So, I am trying to make a funky mango beer with some tartness. This is what I have come up with thus far. Any input would be great. Size 5.5 gallons O.G. 1.055 F.G. 1.010 (maybe less) Grains: 8lbs 2 row (66.7%) 3lbs white wheat (25%) 1lbs oats (8.3%) Mash high ~155 Hops: none Yeast: Omega yeast bit o funk Omega lacto blend Dregs from de garde or russian river Mangoes (12lbs) - after 2-4 weeks transfer to a glass carboy. After a month or so add the mangoes and let them sit for an additional month.
Looks good to me, but I'd stick with just the 2 Omega blends and skip the dregs personally (but I'm not the biggest fan of pitching dregs after a couple of bad experiences)...I've used the Bit O Funk blend and got the perfect funkiness (not full horse blanket, but a balanced funkiness with heavy tropical fruit) in less than 2 months recently and won a local comp with the beer. I haven't used the lacto blend yet, but you could pitch a couple of shots of Mango Goodbelly to save money and still get a quality sour, but I'm sure the blend will produce nicely. Grain bill is good, I haven't used oats much in this style of beer, but could see it in there. The oats and yeast should keep it hazy, if that's what you're looking for. Personally, I'd add the mangoes into the primary and just keep the beer in primary the whole time to avoid oxidation. Then rack directly into your keg and add fresh wort onto the yeast and bug cake for your next sour/funky beer...but that's just how I keep my pipelines going
I'd give your beer 8 weeks on the fruit before packaging, just to make sure. Other than that, recipe, including amount of fruit, looks good.
Maybe you're already planning this, but I'd recommend pitching the lacto 2-3 days before the yeast to give it a head start. Pitching at the same time you'll have to wait 6-12 months for it to sour. My last few sour batches have had a similar grain bill to yours, though I've been using some acid malt as well. I think the oats definitely add good mouth feel. For reference, my grain bill: 75% Pilsner or 2-row 15% white wheat 5% acid malt 5% golden naked oats
6-12 months??? I've never had a beer take that long to sour when I pitched a mixed culture. I generally get a nice tart pucker within a month or 2 in all of my sours that I copitch and I never pre-sour. Been doing it that way for years. Pitching L. planatarum/Good Belly will have the pH down very quickly...which lacto are you pitching?
Yeah . . . LABs, when copitched with sacch. (and especially brett) will sour a wort very quickly because they are bacteria and grow MUCH more quickly than do yeast. If they're pitched into an unhopped environment, even more so, as there is nothing to inhibit growth and lactic acid production of certain genera.
I don't have a ton of experience, I'm regurgitating what I've read in American Sour Beers. I believe it says co-pitching lacto and yeast at the same time will take 6-12 months, which matches my limited experience. My first sour beer was with a Wyeast Berliner blend and after 4 months it was very lightly tart. Even now, 7 months later it's nowhere near tart enough. I have one I brewed a couple months ago where I pitched Wyeast lacto and Saison yeast at the same time, but I'm not planning on touching it until December or later. I've done kettle sours with Wyeast lacto and goodbelly and 2-4 days with the lacto only gets it nicely tart before pitching the yeast. We may have different desires for level of tartness.
Pre-souring/kettle souring makes a very one dimensional sour beer IMO...kinda boring with no complexity. Copitch and keep the sour over 80+ degrees and you'll get a big pucker in less than 2 months. The Berliner Weisse blend doesn't really produce a pronounced pucker and is perfect for folks that like their sours on the tame side...I have 2 fermenters with beers using that blend that I use to blend with my really puckertastic sours (made using the method i mentioned previously...think deGarde tart) when I want to tame them down for folks that don't like true sours. The Wyeast Lacto is well known for being terrible at souring as well. Seems like you've unfortunately gotten your hands on 2 of the worst LAB commercial pitches available for your 2 batches. Books are great, but I advise gaining more experience with book knowledge so you know if it's true for you or not....just because it was in a book doesn't really make it dogma.
Working on it! I've got three in the works right now. The one mentioned above that's aging long term (though maybe I'll pull a sample now for a quick taste based on comments on this thread), a kettle sour that I bottled last weekend, and another kettle sour that I'm planning to add fruit to as soon as the peaches are ripe.
Nice! Try a copitch (I cool my wort to around 120 and then copitch) with a blend of lacto strains, and add a shot of Good Belly if the blend doesn't already have plantarum in it, along with a clean yeast like 1056/05 (and a little Brett if you want more complexity and a fixer for most any possible off flavors...I'm a fan of lambicus in simple sours) in your next sour and let it ride above 80 for a month and see what you think. FWIW, I also do No Boil similar to Milk The Funk's Berliner recipe (http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Berliner_Weissbier) on my sours if you want to try that...saves tons of time and effort and produces a great sour. Milk The Funk is the best resource for sour and funky beer making IMO as well.
Thanks, appreciate the suggestions. I've been drawing a blank on what to experiment with next, so I might do something along those lines for my next batch.
Try feeding your LABs again after primary fermentation has died down. If you're making a plain beer, simple sugar is fine but maltodextrin is better, but if you're fruiting, the fruit will suffice. Do you boil post-souring or do you simply pitch the yeast?
The "Reverse Kettle Sour" method is also a good one: http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Alternative_Bacteria_Sources Agreed 1000%. The MTF wiki has more information than any book could possibly contain and it is always growing and evolving, so it's not static like a book.
I've done both. My first kettle sour, after souring I heated it up to 170 for about 20 minutes to pasteurize and also steep some hops. Then I pitched the yeast after cooling and dry hopped for 7 days before bottling. It turned out pretty well, though it's not as sour as I'd like. I wanted to let the pH drop another couple points, but it was Sunday night and I wasn't going to have time during the week to finish it. For my second kettle sour, I pitched the yeast directly after the pH dropped to 3.4. I also added the dry hops at the same time as the yeast to see how that affected things. I bottled this one almost 2 weeks ago and plan on trying one tomorrow. It tasted a good bit more sour when I was bottling than the one I pasteurized. My fruited sour is the same as #2, pitched the yeast after the pH dropped. This one got down to 3.2 before I pitched the yeast. Just added 2lbs of peaches to it yesterday in a secondary container (it's a 1.5 gallon batch). Question on pre-acidifying the wort: American Sour Beers recommends dropping the pH to 4.5 prior to pitching lacto cultures, but the MTF Berliner wiki recommends 4.2. Pros/cons one way or the other? Does it make a difference?
Not really. You're going to limit ester production no matter what you do when you drop your pH before pitching yeast. The pre-acidifying bit is just to limit microbes that you don't want. Enteric bacteria, especially clostridium sp., which produce the isovaleric and butyric acids that brewers are trying to avoid.
