My brother and I brewed regular beers in the 90's. Kinda lost interest. Now we and our other

brother are going to start up again. My question is, how many of you are brewing sours? Are

you going the long process or quick souring in the kettle? We could use any tips on this. I plan

on our first few sours to be kettle soured so that we don't have to double up on equipment. We

will be brewing regular beers also, since one likes sours,the other likes IPAs, and I like English

style ales. We will be going extract for awhile, if they don't lose interest, I want to be all grain

within a year or so. We won't need too much more equipment to do that. My brother who likes

the sours wants to do a strawberry lemon type of sour. I came up with a recipe of

5.5 pounds of wheat DME

1# flaked wheat

4 AAUs low alpha hops

A gallon of strawberry wine extract for secondary

Some lemons for secondary

Soured in kettle with Omega labs 3strain of lactobacillus in kettle

A clean American yeast to ferment with.

If cloudy rack to a third carboy or add geletin

Any tips will be appreciated

I have done a bunch of kettle sours! My process is split between a boil/no boil depending on laziness levels or if I want hops. I usually don't use hops in my sours. I do a normal mash and transfer to a fermentor and pitch the lacto. I have used Goodbelly, but now use probiotic pills due to buying a big bottle on sale. I let the lacto work for 24-48 hours, depending on the PH I'm trying to get to, and then either rack to the boil kettle or just pitch yeast. I don't do a CO2 purge and haven't noticed any off flavors.  I haven't noticed any differences in boil vs no boil either.  It's a pretty easy way to get some sour beer without waiting a year or 3!

Thanks for the reply, it looks like this section doesn't move very fast. I'm thinking

for the hops, to just do a half hour boil with the hops going in at 15 mins to go.

I'm going to have to check into the probiotics  for cost, the Omega is $12 and then

you still need the yeast. For the first batch,going to sour by time not PH, about 36 hours.

Since it's a group effort, I have to plan brewday for when everyone has the same  day off.

Just be 100% certain that you use less than 5 IBU's.  Hops kill lactic acid bacteria, pretty much why hops became so popular! Or use the more common method of souring the unboiled and unhopped wort first, let it get to the 36hrs or to the sourness level or PH you want, then boil with as many hops as you want just like a normal beer.

I would just sour an unhopped wort to not worry.

I have even done a mix. Cool wort to 95F, pitch lactic bugs, let it sour, pour out 1 gallon and boil with hops, cool the hopped gallon and add back to fermentor and pitch yeast.

Also you can add hops as soon as the PH/sourness is to whatever level you want. Pre, mid, post ferment.


But hops kill, seriously hampen at the very least, lactic acid bacteria. Less than 5 IBU's is the general rule of thumb. I use zero hops to whatever wort I'm souring to be certain I get the most out of it.

On Wednesday we made up a one liter yeast starter and a liter lactobacillus starter.

Tonight  we boiled 5 pounds of DME in 6 gallons of water for 30 minutes no hops.

Cooled it down to 90 degrees and pitched the lacto. Covered and set in basement

till Sunday, when we'll boil again to kill the lacto and flavor hop for 15 minutes with

6aaus of Hallertau Blanc hops. Had to move operations to basement due to rain. I'm

glad to get back into brewing again. Instead of lemons we decided to use lemon zest

instead , we want a hint,  not Lemon Pledge.

Should be good!

I guess I'll keep updating since there were no sour threads in this section.

After about 40 hrs of souring, PH was 3.41. Did a 30  minute boil , hops in at

15 mins. Was hot out , couldn't get it to cool lower than 78. Transferred to

carboy with strawberry purée, lemon and lime zest, and yeast starter.  Agitated

it real good,because next morning it blew the top off of the air  lock. Had to make

a blow off tube into a bucket. This was a little over 5gals in a 6.5 carboy. Will probably

transfer to secondary this weekend. As for cooling problem, I'm going to make a

chiller plate out of a cooler (filled with ice water) with basically a second wort

chiller inline. At transfer will get a sample to see how sour it will be to taste.

@G8R Any updates? I have been making a bunch of kettle sours lately.

We sampled at transfer to secondary and decided it needed more strawberry. We added 3 pounds of

frozen strawberries and a pound of frozen rhubarb. The beer turned out drinkable. Lessons learned

from mistakes. Next time use a German wheat yeast and add fruit to  secondary only. Our next beer in

the sour range will probably a gose. Since this beer, we brewed and bottled a vanilla stout and today

I brewed an old ale, the hops aren't traditional but that's what brewing is all about -  experimenting.