First sour Help!

Well, it's an underpitch for sure, because your vial contained not a complete yeast culture, but a blend of sacch and lacto.

I'd give it a couple days and wait it out, and if anything let the lacto start to sour the beer, and then maybe pitch the US05.

This beer, for what it's worth.. will take a while to get where you want by the way.. Just hoping you don't expect it to be a sour berliner in 2 months.. or 4 months..

 

Let it ride! What temp are you fermenting at?

 

I'd get more Lacto in there, I've been very underwhelmed by beers brewed with 630 and the 677 Lacto it contains. Just not enough acidity for my tastes. If you are aging it that long anyway, toss some sour beer bottle dregs in there. The Brett will help to mellow the banana flavor from the hefewiezen yeast (not my thing in Berliners).

 

I would pitch the US-05 now. Half a WL vial of mixed culture would be somewhere in the 40 - 75 billion cell count, but how much is sacch and how much is lacto? Cell count needed for your batch is anywhere in between 97 - 130 billion (750,000 cells/ml/plato - 1,000,000 cells/ml/plato).

For a healthy primary, I would pitch 1-2 gram of US-05 which would give you an additional 20-40 billion cells.

@OldSock , to increase lacto acidity, could he feed the beer a mixture of boiled and cooled maltodextrin on a monthly basis over a few months to favor lacto growth and acid production?

 

Depends if the Lacto strain in question is capable of fermenting the carbohydrates in the maltodextrin. Sadly my experience has been that WLP677, even as the only microbe in the wort, just doesn't produce much lactic acid. I've heard a couple positive reviews, but weigh that against dozens of emails/posts reporting lackluster acidity.

 

I have 3203 going on a Flanders Red. It is not straight lacto and will likely give you a different result from what you are trying to make. Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I just wanted you to know. My pitch is about 4 months in the fermenter, and there's a lot more going on in there than straight sourness.

 

If you want to minimize funk I would pitch the US 05 now to get a mostly clean ferment. Then see how the lacto that did make it in there seems to be doing with it. If you pitch a clean yeast, then this will buy you time to order and obtain straight lacto for your desired flavor character. You could also dose the finished beer with lactic acid to power up that flavor a bit. I have done the "souring in the bottling bucket" technique a couple of times, and although the acid note is distinctly lacking in additional character this way, it could help if you find it lacking after you give the lacto some time with it at a warm temperature, after the clean yeast has had a week to finish.

 

By the way, none of my thoughts should preclude you from going ahead and trying 3203, but I would say the flavors are more distinct from straight sourness, much like Roselaire Blend (whatever number that is). I had a fermentation with Roselaire Blend sit for a year and it is not very sour at all. It is much more complex, though, and enjoyable.

In the end, I think you will get something good out it, even with the difficulties you have experienced getting started. Good luck!

 

Got any grocery stores around? Buy some Greek yogurt, fat free, open it next to the fermenter, sanitize a spoon, give it a scoop. Much hardier strains of Lacto in that than anything from WLP. It will be sour in a few months. I would also give it some of the US05 to get the Sacc counts up.

 

Hmmmm, I wonder how yogurt would work for sour worting.

 

The liquid if you can get it. A scoop would't be bad though, just not the whole container... the taste of the milk products might show up too much if you use an entire container. You could also do a small starter with it in a pint jar in a Crock Pot set on warm for a few days, then pour in the liquid portion of the starter only.