Happy new year, happy new beer: 29-Hour Sour
I have done a lot in the past couple of weeks but haven't had any time to post anything. I have another brew day post coming (5 gallons of a Bavarian Hefeweizer, and here's a teaser - my first ALL-GRAIN brew!). But I wanted to post a quick update because I have gone on and on about sour beers and heretofore haven't MADE any sour beers. Except today I started one. I got an Instant Pot recently (to: me, from: me for Christmas) and wondered if I could sour a wort in the IP. And you probably could just pour your wort in there and go for it, but then you've got sour wort in your IP, and I don't know if it'd get into the lid or whatever, so when I saw this video by Basic Brewing doing a kettle sour by using the IP as a water bath for a 1-gallon glass carboy, I knew I'd found the method I wanted to use. I highly encourage you to watch the video, and any of their other videos/podcasts for that matter -- they do some pretty great work. I feel like they are Click & Clack of the beer world.
Kettle souring is the quick way to make sour beer; the traditional method takes around a year. With kettle souring, you sour the wort by first adding only lactobacillus to it -- no yeast or hops. Yeast and lactobacillus will compete for sugars. Meanwhile hops, with their antibacterial properties, will kill lactobacillus. Hence, you make your wort and only put lactobacillus in it - at least for now. You let it sit for 24-48 hours and the bacteria sours your wort. Once the wort has soured to your liking (you can either measure the pH or simply taste it to see if it's where you want it), you boil it again to kill off the bacteria. From this point, it's just normal brewing. Do the hop thing, chill, pitch yeast, etc. The only difference is the 24-48 hour incubation period for the lactobacillus.
The method linked used by Basic Brewing makes a 1-gallon batch, which is perfect as it will let me experiment and try different things without stressing too much about waste. I was originally planning on 2-gallon batches but was having a hard time sorting out how to hold temperature for 24-48 hours, especially with as chilly as it's been. It was 36F outside when I woke up this morning. I know that's child's play for your northerners but for someone born & raised in a hot climate, that's plenty cold. Especially if you're trying to keep something around 95F for an extended period of time. The other thing, as Basic Brewing points out in their video, is this 1-gallon batch could then be used to inoculate a 5-gallon batch. Holding a 5-gallon batch to temperature will take some finagling, but would definitely be easier in the summer than the winter, so for now I'll stick with my 1-gallon batches.
There is another benefit to kettle souring over traditional souring: this method protects your equipment from bacteria. I've read that lacto is a particularly stubborn bug, and if it gets in your tubing, or your plastic fermenter, it can take up residence in the tiny, microscopic flaws or scratches in the material and be impossible to eradicate. This means if these items get infected with lacto, ALL your beer brewed using that gear will be sour. I mean, I LOVE sour beer but I want the freedom to make other styles, too! With kettle souring, the bacteria is only in your stainless steel pot, and it's boiled all to hell before it goes anywhere near your fermenting gear, killing the bacteria and protecting your future non-sour batches. People who do sours the traditional way typically have an entire second set of fermenting gear for their sour beers. With kettle souring, this is not necessary.
Just a note: there are lots of different strains of lactobacillus, and each one prefers a slightly different temperature range. I used Yakult and found the ideal temperature range accordingly. If you use Goodbelly or some other strain of lactobacillus, you'll want to ensure you find the right pitching and incubation temperature to ensure successful inoculation of your wort. Google is your friend!
Now, on to the method:
Ingredients
- 1 lb Dry Malt Extract (DME) - (I used Briess Light Pilsner DME -- they used a pale DME but I'm not about that pale ale life).
- 2.7 fl oz (80 ml) probiotic drink (such as Goodbelly or Yakult). I found this at Sprouts, any whole foods store will have it or possibly your regular grocery store. Asian stores, too!
- 1 oz Hops (I used Amarillo)
- Safale US-05 yeast
Directions
1) Boil 1 gallon water and 1 gallon Dry Malt Extract for 5 minutes to sanitize.
2) Using an ice bath, chill the wort down to 105F.
3) Add lactobacillus and stir to blend (they used a Goodbelly probiotic shot, I used Yakult because I love that stuff and I just wanna use it in my beer).
4) Rack to 1-gallon sanitized glass carboy - pH should be around 5.1 per Basic Brewing, but may differ depending on your lacto strain. I found mine to be around 4.7 pH.
5) Fill your Instant pot to about Halfway full (you can add more water later, but leave room for displacement). A note on this, I have an 8 qt Instant Pot. If yours is smaller, check to see if your IP will hold a glass carboy with room for a water bath.
6) Let sit around 24 hours and measure pH. For the Goodbelly probiotic, it should be around 3.5. If you can't measure ph, you can simply taste the wort and see if it's sour to your liking. If not, let it sit longer. If it's too sour well, I suppose you could start over and let it sit less time -- but sour beer may not be for you, son.
