I'll be brewing a Witbier here shortly and was planning on giving it a little lacto kick. I don't want a full on kettle sour, just a hint of sour really. What's the best way to to limit sourness? Here are a few ideas I had, wondering if anyone has any experience with: 1) Collect .5-1 gal of wort to sour, then boil and add back to fermentor? 2) Keep the temperature lower when kettle souring? 3) Add some hops and let them reduce the sourness? I've had good luck with Goodbelly in the past, and will probably be using that. I'm leaning towards option 1, but not sure how much to sour. This is 5 gallon batch.
I think blending is your friend, per #1. An approach I have played with is collecting wort for souring in 0.5 gallon canning jars, introduce souring agent, give it time, then pasteurize in the jars, store in fridge. Blend into fermenting beer, to taste. Allow time for further fermentation. One of the best beers I made did this using 1,5 gallons of sour added to about 5 gallons old ale fermented with a low attenuating strain in the main ferment. After blending the sour wort, I added Brett lambicus, which took care of most of the residual sugars. Took some time, maybe more than most invest in kettle sours, but I was tired of getting too much sour and wanted more control.
Yeah, I'm probably going to go this route. I'm not sure how much to sour though. Probably going to go with something in the 10-20% range. Just looking for a little lacto twang, seems like it would go well with the orange and spices in a Wit.
