I want to brew a sour soon and have a few questions about the procedure. 1) Should I do the primary fermentation in a carboy or oak barrel? 2) Is primary fermentation done with regular brewer’s yeast or the souring yeast? 3) If primary is done with regular yeast when and where do I add the souring yeast, in a different carboy or the oak barrel? 4) When adding fruit, do I wait until I get the desired sourness then add the fruit or put the fruit in at the same time as the souring yeast? 5) This one is a general question. Russian River Concentration has an OG of 1.078 and is 10% ABV. To get that of high of an ABV, the final gravity needs to be around 1.003. How can Concentration be so full bodied with that low of a final gravity.
1) Depends. Do you have a barrel to hold the beer in for the duration of the fermentation? Are you thinking about a 55 gallon Wine Barrel? If so, that is a lot of sour beer to do yourself. If you are looking at doing a 5 or 10 gallon barrel you run the risk of over oaking the beer if you leave it in there for the year you need to wait for a sour. I personally use a carboy and add oak to it for the duration of the ferment. I don't really want 55 gallons of the same sour beer. 2&3) Depends. You can pitch brewers yeast with dregs, you can pitch a blend of yeasts and bacteria like Roselare or Lambic Blend, Bug Farm, etc., you can pitch these with dregs from sour beers (recommended), you can try to culture your own wild yeast (don't try this unless you have done some research first). I did this last one and so has Old Sock/Mad Fermentationist with good results. If you want more funk, brew the beer for a higher FG, pitch the yeast (or blend) and dregs at the beginning and leave it alone in the fermentor until finished (or until you add fruit). Less funk, brew the beer for a lower FG, rack to secondary, add dregs or yeast blend, allow to go for a year or so, then add fruits. 4) Add fruits after the beer has finished souring and is at a good place as far as acids, esters, funk, and a stable FG is reached (no change over the course of weeks to months not days). Good thread here. 5) Not sure. Sours tend to be thin from the lower FG, but don't taste watery. You have tannins from the oak and fruit, acids, and other compounds in there that play with the mouthfeel, as well as carbonation. It will finish very low, but if you make it right it shouldn't taste like sour funky water. I would read up as much as you can on how to do sours before jumping in too far. Mad Fermentationist has a lot of good stuff (including which sour beers to use and which one's are pasteurized). I've got some musings here and there on my blog but nothing like MF does, and I haven't put my thoughts together into one posting on it yet.
For the full-bodied feel, you would look at a few things: 1. higher mash temp 2. use of grains that impart mouthfeel (like flakes) you don't want a high mash temp unless you want to wait 1-2 years to have your beer. mash at around 149-150F. for mouthfeel (and greater complexity), use flakes like wheat, corn, etc. not sure if you can or want to have a thick, heavy stout with a sour feel. so it will be kind of watery, but not a berliner weiss type of thin beer
The above posters seem to be more experienced as far as brewing sours. I've never tried it, but have long thought about it. I would recommend you read Jeff Sparrow's Wild Brews. Gives you great insight into the sour beers, and the time and care that goes into them. Although it did end up scaring me away from attempting to brew a sour right away...
There's no such thing as a "souring yeast". Brettanomyces will not sour your beer. You'll need pediococcus and lactobacillus bacteria to sour the beer.
yeah yeah.... i pretty much lump funk and sourness together. while they aren't the same, i feel like people either use funky yeast or they don't.
Brett will produce lactic and acetic acid under the right conditions. http://byo.com/american-amber-pale-ale/item/262-brettanomyces Fermentation acidifies the wort from 5.2-5.6 pH to 4.0-4.6 pH in beer. This is done by the yeast pumping out H+ ions, which makes it acidic, but not sour.
Start reading here - http://www.themadfermentationist.com/ Some of your questions are debatable. Honestly there is still not much known about sour beer production so its really a game of experimentation. OldStock's blog is a good start though because he has tried a lot of methods so you can get a feel for how they turn out and then decide if that is a result you would like.
quick clarification here. is adding oak chips really necessary for this type of beer? as i understand it, the type of wood used in barrels is important as far as oxygen permeability goes, but most brewers don't want to add any serious oak flavor to the sour beers; in fact, they usually try to blend it out. therefore, i dont see the need to add any chips to a homebrewed batch. correct me if im wrong, thanks.
All true to an extent. Just an observation from RR sours, if the oak character and character of previous held liquid in barrels is something to avoid, why do we care if one batch is aged in Chardonnay barrels, but another is from Cabernet, or Pinot? It all depends on what you want from the beer. I personally like barrel character and use French Oak chunks that were from a barrel of Pinot Noir from Lodi, CA. I add more if I want more, less if I add less. I did a Blonde Ale that was soured and split into 2 batches, one got Mango and DH, the other got blackberries and lots of Oak because that's what I wanted. The oak, regardless of character, will add tannins which are desirable in a sour beer.
Totally agree here. The tannins will help add body to the final beer, which is good bc a lot of sours are too thin bc the bugs just eat everything. You can also put the oak cubes in primary fermentation to get the structural components of the oak without the flavor (I do this with a lot of my Belgians in general, esp saisons)
Yes, ok, true, but you know as well as I do that brett shouldn't be called a "souring yeast". If you use brett only and expect to make something like a lambic, it's not going to work too well.
Yes, that's true: 17. Sour Ale Styles 17A. Berliner Weisse 17B. Flanders Red Ale 17C. Flanders Brown Ale/Oud Bruin 17D. Straight (Unblended) Lambic 17E. Gueuze 17F. Fruit Lambic Brew me any of these with a "souring yeast" only, no bacteria. Good luck.
Very true. Brett also is said to make more of the funk if it has higher levels of lactic acid from the bugs. Some have said try making a beer with pedio and no Brett - you get a diacetyl bomb. Brett reduces the diacetyl from the pedio.
