So I have a sour beer that's more sour than I want it so I'm thinking about blending. The main question I have is how concerning is it to blend sour beer with clean beer, then bottle since this will inevitably add some extra things for the Brett/bacteria to chew on (bottle explodes in the background). I don't wanna lose a lot of the sourness so I don't think I'll need a lot of clean beer to get the balance I'm looking for. I have maybe a gallon of headspace in my carboy so maybe ill just top up with starter wort to help bring the acidity down? Should I look at other ways to basically back sweeten the beer? In general how do you all go about blending your beers at home?? Cheers Pat!
I am no expert on blending so I do not have too much to say other than that I do not think that adding starter wort will help with reducing sourness. You will basically just be adding sugars for the souring bugs ferment, producing more sour beer. My guess would be to add something a little more bitter and fermented pretty low. Maybe something using Wyeast 3711 since that will take down most if not all fermentables.
The ideal would be to blend it with a mature wild ale that hasn't gotten too sour for your tastes yet. How old is it? The contents of my lambic barrel are a year and a half old, and while it has a nice flavor with some complexity to it, there is little perceived sourness, except a little in the aroma. The hard question is whether something has gone wrong and is it turning into vinegar on you?
Blending will just give the sour bugs more to eat. Some commercial brewers (yeah, you, Rodenbach) deal with this by pasteurizing and back sweetening; that might be the best answer, winemakers do something similar all the time. Just get some potassium sorbate and read up on sweet wines.
It's about 8 months old. I did a stepped starter of Jp la Roja dregs + other sour beer dregs added throughout. The beer does have more acetic sourness than lactic I think but it's not overly vinegary.....yet? It's the first and so far only sour I have going.
Yes I thought about back sweeting with wine conditioner but that feels like cheating to me, but that's probably my easiest option
Maybe chill it down a bit and get something going to blend with it? If you can get it down to lagering temperatures, that should buy you a bit of time.
That was the first sour beer I ever had and still a favorite of mine. Luckily one of my good friends travels to Michigan frequently for work. Never had a Jolly Pumpkin beer I didn't love. I think the problem was I built up the dregs too much. The beer was quite sour in about a month. The beer still isn't quite as funky as I'd like. It's more like a red Berlinerweisse right now.
Blending will only make it more sour if the blended beer has a good amount of sugars left. Brew a neutral beer and make every attempt to get it as dry as possible, low mash temp, long rest. Saisons are good for this since they finish fairly dry.
@psnydez86 How did your beer end up? I ask since I recently tasted my 14 month old sour stout and it's too sour. Looking into blending it with a similar beer fermented with a high attenuating saccharomyces strain, or maybe even brett B. Coincidentally, I added bottle dregs along the way and one of them happened to be JP's La Roja.
I actually never went through with blending it. I just ended up kegging it and bottling some straight. It was definitely a face ripper but for a first attempt it wasn't bad. Blending definitely woulda helped it but a newborn cut back my brewing time considerably. So I now have a little less tooth enamel than I would have otherwise but o well.
How about if you blend with a good ol' Budweiser or two or three? There'd be no sugar left there that you have to worry about. (Okay, maybe it's called cheating on your homebrew, but it seems less risky to me.)
Unfortunately this beer is long gone but I did blend most pours while I had it. It went surprisingly awesome with a Dirty Bastard.
Have you tried the Bruery's sour stout (Tart of Darkness)? I had one for my birthday last year and I would describe it similar to how you describe yours. I really liked the sour bite on it, which my sours so far have lacked.
Yea I love that beer. In fact I was really scared and unsure of a sour stout, because I hate robust porters or oatmeal stouts with that acrid roast malt tartness, but that beer is freaking awesome. My beer is no where near that beer but cutting it with darker beers helped keep the acetic acid in check.
