Sour Red recipe anyone?

[BeaverBarber]

Has anyone here brewed a sour red and had it to come out well? How did you do it? I'm not concerned with a recipe so much as the yeast/bacteria you used, how you did it, the length of time it takes for the beer to turn out, and what effect it had on your brewing equipment. I know I could look it up, but I trust the information more in this forum than I do in a lot of other places...and that includes Zymurgy magazine...because I'd like the results of first hand experience. I think Ozwald, Spiderwrangler, brewinhard, afterlabs, Mills, or EllisTX might have some experience, but I'd appreciate any feedback based on anyone's experiences.

[brewinhard]

I brewed a handful of flanders and with each one I have brewed, I have learned quite a bit more both about the style and I how I prefer the style to come across (if that makes sense). The first few flanders reds were brewed using either WL Sour mix or Wyeast roselare blend (without a starter and minimal oxygen before pitching). These commercial strains tend to be rather weak in terms of acid production (at least w/ the first initial pitch), and took around 12-18 mos to reach a proper sourness for the style. These beers were fermented as normal in the primary, then racked to secondary carboy for extended aging where they formed small, thin pellicles on the surface. Several of these batches were dosed with bottle dregs from various commercial sour beers (Jolly pumpkin, drie fontenin, Cantillon, Fantome) just to speed up the souring process and boost the complexity of the depth of the funk.

In recent years I have had better results using Al B's East Coast Yeast Bugfarm/BugCounty which really can sour up your beer quite quickly. His blends are extremely attenuative and can really dry the beer out quite a bit (a little too much sometimes in my opinion) even with lots of specialty malts and a high mash temp. My latest attempts have been to make a typical flanders with the East Coast blend and let it get really sour and funky over the course of 1-2 yrs in a 5 gallon carboy (after primary in a larger vessel). Then as I near the point where I can't wait any longer (or have no other beers to brew in my lineup ), I will brew up another malty red style with an english or belgian yeast and then blend the two together for best results.

Blending the two can help to cut back on the acidity(both acetic and lactic) while adding back some extra malt roundedness and yeast character to the aged sour beer. Most judges seem to comment on the lack of fruity appropriate esters and thin malt bodies in my single batch beers indicating they want more sweetness to balance the sour with. I have come to appreciate those tastes more as I brew more of these types of beer.

As far as equipment is concerned, you will want to dedicate a separate set of any plastic equipment you use for just your sour beers. Things like separate airlocks, autosiphons, transfer tubing, stoppers, plastic buckets, wine theifs all should be kept apart and only used for your sour beer production. I also have dedicated sour kegs for serving as well as separate tap lines just to be safe. To this date I have yet to have a "normal" beer become infected from my sour brewing.

Hope this helps and let us know if you still have any questions I might not have addressed.
Cheers -

Brewinhard

[BeaverBarber]

Brewinhard

Man, this was INCREDIBLY helpful. It was just what I was looking for. Thanks a lot! Obviously, I could read about the style and find a jumping off point, but I had a feeling there was a lot more to it than what I was reading. Thanks for sharing your experiences and giving me a better place to start. I'll be getting some of Al B's East Coast Yeast Bugfarm/BugCounty and I'll try it as is. The Jester King beers have given me inspiration to try this style, and their beers are ridiculously dry. I wasn't sure how I was going to make my beers as dry. It looks like Al B's is the solution. Thanks again,

Mike

[brewinhard]

His yeast is tough to get ahold of as he only releases them at several times throughout the year. Your best bet is to check out East Coast Yeast on facebook for his updates as to what he is releasing and when. If you cannot get his blends, then do not worry. You can still make a great beer with the WY Roselare blend and augment it with some commercial dregs to speed things up. One extra tip if you do decide to use the Roselare - the blend gets more sour, faster with each successive pitch. So your third and fourth gen. pitches will get more sour faster than the first and second. So plan to brew a couple sour reds, maybe an oud bruin or two!

