Your experience with Philly Sour

Did you get a gravity reading?

 

I had a similar experience. All of the yeast sat on the bottom of the fermenter for days, but then finally kicked off into a standard fermentation. Maybe it's the lactic production phase before the true fermentation starts? I dunno.

 

I used it 3 times. It only took about 2 days to start showing signs of fermentation each time.

I made one beer I really enjoyed and two that I wasn’t as stoked on. Each one gave off this really odd wood/tobacco note that was really strong during fermentation but then faded but was still present in the final beer. It was really hard to explain. It actually seemed to go well with the berry centric beer I made with it (freeze dried strawberries and raspberries) but not necessarily the ones I made with more tropical fruits.

Maybe fermenting it warmer might have helped? Not sure..

All 3 attenuated well and produced a nice acidity but the woody/tobacco note was too strong for me.

A local brewery has been testing it out and supposedly has had really good success with it. I guess they’re releasing a beer with it shortly that I’m interested to try. They’ve even been repitching it and getting good results??

 

I used it 1x. I just pitched it and forgot about it, so can't say much about the fermentation details. I didn't discern anything i would characterize as tobacco.

 

I’ve used it like 5 times. It’s never failed. I generally just let it go 2 weeks before kegging.

 

Does it get sour enough? I’ve seen videos of others that said they need to pitch 2 packs to get it sour enough.

 

I had 1 get a nice pucker and the other was very mild. I got lazy with temp on the mild one.

 

By pure coincidence I happened to stumble across this excellent blog post today:

http://suigenerisbrewing.com/index.php/2021/02/12/diving-deep-in-to-philly-sour/

If anything it appears overpitching will dampen the yeast's souring ability, so I would say don't pitch two packs unless the volume of beer you are brewing calls for it. However, an easy way to boost acidity is to mash cool and/or add some glucose (corn sugar) to your wort, up to 5% of your fermentables.

 

I used it with blood oranges. It was sour enough for me. The OP is using it with cranberries, so I think it will be plenty sour

 

Ya mine was plenty sour. I didn’t notice any difference when I used good belly.

 

The first few days Philly Sour is creating lactic acid, after that a more normal fermentation begins. So don't be surprised if you don't see airlock activity or a krausen until day 4.

I read that Philly Sour will produce more lactic acid if you have more alpha-amylase sugar present so you can mash a little cooler to achieve that but I've also just added a few ounces of dextrose to the boil to have some simple sugar for them to eat through. I was please with the sour production for a Berliner style beer but it's not overly tart. I also got an earthy aftertaste I wasn't siked about but it diminished over time.

 

*beta-amylase