Blackberry Sour Stout

Jolly pumpkin dregs will have it sour in about 10 more minutes. Ok, an exaggeration, but they’re incredibly potent. Sounds like you’ll have a tasty beer on your hands! When I use JP dregs, it’s usually just a POF+ yeast and dregs, and it’s perfect in a couple of months.

1 Like

That’s good to hear. 20 months is doable but pretty painful. :smiley:

I really need more practice with partial mashing. I tend to start too hot and end too cool—probably not a problem for this particular beer, since you want lots of otherwise unfermentable sugars for the brett et al to work on, but not so good in the oatmeal stout I made, for instance.

(What’s a POF?)

Phenolic off-flavor. Belgian yeasts, hefe yeasts, etc. They produce precursors for brett to metabolize down the road. POF+ is an estery or phenolic yeast, POF- is a clean yeast like us-05.

1 Like

Well, 12 hours after pitching and there’s already a krausen and lots of bubbling in the blow-off bucket. It’s hovering around 74F, so I guess I’m in for lots of activity.

36 hours in and it’s still bubbling like crazy (at about 72F), but the krausen is completely gone. It never got to be more than about an inch or so, and now it’s just pure black. Is this weird?

It’s weird, but all mixed fermentations are weird. I’d say it’s not a cause of concern - it probably just means that some of the other microbes are starting to become active and doing their thing.

1 Like

Cool, that’s what I figured, but you know how it is—like a helicopter parent over the carboy.

I’m just hoping some super-aggressive champagne yeast or something didn’t get in there and run roughshod.

It’ll be fine even if it did - champagne yeast can only ferment simple sugars, so it’ll only be able to partially attenuate the wort. After that, the other yeasts and bacteria will have plenty of more complex sugars to ferment.

1 Like

This guy has formed a lovely pellicle after a couple months. :smiley:

Got any pictures?

This was a couple weeks ago…

Watch that headspace! Too much oxygen getting in to the fermenter really increases the risk of developing too much acetic acid and acetone over the long run.

1 Like

Unfortunately I can’t really do anything about it at the moment. I only have 6.5gal carboys/buckets, and I only made a 5gal batch. Also, I’m moving to Vietnam, so I’m definitely not buying any more equipment right now.

Be interesting hearing what the brew culture is like over there! Sneezles61

1 Like

I was over there briefly last month and tried craft brews from a couple different breweries, Pasteur Street Brewing and FURBREW. Both were excellent.

Sounds like there are a few homebrew stores in HCMC and Hanoi, but I’ll be in Danang so I’d have to get stuff shipped. I’ll also be there for just 2 years, so investing in gear doesn’t seem like it’ll be a smart move. I’ll probably just take a break and start up again when I get back. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Your doing partial mash how much equipment do you need? I couldn’t go cold turkey. I’ve been away for only two weeks and can’t wait to get home to my homebrew.

1 Like

Da nang, na, bitt… Sneezles61

Im pickin up what yer puttin down.

Thanks Boom Hower! Sneezles61