7) If the wort is sour to your liking or at your ideal pH when measured, boil it for 5 minutes to kill the lacto.
8) Chill the wort down to 180F and add 1 oz of hops. You can use whatever hops you like; the guys at Basic Brewing used Azacca but I decided to go with Amarillo, I think its flavor profile (orange, citrusy, etc) will lend itself well to a sour beer. Azacca would probably be fine, honestly, but you know me -- can't follow directions.
9) Hold at 180F for 15 minutes. To be honest, I don't know why they are not boiling the hops per most recipes and tradition. They do experiments though, so perhaps they have found that 15 minutes at 180F is sufficient to extract hop flavor. I trust them, so I'll follow their directions.
10) Chill in an ice bath to 84F (the temp range for Safale US-05 is 77-84F).
11) Pitch Safale US-05.
12) Ferment for 10 days at
13) Bottle with priming sugar.
I generally give beer about 3 weeks for bottle carbonation. I tend to bottle a plastic one alongside my glass so I can ensure proper carbonation is occurring (the bottle will expand and get very hard to squeeze). Two weeks may be sufficient. YMMV.
I didn't get shots of everything I did but how many shots do you need of wort boiling, really? A word of caution, DME loves to foam right out the fucking pan so watch it constantly. Don't walk away from this, it WILL boil over and make a horrific, sticky mess all over your stove. I watched it and stirred it constantly to keep the foam down and had to remove it from heat several times. Right now, the wort is still in the IP, about an hour in. Here's some shots I did get:
That's my instant pot working. I was checking the temp repeatedly every 30 mins or so at first, just to ensure it didn't exceed ideal temps, then I got clever and affixed my thermometer with electrical tape. Now I can check it easily any time. It seems to be staying between about 99 and 102, which should be ideal for Lactobacillus Casei Shirota, which is the strain found in Yakult.
The next morning (about 20 hours later), I checked my wort. Lo and behold, a pellicle had formed. This is quite scary looking for the novice but is actually totally normal when working with lactobacillus. It's also normal, apparently, for a souring wort to never form a pellicle. So, tomatoh tomatoe.
I sampled the wort along the way to see how sour it was getting. All told, it sat for 29 hours and was quite tart. The flavor was... off-putting. The sourness was good and very present, but the underlying flavor was very earthy and sickly-sweet. I felt like my body, my evolutionary lizard brain, was telling me not to consume this. Obviously, it's fucking riddled with bacteria. My modern brain knows this is "good" bacteria - a probiotic, in fact - but my lizard brain is still like "oh boo, wutchoo doin'?" It was a visceral reaction and after the first sample I gave it wide berth - a good six hours more - before sampling again. I did use my pH meter but it's kind of a cheap-o one, so I don't really know how accurate it is. Well, in theory I know exactly how inaccurate it is. It rates purified water at 7.1 pH which is 0.6 pH higher than it should be (based off this chart and the brand I was using). Subtracting 0.6 pH from the reading, I got a final pH of 2.8. This is more acidic (therefore more sour) than the beer made by basic brewing, but I was using my taste buds as my guide. I tasted the beer at 24 hours and it simply was not tart enough for my liking. Incidentally, the beer named itself: 29-Hour Sour. Or maybe 29-Hour Kettle Sour. Not sure which I prefer, yet.
Once the desired sourness was reached, it was more or less brew as usual.
Boil the wort to kill off the lacto -- again DO NOT walk away from this, it WILL boil over. Plan to spend the entire 5 minutes at the stove.
Once again, I'm gonna say this is NOT for the faint of heart. The smell was unpleasant. That same tart, earthy, sickly-sweet smell filled the whole house. It was present for hours after. The next morning, though, it had dissipated, but still. It was rough. Adding hops helped with the scent for a while, but it was still kind of ugh. The things we do for our hobbies. Speaking of hops!
Cool the wort with a water bath to 180F (which isn't that far below boiling, save your ice for the next cool down), then add the 1 oz Amarillo hops and maintain at 180F for 15 minutes:
After this, chill in an ice bath to pitching temps, pour into a glass jug using a funnel (sanitize everything first, obviously) and pitch your yeast. I thought I'd gotten a picture of it last night before it started fermenting but I guess not. I checked on it this morning and it looks rather frightful, like just in general. This may be the way it's supposed to look, but as this is my first sour, I'm not sure.
I THINK the white spots are just yeast rafts and air bubbles. It looks a bit fuzzy in the pictures but doesn't in reality. I hope it's okay. I could have fucked something up with my sanitization or not killed off all the lacto -- though if the latter is the case, I can just try to reboil it and try to kill it again and go from there. If there's mold growth though, this 29-Hour Sour will be in trouble. Fingers crossed. Right now I'm getting about 1 bubble every 5 seconds, so some kind of fermentation is occuring. Hopefully the right kind.
