Sour beer by adding lactic acid

Northern Brewer General
1

I’m thinking of trying to make a sour beer, but I’m not ready to try souring in the fermenter or kettle souring. I’ve read that you can add lactic acid when bottling to sour the beer. Seems pretty straight forward but I have a couple questions. I’ve bought a 5 oz bottle of Brewers best 88% lactic acid.

  1. Is it safe to add a measured amount of lactic acid to each bottle before filling bottle?
  2. Will this achieve a desirable sour taste that I’m looking for?
  3. What amount of acid will I need to add? My thought was maybe 1-2ml in each bottle.
    Anyone tried this before that can offer me some good advice?
    Thanks
2

Before you do anything, just dose some beer at serving time. You may find that it’s not giving you the character you’re looking for.

3

I’m with Wahoo on this, even if you take a glass of Bud [ neutral taste] and add small drops one at a time to the glass and see what you think, before dosing a whole batch.

4

Yes, it’s perfectly safe to add food-grade lactic acid to your beer to increase sourness. But as the other two gents suggested, pull a sample of it, dose it to the sourness you like, and if it gives you what you want scale it up and add it to the bottling bucket. I wouldn’t add it to each bottle - small measurement errors are going to create huge variations in the bottle.

The amount of lactic acid it will take will be heavily dependent on the grain bill and your water. Just to give you a reference, though, I have a fairly high amount of alkalinity in my water but with a Berliner Weisse grain bill it takes ~25ml 88% lactic acid to drop pH to around 3.5. Perceived sourness also depends on your SG, alcohol content, and carbonation level, so you will have to experiment with the amount that you like. I like 3.5-3.6 for gose and 3.2-3.3 for Berliner Weisse, but I also try to get high attenuation in these styles which will increase perceived sourness.

The benefit of using lactic acid is obviously sanitation and no risk of cross-contamination, but it’s going to give you a very simple sour flavor, and many people feel it has a chemical/medicinal character. Even a pure lacto/sacch beer will have more subtlety due to the additional fermentation by-products of lactobacillus.

This is the point at which I’m going to try to talk you into trying a kettle sour. It is NOT complicated, and if you are capable of making a yeast starter, you can do a kettle sour. Once you try it, you will probably be surprised at how easy they are. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to talk you through the process - just need to have two days to execute it and a lacto culture from a reliable source. :cheers:

5

I did a gose that added lactic acid to at bottling. It came out ok. Using straight lactic acid was cheap, easy, and did the job of dropping Ph and adding tartness but lacked complexity. pork chop I’d like to hear your kettle souring. I’ve never messed with anything like that.

6

+1. Only downfall I see is that it won’t develop more complexities with age. But I would still be interested in hearing it.

7

A friend of mine once made a Berliner weisse using lactic acid at kegging. It works, it sours the beer, but to my palate it gives a sort of “fake” or bland tartness compared to what you would get from actual bacteria. If you can sour the beer more naturally, it will turn out better IMO.

8

Thanks for all the info & opinions.
I would like more info on kettle souring.

9

Post it up!

10

In my experience, you want to start with a culture containing lacto plantarum. This one works best at room temperature, so there isn’t any need to worry about keeping your kettle above 115F and excluding oxygen. Omega labs’ OYL-605 is a great choice, but unfortunately NB doesn’t carry it. It’s available from a couple smaller homebrew retailers. If you can’t get it, Swanson Probiotics has pure lacto plantarum capsules available, they can be purchased at Amazon for really cheap. Either way, make a 1-liter starter for a couple days… if you start with the capsules, 3-5 of them in your starter will work.

The most important thing with this culture is to keep hops away before boiling - it is completely intolerant of hops. Collect your wort, either AG or extract, either boil briefly or pasteurize at 170F, and chill to around 90F. If you can, adjust your wort pH to 4.5-4.7, as this will help head retention. If you can’t, no big deal. I like to use food-grade lactic acid for this. Don’t worry about DMS at this point, it won’t be an issue if you keep the wort below 175F. If you do boil it, make sure you do a full boil after souring to clean up any DMS that may have formed.

Pitch your lacto culture once you’ve cooled to 90F and let the temperature free fall to room temp. No need to insulate the kettle or wrap it with anything to keep oxygen out - it’s a sanitized environment, and lacto is just fine with oxygen exposure. The concerns about oxygen and sour worting are related to using a culture from grain, as the spoilage bacteria on the grain need oxygen to make butyric acid. A pure culture pitched into a sanitized environment will not look or smell bad, that’s caused by other bacteria.

