I recently moved and finally got to brewing again. I made no-boil, no-chill 3 kettle sours, all with no hops to ensure maximum performance of my LAB. I didn't boil them after souring to kill the LAB, just pitched yeast and Orval dregs into the fermenter. They are between 1.002-1.000 and still show signs of activity. 2 will be bottled as soon as they hit FG, one will get some raspberries and will sit for a while before bottling. I know that hops are added for antimicrobial reasons, but these beers are already "infected". They are also not sweet at all, so the bittering isn't neccessary either. I could dry hop for a few days before bottling, but I just don't think it would do anything other than a touch of aroma. What problems will these beers have with no hops? Do any of you skip hops all together in kettle sours?
No problems with the beer if you skip any hopping. I don't hop my sours and learned early when I started brewing sours that I much prefer them without hops...I get a much better pucker and the delicate nuances of the beer shine through better than with hops. Plus, as you pointed out, you dont need them for their antimicrobial properties in a style like this. Sure you can dry hop it and call it a Sour IPA (if its kettle soured, you could have added them to the boil) but I feel this style tends to diminish the sour to focus more on hops. The choice is yours, but I say go without for your first batch and then brew it again with hops and decide for yourself as to which you like best.
Just going to echo what @DrMindbender (no relation) said. For your purposes I don't foresee any problems stemming from the lack of hops, and I've brewed several sour beers with no hops whatsoever. (Hops added during the boil aid in head retention, but if you're brewing sour beers I assume you don't care much about that.) In fact I think it's a big mistake to add hops to a beer that will be soured with lactobacillus, especially the lacto plantarum that people have gotten into lately. That said, a few questions: 1. What did you sour with? 2. What is a "no-chill" sour? 3. What makes it a "kettle sour" if you didn't boil it? I'm not trying to be pedantic, but to me that's just a raw ale that happens to be sour, not a "kettle sour." You didn't sour it in the kettle (right?).
1. L plantaurum, from some Good Belly 2. Not chilled, allowed to cool down to temp on it's own. I left it in the kettle(I did heat it to 170F for several minutes to pasteurize), covered, for most of the day, then racked to the fermenter when it got down to ~100F. 3. Kettle sour pretty much refers to the process of pre-souring the wort with LAB for hours or days before yeast is pitched. Either in the kettle, and then heated again to pasteurize before yeast is pitched, or in the fermenter and left alive. A quick sour.
So . . . that's not the whole story. Sure, hop related compounds do inhibit a lot of bacteria, but some are not inhibited, like some species of pediococcus. Hops are also added to lambic and lambic-style beer to provide phenolic precursors, namely hydroxycinnnamic acids, which brettanomyces (and other microbes as well) can turn into vinyl and ethyl phenols which give lambic some of its unique characteristics. Dry-hopped sours are a neat thing. Not only can dry hopping stop acidification, but many of the newer, very fruity varietals complement acidity very well and some brewers are dry hopping their quick sours at IPA-like rates. Personally, I never use hops in my sour beers, as I'm not trying to recreate lambic, and have never had an issue.
