Some years ago I had made a thread on here about cloning Lagunitas Aunt Sally: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/aunt-sally-clone-how-to-sour-for-dummies.553597/ The resulting beer was great and over the years I've done some tweaking away from Aunt Sally, and now its a dry-hopped kettle sour I call Noetherian Sour. Its a simple partial mash with 2-row and Light DME, hopped to about 20 IBU, kettle soured with Goodbelly StraightShots, fermented with various yeasts, and finished with various dry hop blends. This time I was thinking about adding some kind of berry, and doing a more fruited kettle sour after being inspired by a new release from my local brewery Captain Fatty's called Plumdemic. My question is, should I completely forgo my usual dry-hopping regimen for this one? How does dry-hopping mesh with fruit additions? Should I do my usual but add fruit, switch to some flame-out additions and do that instead of dry-hop, or remove all the hops? I called the brewery and they don't use any hops even bittering for Plumdemic-- not that I'm trying to clone it, but just for what its worth.
It's your beer, so you can do as much as you want, or keep it simple as you need it. That's really all you are dealing with. How hard do you want to make this on yourself? I'm sort of in the mindset as well of, If you don't need to do it. Don't. It's extra work. And if you're just shooting a dead horse with the effort. Don't. If the fruit addition is doing the lifting. Leave it be. If the hops are doing the lifting. Let them lead the way. THis also sounds like something that you could probably pull off a convincing version of either way. So. If you have the means, and the time. Try both!
Depends on the DH/ fruit combination. But usually fruit + DH + sour = yum. It’s your call though, should be good either way.
I would use hop varietals and fruits that are complimentary. Northern brewer and berries would be awful together. Citra and peaches may work well. Not saying you use northern brewer, just using 8t as a gross example. Yuck.
