Sierra Nevada's Otra Vez

The above recipe looks like it would make a nice beer, but it won’t be sour at all. To make something like Indeed’s Lucy, I’d start with a grist of pale malt/wheat with whatever ratio strikes your fancy. Anywhere from 50/50 to 80/20. Add up to half pound of golden naked oats, as that’ll help the beer retain some body.

Indeed provides some nice details about the beer on their website. You’ll need to sour with goodbelly before adding any hops. And this will need to be done as a kettle sour to get the IBU. Heat to 180 to pasteurize after souring, and toss in an ounce or two of Calypso and Eldorado. Whirlpool for 20 minutes or so. Toss in some crushed up lemongrass and the bitter orange peel when you start chilling. Or skip the nasty dried stuff and just add some orange zest, although it won’t have quite the same flavor contribution. As far as the passionfruit goes, I’d get some puree and add it in secondary to preserve as much flavor as possible.

The Imperial A15 yeast should be easy enough to get, but if you wanted something more common, I think 1272 or any estery British ale yeast would work nicely. Or give S-04 a try. It won’t matter much, since esters don’t form as well at low pH.

Lots of SWAGs here, but after playing around with the proportions of ingredients, I bet you can get pretty close to the original. :beers:

Porkchop, being the nice guy that I am, I choose to let the funk live. When would I toss in the Calypso and Eldorado and at what time? How much lemongrass (I would snip it from my garden)? How much passionfruit puree would you recommend? Also, how would you modify for all extract?

For extract, I’d just sub wheat DME and not worry about the GNOs. The problem with adding any hops into the beer before souring (and you need the heat to extract some of the bitterness and aroma/flavor compounds), is that the hops will stop the lacto dead in their tracks. So it has to be soured, brought up to whirlpool temperatures, and then the hops added.

However, you can also blend. Do your brew day as normal, but draw out half the batch and chill/pitch lacto. The other half, add your hops and either hopburst it or whirlpool, with the idea of ending up with about double the IBU as the final blend, assuming you’ve split it 50-50. Chill this portion, and pitch yeast.

After a few days, rack the soured half onto the hopped/fermented half, and let it go. Might take a couple tries to get the right balance between sour and hoppy, but that’s the general idea.

I really can’t say how much lemongrass, but I would start with less than you think it’ll take, sample after fermentation, and add more if you think it’s needed. For the passionfruit, I would start at 0.5# per gallon. You can always add more, but it’s hard to take it back out. Unless the fruit you’re adding contains a lot of acidity (and the beer is already sour, so not much of a concern), it’s pretty hard to over-do fruit additions. At 0.5#/gallon, chances are you’ll want more, but you might want to try it and adjust as necessary.

Thank you Porkchop, however splitting it probably is a bit too complicated for me. How necessary do you think an ounce or two of hops are to the recipe?

I’d think somewhat necessary. You can skip it and just go for a dry-hop with it. It won’t be the same, but it’ll still be great.

Rather than splitting the batch, how about just boiling half the DME in half the water, no hops, and pitching it in your fermenter with the lacto. After a couple days, boil the rest of the DME with the rest of the water, add your hops, chill, and dump into the fermenter with the soured wort, and pitch your yeast. Just bring the DME up to a boil, it doesn’t have to go for an hour.

I love that idea!!! Thank you again Porkchop.

Porkchop, how long do I need to boil the half for the lacto? Wouldn’t I have to boil the half with the hops for 30 minutes or more, as the hop addition would be at 30 or 60 minutes remaining?

If I added cucumbers to the boil, how much would I add and at what time?