Just scored a ton of good blackberries and want to brew up a sour with them. Anyone have a good base recipe I could start with?
Did a blackberry sour blonde before, here is the outcome of the base beer, I soured it on lots of Brett, oak, tons of different microbes form numerous commercial (sour beers, not yeast suppliers) and homebrew sources, as well as bootleg sources. Also did a great Lambic by culturing the yeast from blackberries (not a blackberry sour though) and pitching it directly into my wort.
How quickly do you want to drink it? I'd wash the berries and freeze them. Brew something light with a mixed fermentation for ~ a year before racking onto the berries. Or else a sour mash Berliner and drink it in a month. My Blackberry Lambic was a Piatz extract lambic (3# wheat DME, 3# pale DME, 0.5# maltodextrin), 4 oz aged hops, pseudo-spontaneous ferment (cooled outside open to air, then into the kitchen for some enterics, then in the basement, still open, to complete ~ 24 hours. Strained into bucket with a few dregs (I chickened out). Primary ferment in the bucket for ~ 9 months then to glass for ~ 4 months. I racked onto ~ 1# blackberries/gallon for ~ 2 months. It's a shining violet color, softly lactic without acetic acid, firmly funky, indistinct fruitiness from the berries.
Yes. Mash your Black Berries with a potato masher then dump on top of vanilla ice cream! Years ago I made a Black Berry Stout. Although the beer was good I would have prefered the berries over ice cream. Good luck.