Give it 12-24 hours to sour, I usually go around 18 hours because I’m lazy and that’s how it works out. It’ll be tart, but because of all the residual sugars it’s hard to tell from taste how sour it will be. There should NOT be a gravity drop beyond a few points - if there is, that means you got some yeast in there. Boil it to kill the lacto and hop if you want (I don’t), and complete your brew day as normal. Aerate/oxygenate as normal, chill as normal, pitch yeast like normal. Treat it like a regular brew at this point. I like to double pitch rate because of the low-pH environment, but I’m not sure it’s necessary.

So to simplify, collect wort → boil → chill to 90F → pitch lacto → wait to next day → boil → finish brew as normal.

I haven’t bothered re-boiling lately, I just pitch lacto in the carboy and the next day add yeast. It’s less predictable that way, but it does change a little in the bottle. If you don’t want to maintain sour equipment, boil away and treat it like any other clean beer. :cheers:

11

wow, awesome info, thanks.

I notice you mentioned bottling. Do you ever mess around with chemical pasteurizing these then kegging? We hit our flanders with k sorbate/k metabisulfate and kegged, and I have loved the results (though I will still probably keep one tap in my fridge dedicated to sours/wild ales as a result of this).

Also, I may try your souring method with a 100% brett ferment, but I would like to hop such a beer with a good amount of citrusy hops, so the brett can do its thing on the glycosides. Do you not hop just to keep the flavor profile simple or for another reason?

12

I haven’t tried chemicals to halt the microbes, but it’s probably pretty effective at controlling them! I don’t have kegging equipment but go for high CO2 volumes in bottles, there’s just something I love about pouring a sour beer at 4+ volumes. But a flanders, that sounds like a really good way to backsweeten without having to deal with pasteurizing.

I keep the hops out just because it basically stops the lacto in its tracks, and I’m not a big fan of the bitter and sour combination. But a big dry-hop or whirlpool (if pasteurizing) on a lacto-soured beer? Dry hopped sours are AWESOME! You can make an absolutely incredible sour by pre-souring with lacto, pitching your sacch/brett combo, and fruiting or oaking like a normal beer. Not having to wait a year for pedio to do its thing is nice, too, although there is something magical that happens in a long aged sour with brett and pedio playing together. But a hoppy pre-soured saison with brett is great too. Centennial + brettanomyces FTW!

13

Pork thanks for posting that. I just might have to make a sour. Admittedly I’ve always been hesitant due to cross contamination.

14

You should! Considering the number of bad to mediocre (and some really good) sours coming on the market, it’s nice to be able to turn around a simple quencher for minimal costs on the homebrew level. And if you’re going for complexity, you don’t necessarily need the lacto to bring that. You can make really complex beers with pure sacch, so why not approach a pre-soured beer in the same manner?

15

[quote=“porkchop”]I haven’t tried chemicals to halt the microbes, but it’s probably pretty effective at controlling them! I don’t have kegging equipment but go for high CO2 volumes in bottles, there’s just something I love about pouring a sour beer at 4+ volumes. But a flanders, that sounds like a really good way to backsweeten without having to deal with pasteurizing.

I keep the hops out just because it basically stops the lacto in its tracks, and I’m not a big fan of the bitter and sour combination. But a big dry-hop or whirlpool (if pasteurizing) on a lacto-soured beer? Dry hopped sours are AWESOME! You can make an absolutely incredible sour by pre-souring with lacto, pitching your sacch/brett combo, and fruiting or oaking like a normal beer. Not having to wait a year for pedio to do its thing is nice, too, although there is something magical that happens in a long aged sour with brett and pedio playing together. But a hoppy pre-soured saison with brett is great too. Centennial + brettanomyces FTW![/quote]

I took a lot of flak from sour traditionalists on the plan to stabilize the beer. But the flavor from the blend of two ‘barrels’ was exactly where we wanted it. To your other point, I do think that there is some additional complexity that develops as a result of the bugs (probably more Brett scavenging oxygen and other compounds from pedio than anything), but I also think some of the flavor development comes from simple maturation of the alcohol (esterification and the like). A year or so later, this beer is still on tap and phenomenal (and the flavor is improving/developing).

One last thing on hopping, so you don’t even add a small 60 or 30 minute charge to balance out the beer? i guess because there isn’t much residual sweetness (any), you don’t really need bitter to balance it.

It seems that recent research (Yakobson and Tonsmiere) is indicating that Brett’s ability to cleave glycosides off of hop compounds is what really makes Brett amazing with dry hopped beers.

