I plan on brewing a Flemish red ale on Friday, and I have a few questions. I am relatively new at brewing sour beers (I have done a couple of berliners and a lambic), but I have a hard time getting them to be really sour. My lambic is funky, but not as sour as I would like. I pitched the Wyeast lambic blend in the primary and let it ferment for about 6 mo. then moved it to secondary, and added a few pounds of cranberries and let it sit for another 6 mo. along with 1.5 oz boiled oak chips. I plan on pitching the Wyeast roselare blend in primary for my red, and adding bottle dregs when I move it to secondary along with oak chips that I plan on soaking in red wine. (Boiled first to sanitze) I plan on letting it age for a year before bottling. I'll post my recipe below. TLDNR: How does my recipe look? What can I do to make this more sour? Should I just relax and have a homebrew? Flemish Red 5gal partial mash Single infusion mash at 154 for 45 min Grains: 1.5 lbs Pils 1.5 lbs Munich 1.5 lbs Vienna 1 lbs flaked corn .5 caraMunich .5 Special B 3.3 lbs Munich lme Hops: 1 oz German Tettnanger (2.7% AA) at 60min Yeast: Wyeast Roselare Blend
The lactic acid bacteria (chiefly Pedio in most mixed-fermentation beers) need carbohydrates to produce lactic acid. I usually mash ~158F to produce more "unfermentables." Maltodextrin is another option, especially helpful for extract beers or split batches. Dregs will help too, those microbes tend to be more aggressive than the White Labs and Wyeast blends.
If you want more sourness toss in bottle dregs from 2-4 good sour beers you like. The commercial blends tend to be rather tame on the first pitch whereas the dregs of unpasteurized sours will represent some of the hardier bugs in those beers. You can also add in some maltodextrin to give the bacteria some more to eat.
I should have added that my lambic did have a pound of maltodextrin. I will plan on mashing around 158 if that will help. On a side note, I just got your book for my birthday and I really look forward to reading it!
