So I am new to homebrewing but want to dive into sours, yes I know this is the deep end, and wanted to know if you can sour a Kit? I have to do small batch because I live in an Apt in DC. I just brewed the Northern Brewer White House Porter. Can I sour it in a secondary fermentation? If yes, what yeast should I use. And, how would I mimic the oak flavor found in most sours? BTW I am new at this, please go easy. I am willing to learn and very aware that in the above post I may not have been clear enough on certain things. Please ask a question if you are confused by what I am trying to do.
Generally you don't find a lot of oak in sours since they use well used barrels, however, my recommendation is oak cubes since they release flavor and tannins slowly. Secondly, you can sour anything with residual sugar. The easiest way is to buy one of Wyeast or White Labs sour blends. What is your final gravity? Another option is to drink a bottle of your favorite sour that you know has active yeast and bacteria and pour the dregs into the carboy. I've done this before with a bottle of Temptation. Most people will probably suggest to get your brewing process down, especially sanitation, before you dive into sours. Patience is key and you want to minimize oxygen exposure so that it doesn't turn into malt vinegar. I've done a couple of sours a few different ways: http://fermentologist.blogspot.com/p/beer-recipes.html It's going to be hard to do it with extract if you pitch the bugs in secondary since there will not be a lot of fermentable sugars left after sacc has it's way. You could also add some malto-dextrin into secondary (I've done this before). My last suggestion would be to wait until you can brew 5 gallons. If you're going to wait for over a year for a beer to be ready, you'll be sad if you only end up with one gallon to show for it.
You can definitely sour a kit beer just like any other. You can try pitching dregs from a commercial sour beer that you like, as long as they are reasonably fresh. Be prepared to wait a lot longer for the beer to finish if you decide to try this. You can lose a lot of bottles if you package a sour before attenuation is complete.
Suggest a dark porter-like sour beer that you like, and I bet someone here can suggest something to pitch into secondary. But souring beers in a DC-area apartment? I think it's been done before (in case you do not know about this blog by the author of the American Sour Beer book).
