Sour American Blonde

I am not an expert on sour brewing by any stretch of the imagination, but my concern with using the dregs from a sour saison is that you will not just be getting the souring bugs, you will also be getting the saison yeast, and those guys are likely to be hungry hungry hippos. That is, they might go ahead and attenuate your beer down further than your original clean yeast, and I don't know what the final character of the beer would be like if that happened.

If you are willing to wait a year (and it sounds as though you're prepared to), then I would consider using Wyeast 3763 Roeselare blend. This is the same blend of microbes used to ferment Rodenbach, although obviously your grain bill will be very different. Mash hot to give the bugs plenty to eat, and control the exposure of the beer to oxygen while it is fermenting (because there are aceto bugs in there, which make acetic acid, also known as vinegar).

Another approach, though, would be to pitch lactobacillus along with your clean yeast. White Labs 672 lactobacillus brevis may be a good choice, or Wyeast 5335 lactobacillus would also work. In either case, you would want to keep your IBUs very low (as in, mid-single digits) so as not to suppress the bugs (although allegedly lacto brevis is a bit more hop-tolerant than other strains). The advantage is that lacto should work reasonably fast, yielding a somewhat sour beer within a few months.

Yet another approach, which you can read about at length on this site with a little searching, is to do a "sour wort." Basically, do a normal mash, and then pitch lacto bugs before the boil. Let the wort sit for several days, ideally in the range of 100°F and with minimal oxygen exposure. Then boil the wort with hops as normal. (Because the lacto has already done its work, you can use a normal level of hops - and the boil will kill the lacto bugs, so your beer will be sour but clean once the boil is done.) Then you just need to pitch a clean yeast that can handle the low pH. Since you are interested in sour saisons, I will mention that Wyeast 3711 French saison is reputed to be very acid-tolerant. It is also reputed to be a beast - it will give you a very low final gravity. So that would be another way of getting a sour beer in a reasonably short time period.

 

I've done a sour American Blonde, two of my favorites (split batch). I did Pale and Honey malts, Amarillo, and WY 1469 West Yorkshire. Dregs will work well.

 

Recipe looks good. Dregs will work fine. Just pitch them in primary along with sach strain, and let it ride. Just about any type of sach strain will work, just a matter of personal preference.

 

I normally just toss in a few low AA pellets (maybe 0.1 oz) to get to 3-5ibu. I don't let the hops really play any role in my sours. I just toss in all bugs and sacch at the same time and let it sit. I normally like to add a tiny amount of oak to the beers as well, though I am not sure it adds much of anything to the end product.

 

I realize I am not Supergenious, but I would also pitch at the same time. Pitching at the same time allows the bacteria to start feeding on some of the simpler sugars in the wort and wake up/start multiplying before the pH drops and they have to fight for more complex sugars as well as the alcohol effecting them. When pitching dregs into a beer post primary they will do the job, but you are expecting them to wake up in an alcoholic environment with low pH and scavenge for left overs. This is why some people recommend pitching the dregs early, to give the bacteria a head start. The drawback to this route is that you also give any other bacteria present in the wort post boil time to grow and do damage (there are some beer spoiling [not souring, but spoiling] bacteria that can make it through a boil, or can get in during the chill or after it during transfers) before the Sacc can kill them off through pH drop and alcohol production.

I would not waste my money on pricey and yummy American hops or late hops*. Late hops will be non existent after the long aging. I would just use whatever cheap hops you have or can get and go for 10 IBUs max.

*I realize that I stated above that I used Amarillo, but I was actually brewing an American Blonde to test some equipment as a source of infections that had wiped out 7-10 beers in my brewery. After I found the culprit, and tasted the Blonde, and decided I didn't want to drink 5 gallons of that beer, I soured the entire 10 gallons post primary.

 

Listen to whatever jbakajust1 tells you... He seems to know what he is doing, especially when it comes to sours.

If you really want to use some American hops... Look into dry hopping a week before bottling/ kegging with some nice fruity hops. I have limited experience with this, but it can be done. You might want to taste when you are getting close to bottling and make a judgement call at that point.

 

To be honest pitch when ever you feel like, given enough time the beer will sour. There is no agreement, because it can be done multiple different ways. Assuming your primary yeast doesn't dry the beer out too much there will be some food left over for a secondary fermentation.

The key to dregs is to make sure that the beer you are using contains souring bugs in the bottle. Odds are it does since I don't think HF has the capacity to filter out bacteria and I don't think he pasteurizes his beers. I personally think dregs make the best sours because they are usually hardier then WL or Wyeast and you can get an idea of what they will do to your beer.

 

Ah, now I remember what I was going to say above, dry hop with the Citra after it sours. I dry hopped a Mango Sour Blonde with Calypso, Falconers Flight, and Simcoe. 2 years later that beer is still hop forward in the nose. Just be super careful of any O2 pickup as it will oxidize the hops, and can also cause Pedio to kick up diacetyl production making the wait time longer (speaking from experience).

 

As far as hops are concerned, I would go light in the beginning of the boil 5-10 IBUs and save any aroma hops for prior to bottling because they will fade with extended aging.

Edit: I see @jbakajust1 beat me to it.

For when to pitch dregs: both methods will work fine, I've used both and they each produce a sour beer. Personally I feel pre-souring the wort produces a less complex sourness and a more aggressive sourness.

But as usual the best thing you can do is wait and be patient no matter which method you use. I think quick souring is a myth in that although it is possible to make a beer sour quickly, it's not possible to make taste like a slow soured beer (just like making good BBQ). I've had a beer sit in primary for 20 months before it finally turned a corner.

 

with regards to HF dregs, bear in mind he started to use wine yeasts for conditioning about a year ago. some people have reported success using dregs from these newer bottles and others (myself included) haven't.

if you come across a bottle with a bottling date of 2013 or older you should be fine

 

Bottling with wine/champagne yeast shouldn't cause any issues with the viability of the bacteria and Brett unless these were filtered out prior to packaging. You could get a small amount of growth from the wine yeast but not fast enough to overtake the full size brewer's yeast pitch, and it won't eat anything the Sacc leaves behind. This leaves the bacteria and Brett (regardless of the timing of the pitch) to sour and funk up over the course of extended aging.

 

my attempt at using HF dregs was with multiple bottles of the may 2014 bottling of Arthur. there is some concern that the wine yeast being used now is interfering with the sacc strain.

 

You said the "wine yeast being used now is interfering with the sacc strain". Which Sacc strain is it interfering with? The house Saison yeast they use (trying to build this up from the dregs along with the bacteria and Brett), or your pitch of Sacc?

 

could be the strain I pitched (3711) or their house sacc (supposed Blaugies derivative - Arthur doesn't have Brett or bacteria); we got a bunch of really weird off flavors I've never experienced in 4+ years of saison/wild brewing. a friend and I want to say it's autolysis but we're not 100%. we started the dregs additions about 1 week into primary while there was still a krausen up. we had hoped a brett addition would help clean it up but after 6+ months it still hasn't.

I'm not the only person who has had issues trying to use dregs from 2014 bottlings of HF...
just trying to help someone who may not have known about HFs switch from ale yeast to wine yeast for conditioning.

 

Good to know. Some of the wine yeasts have an enzyme that kills all other Sacc strains, but wont kill bacteria and Brett. Odd that you got an off flavor from it though. Is it possible that it was something other than adding the dregs that brought it about?

 

hence why we added Brett (and racked it off the yeast cake to secondary just in case...) after the off flavors started to develop in case it was autolysis.

anything's possible...