First Sour Ale BIAB w/ some extra grains... help

What do you want the beer to taste like?

My suggestions would be to mash higher to provide a more dextrinous wort for the bugs and/or add some maltodexrin for the same reason, and to ditch the US-05/S-04 and just pitch the bug blend straight away. That said, it depends on how sour/funky you want the beer to be.

 

You can leave the beer on the Roselare for 2-3 weeks. I would highly suggest making a starter for the Roselare, pitching lots of healthy yeast is important. Once the beer has sat on the Roselare and began to ferment it has the Brett, Pedio and Lacto in it so it does not matter how long you leave it on the original yeast cake the bugs are in the beer. If you want to re-use the roselare I would suggest just "yeast washing". If you google it there should be some useful links/youtubes to teach you how, its easy. Lastly remember as this is your first sour, anything plastic the roselare touches replace for your clean beers. People will disagree with me on this but plastic is cheap, mistakes are not.

 

you can probably scrap the maltodextrin with that recipe + that mash temp. personally, I'd switch to munich vs. vienna, bump up the % of the grist, and reduce the wheat to 1lb. consider adding maybe .5lb of aromatic, and reduce the special B to .5lb...1lb may actually give more of a roasty impression than what you are looking for.

Getting on a schedule for making a new sour/wild beer is a good idea, for sure. But consider only using a smallish portion of the yeast + bug cake plus a new/fresh pitch of sacch for subsequent batches, especially for higher gravity sours.

BTW, don't forget your oak if you intend a flanders red flavor profile! I actually like a blend of some medium + french, plus ~25-50% portion of some american oak...ever have jolly pumpkin la roja grand reserve? that's a holy shit beer IMO. I'm fairly certain there's some bourbon barrel character there...american oak, for sure

 

I started making sour beers last year, so I can't speak to the results yet, but I can pass along some of my research.

Steve Piatz brews award winning extract lambics, in 2004 he wrote a byo article http://www.byo.com/stories/beer-styles/article/indices/11-beer-styles/979-lambic-brewing about brewing lambics where he details how he creates sours with a charge of regular yeast and follows it up with the lambic blend or roselaire blend. I imagine this is the technique alluded to above, you might want to read through it and adapt his process to your own thoughts.

BYO also has a good article on flanders reds http://www.byo.com/stories/beer-styles/article/indices/11-beer-styles/659-flanders-red-ale.

I would break with the comment above and not make a starter for your sour blends. Sour blends are a blend of special stuff in precise preportions. Different things thrive at different ph etc. Pitch the pack, Don't make a starter, It'll work its magic over time. If you are making a high ABV beer and are worried, pitch a second pack.

I can't comment on the results other than the smells, because I haven't taken a sample of them yet. I made 3 batches of 5g lambic last year, the roselaire one smells great, classic rodenbock funk, the wyeast lambic blend, still smelled sick last time I was in there, it's not done yet. I also made one with AL B's Bug farm 5...Mega funk.

themadfermentationist.com is a good resource, he's a sharp guy with several years of home brewing experience.

My blog where I record my home brewing is in my profile if you are curious.

 

I've never brewed a sour, but I'm interested. Can someone explain to me why you would use quite a decent amount of three different types of cara- malts for a sour ale?

Some additional flavor compounding would be my guess because there are other things here that would aid head retention as well as provide mouthfeel without introducing too much sweet to offset the sour.

 

Well, the OP said that he's just trying to use up some left over grains, so he's probably not blending different crystals with a specific goal in mind other than trying to get rid of them. That said, what the crystal will do in this beer is add color and flavor, what it will not do however, is add body and sweetness. In an all sacc beer the residual dextrins from the crystal will of course increase body, in a mixed culture beer though those same dextrins will be consumed.

 

Sounds good to me. Just a couple observations. Rodenbach dregs are pasteurized so adding them will do nothing to the beer. Also, were I in your shoes, I would skip the us -05 in subsequent batches. If you want more sour, let the yeast cake do its thing each time. In each subsequent batch the yeasties and beasties will be ready to do there thing. If you use US-05 it will begin to eat the sugars that you want for the other stuff. The less Sacc involved, the more sour and funky your beer will be... just a thought.

 

Check here: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/06/harvesting-sour-beer-bottle-dregs.html

Great resource for brewing wilds w/o paying a grip for commercial yeasts.