[BeaverBarber]

His yeast is tough to get ahold of as he only releases them at several times throughout the year. Your best bet is to check out East Coast Yeast on facebook for his updates as to what he is releasing and when. If you cannot get his blends, then do not worry. You can still make a great beer with the WY Roselare blend and augment it with some commercial dregs to speed things up. One extra tip if you do decide to use the Roselare - the blend gets more sour, faster with each successive pitch. So your third and fourth gen. pitches will get more sour faster than the first and second. So plan to brew a couple sour reds, maybe an oud bruin or two!

Yeah, it seems that ECY strains are hard to get a hold of. I noticed that Jester King throws "likes" on his Facebook page. I'll bet they're using his strains.

[Ozwald]

You can still make a great beer with the WY Roselare blend and augment it with some commercial dregs to speed things up. One extra tip if you do decide to use the Roselare - the blend gets more sour, faster with each successive pitch. So your third and fourth gen. pitches will get more sour faster than the first and second. So plan to brew a couple sour reds, maybe an oud bruin or two!

Interesting. I've never repitched Roselaire, but I've also never had issue with it souring 'on schedule'. I tend to see a rather thick Brett pellicle around week 7-9 & decent sourness. I still let them ride for several more months to age & develop more complexity. Flanders has become my annual 21A anniversary brew & I'm thinking of splitting the current one up so I can do some 1-2-3 year blends while still getting some unblended bottles from each batch. I'll have to mess around with some repitch samples & see how they compare. I'm not unhappy with the level of sourness I'm getting - it's pretty damn tart, some may even argue too tart for style, but I've still not found a beer that was too sour.

[BeaverBarber]

You can still make a great beer with the WY Roselare blend and augment it with some commercial dregs to speed things up. One extra tip if you do decide to use the Roselare - the blend gets more sour, faster with each successive pitch. So your third and fourth gen. pitches will get more sour faster than the first and second. So plan to brew a couple sour reds, maybe an oud bruin or two!

Interesting. I've never repitched Roselaire, but I've also never had issue with it souring 'on schedule'. I tend to see a rather thick Brett pellicle around week 7-9 & decent sourness. I still let them ride for several more months to age & develop more complexity. Flanders has become my annual 21A anniversary brew & I'm thinking of splitting the current one up so I can do some 1-2-3 year blends while still getting some unblended bottles from each batch. I'll have to mess around with some repitch samples & see how they compare. I'm not unhappy with the level of sourness I'm getting - it's pretty damn tart, some may even argue too tart for style, but I've still not found a beer that was too sour.

So how long before you're drinking them? Everything I read seems to say that it takes a year for them to really mature, but it seems from your experience that you can be drinking them in about 6 months. Does the extra time matter that much?

[Ozwald]

The beer's still sick at that point. I've only done a couple of them, but it's difficult to predict when they're ready. I think the youngest I've poured were bottled (from memory, I could be a bit off) 14-15 months. They got sick again in the bottle & I tried the first one a few months later. I had one that was well in just under a year, but that was my first one, it also got sick in the bottle which freaked me out a little, so they sat in the spare room closet for another year, year & a half before I tried one. Those didn't continue to get more sour after the first tasting, but did get more complex with age. The last bottle was starting to get a little cardboardy though. The first batch I mentioned got a little more sour with age, but more in complexity.

Now, I don't even worry about them - it's a December 5th brew & I haven't even touched the current batch yet. I kept an eye on the temps a couple times a day for the first 4 weeks, then backed off gradually to the point where I check it if there's big outdoor temperature swings going on. It's a good idea to taste them every few weeks on the first couple, to help identify different stages in future brews, but I'm comfortable just leaving it alone until I'm starting to prep for this years batch. I do sometimes sneak in there just to check out the pellicle, but I'm just a nerd like that. It's a do it & learn process. If you're patient, observant & anal retentive about cleaning, it's not too hard of a concept/process to figure out.