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Soured Mild

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Barrel Char Wood Products
akueck

akueck

Certified Mead Mentor
Certified Mead Mentor
Jun 26, 2006
4,958
11
0
Ithaca, NY
More weird beer!

My thought for this one was something like the Berliner weisse style but also like an English mild. Kind of combining the two and we'll see what happens.

First mash:
3 lb US pale
1/2 lb English Brown
1/4 lb special roast
1/8 lb crystal 40
1/8 lb wheat malt, toasted at home to light chocolate

Mashed at 146 for 45 mins, sparged to 3.5 gallons of wort. Hour boil with
1 oz Hallertau (3.8%) 25 mins
Post boil 2.75 gallons recovered at 1.031. Pitch
US-05 yeast

Second mash:
2 lb US pale

Mashed at 146 for 30 mins, sparged to 1 gallon of wort. No boil, first wort hopped with about 5 pellets of Hallertau. Cooled to ~110ºF and tossed in
2 oz US pale
to let sour.

Tomorrow afternoon I plan on combining the two portions into a happy menagerie.
 
It will certainly be interesting. Hopefully it will be good too, or I'll be stuck with all ~4 gallons of it!

Combined the soured portion with the rest this afternoon. Tried to take a gravity reading but it was kind of sludgy and I got 1.060, so I'm going to guess that's a little high and my total OG is about 1.036-8. The random grain bacteria were doing quite a nice job so this one should turn out sour if nothing else.
 
I've done the soured mash several times now and am enjoying the results. I also like not relying on a tube for the bugs. Obviously I am still buying yeast but someday that will change too. ;)

One thing I do like about sour mash is that it happens quickly. Don't you need to wait a good long time for Brett to do its thing?
 
Heard a noise from the fermenting "room" this afternoon. Thought the cats had gotten into the brew stuff again (they ate my GoFerm on Monday), but upon investigation it turns out that this beer had blown its top...4 days after brewing. I was worried since this was the largest charge of live bacteria I've added to a wort that the yeast would have a rough time of it. Guess not. On the plus side, it's already infected beer so the 15 minutes it spent open while I cleaned up and de-gunked the airlock are no harm at all. ;)
 
Update: the cat fished out the Fermaid K and the yeast hulls too. Apparently an 8 ft shelf with no clearance on any side (it just fits the box I put all my stuff in) is still not safe. On the plus side, that's all the yeast-derived products I have (had) so presumably there will be no more destruction.

Oh and I bottled this beer too. Not as sour as I hoped, but it should perk up some with carbonation.
 
First bottle.

Amazingly, this beer is about 98% of what I intended it to be. It could be a little bit more sour with a tiny bit more carbonation, but otherwise it tastes like a blend of the Berliner weisse and English mild styles to me. Very light, dry, slightly sour, and a little tangy but with a roasted malty component pretty well in balance. Think this one will go into the permanent rotation.
 
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