Morning, I brewed a sour ale back in August 2013, been sitting on the bug county yeast cake for ~1.5 years. The beer is just okay, nothing particularly great about it this stage. Sour, not mouthpuckering. Not entirely funky. I've never added any fruit or oak to spice things up. The beer as it is now tastes more along the lines of a flanders red, but on the low end of the color spectrum. I think it would go nicely w/ some oak & red wine. For wine drinkers which type of wine would compliment a beer like the one I have described? Can you recommend a decent inexpensive bottle? Would mixing an entire bottle of wine be overkill? Thanks in advance for any strategies. Grain Bill 67% - 2 row 7% - wheat malt 7 - munich medium 7 - C60 7 - Flaked Oats 7 - Honey SRM- 10ish
Looking forward to what people reply. but here are my .02 -I drink a lot of wine, and as cool as it would be to put in a killer wine (My favorites are Super Tuscans) I believe the type is the major differentiator in whether the beer will come out well. -For something like a flanders red, To taste, I would mix a Cabernet Sauv. because they exhibit a lot of dark juicy fruits like blackberry and black cherry which will go well with a flanders. In addition Cab Sauvs are more often than not oaked. Go to your local wine shop and ask for something with Low tannins and high acidity perhaps, try it out, if you like it, add it.
Before committing to that, I'd recommend getting a bottle of wine that you're going to drink for dinner and doing a little blending experiment. Pull 100mLs or so of your sour and start blending a little bit of wine into it to see if it's even something you might be interested in doing. Personally, I'd recommend finding some fruit (unfortunately, wine grapes and even concord grapes are going to be near impossible to find right now) and adding that to your carboy at about 1lb per gal. Let that sit for 3-4 months, taste and bottle if it's ready. I bottled a 2 year old concord grape sour recently that's sour city. Good but very sour. I added grapes up front, then unintentionally purchased grapes and let them sit for about 6 months in the fridge. Apparently the skins of concord grapes are wonderful barriers at preventing mold. The grapes had mostly shrunk to raisins and some had begun fermenting because they had a very sherry-like character to them. Those sat in the carboy for a few months before filtering out and bottling with honey as a primer. If you're a wine fan, try fermenting your next batch on red wine yeast first (with fruit added), then pitch your Brett and bugs. The wine yeast will kill any sacc strains but not brett or bacteria. I'm working on one now. Also did an agave lime sour fermented on a blend of white wine yeast and bugs. Where are you in MA?
Thanks for the respone Rob. The reason I wanted to go directly with the wine route is to get my carboy back quicker, I didn't see myself gaining anything by letting this beer sit longer. I might go the fruit route, but I had a couple other sours that I thought might play better. I'm in Marshfield MA
I was going to suggest trying a little blending with cab sav as well, something like Consecration might work terrifically. St Lamvinus is supposedly made with sauvignon, cabernet franc, and merlot grapes. I know OldSock has recommended a pretty high ratio of fruit to beer in other places, as much as 2lbs/ gallon, not sure how that would translate to adding wine directly. Could be interesting to try small amounts of each, I would definitely test blend with small quantities.
No prob. Sucks you're south of the city. I'm way up north, in Groveland. As much as it might make a really cool hybrid, my concern is the wine may be too dry and will already have its own character. Unless you were to blend a young, fruity wine, such as a Beaujolais to add sweetness and mild acidity. The other reason for the fruit addition and a little more patience is that the bugs are probably healthy and chugging along, where the sacc should be slowing down a bit now. I say pitch some fruit and increase the temp a bit and you may see a quick spike in acidity. It may start to take on some of the sour character that it sounds like you're looking for. If you can't find wine or concord grapes, plum would probably be a good addition to that mash. Dice them up or puree them and keep the skins on. Throw the pulp and skins in the fermenter, along with any juice if you decide to juice them. It'll make a mess when you're trying to rack but you'll retain more character, color, acidity and tannin from the fruit than just juicing. Fruit also will ferment fairly quickly because the sugars are very simple and highly fermentable, unlike some of your grain sugars/carbs.
Oh, and if you ever do try the red wine yeast experiment, don't be discouraged in the first 4-6 months. Red wine yeast can put out some really off flavors and will make you want to toss your entire batch. Let the bugs catch up and do their thing. I swear, the fart smell will go away. I kid you not, it really smelled like someone farted in my carboy for a good 3-4 months before I infected the batch. About 2-3 months later, no trace of hot ass and it's developing some nice sour notes. And no, not sour ass.
I should have noted that that high amount of fruit is specific to grapes, something like cherries would probably be like drinking cool aid at that ratio.
