if i want to take it a different direction, i'd drop a brett cake or some other version of brett with the angle that i like (sour cherry vs horsey)
Here is what I did when I did a Quad that I soured. It is loosely based off of CdT. This is a partial mash, and was one of my earlier attempts at mashing, but it may help out a little. (P.S. this beer turned out amazing!) https://docs.google.com/file/d/13phPQg40FNHvXqT9I5SGi1atuOXVfVBYGDBJEI1Zc4aizHWdxKxCrNaiczXa/edit
Actually the esters produced during a primary ferment with a characterful yeast will later be consumed by the Brett.
Can it work? Sure, but the results are much less predictable. Wyeast blends are a better bet since they have a lot more cells than the White Labs Sour Mix at only 7 billion total. My first lambic got a pack of Wyeast Lambic Blend and nothing else and it took 4 days to start fermenting and never tasted right (might have been an old pack, I didn't check).
Pitching a mixed culture prepared in a commercial laboratory is less predictable than pitching dregs from various bottles of wild beers with an unknown mix of cultures with unknown viability?
Sorry, my point was more about not pitching a separate culture of brewer's yeast to ensure a healthy primary fermentation. Dregs are a harder question. I think pitching them certainly increases the odds of producing a good and adequately sour beer. The commercial blends sometimes fail to produce much sourness, sometimes they are fine. I'm an advocate for bio-diversity.