16

[quote=“Pietro”]I took a lot of flak from sour traditionalists on the plan to stabilize the beer. But the flavor from the blend of two ‘barrels’ was exactly where we wanted it. To your other point, I do think that there is some additional complexity that develops as a result of the bugs (probably more Brett scavenging oxygen and other compounds from pedio than anything), but I also think some of the flavor development comes from simple maturation of the alcohol (esterification and the like). A year or so later, this beer is still on tap and phenomenal (and the flavor is improving/developing).

One last thing on hopping, so you don’t even add a small 60 or 30 minute charge to balance out the beer? i guess because there isn’t much residual sweetness (any), you don’t really need bitter to balance it.

It seems that recent research (Yakobson and Tonsmiere) is indicating that Brett’s ability to cleave glycosides off of hop compounds is what really makes Brett amazing with dry hopped beers.[/quote]

That actually makes a lot of sense - if you needed microbes to help something mature, why is 18YO bourbon better than 5YO?

I don’t have any bittering charge to my standard Gose or BW. 50/50 pils/wheat, 1.040 OG, mash low. Pasteurize only, no boil. US-05 usually brings it to 1.005-1.007. The tiny amount of sweetness is balanced by the lactic acid, I don’t think I’m missing anything by skipping the hops.

I only have like 3-beers worth of experience with hoppy brett beers, but so far it’s a real eye opener seeing the difference between a typical fruity hop (Centennial) in a clean pale ale and a bretted pale ale. It’s a completely different experience! With brett, Centennial has been a complete pineapple bomb. My understanding is that some English ale strains also produce beta-glucosidase. …Isn’t Conan an English strain?

17

[quote=“porkchop”][quote=“Pietro”]I took a lot of flak from sour traditionalists on the plan to stabilize the beer. But the flavor from the blend of two ‘barrels’ was exactly where we wanted it. To your other point, I do think that there is some additional complexity that develops as a result of the bugs (probably more Brett scavenging oxygen and other compounds from pedio than anything), but I also think some of the flavor development comes from simple maturation of the alcohol (esterification and the like). A year or so later, this beer is still on tap and phenomenal (and the flavor is improving/developing).

One last thing on hopping, so you don’t even add a small 60 or 30 minute charge to balance out the beer? i guess because there isn’t much residual sweetness (any), you don’t really need bitter to balance it.

It seems that recent research (Yakobson and Tonsmiere) is indicating that Brett’s ability to cleave glycosides off of hop compounds is what really makes Brett amazing with dry hopped beers.[/quote]

That actually makes a lot of sense - if you needed microbes to help something mature, why is 18YO bourbon better than 5YO?

I don’t have any bittering charge to my standard Gose or BW. 50/50 pils/wheat, 1.040 OG, mash low. Pasteurize only, no boil. US-05 usually brings it to 1.005-1.007. The tiny amount of sweetness is balanced by the lactic acid, I don’t think I’m missing anything by skipping the hops.

I only have like 3-beers worth of experience with hoppy brett beers, but so far it’s a real eye opener seeing the difference between a typical fruity hop (Centennial) in a clean pale ale and a bretted pale ale. It’s a completely different experience! With brett, Centennial has been a complete pineapple bomb. My understanding is that some English ale strains also produce beta-glucosidase. …Isn’t Conan an English strain?[/quote]

word is that its derivative of/related to WLP007, but yes, it behaves a lot like an English strain. Northeast IPA’s have taught us that esters are as important as hop compounds in hoppy beers…but I’m thinking the beta glucosidase is more important than both!

18

That’s kind of what I’m thinking, too. I love west coast IPAs for their raw, dank, in-your-face hop character. But the hop character of a northeast IPA is just different, and I’m wondering if some of the trouble people have cloning beers like Heady isn’t actually the hop combination used in it, but how the hops are being used and if the yeast are biotransforming them. I wonder the same thing about Bell’s yeast, and if it’s doing something to those centennial hops that pulls out the juicy orange and pineapple flavor…

19

ab. so. lutely to all your points… As an aside, to me, Vermont IPAs and those inspired by them (Treehouse Julius/Green, Singlecut Fullstack and likely others) have redefinedthe hoppy beer experience. No longer do we need mouth-puckering astringency and bitterness to get the flavors of hops.

I have always loved Bells and now I think I know why…

20

I too believe this to be true. I had developed a clone of an APA I love. Was a really good clone but “something” was missing. One day I finally decided to propagate some yeast. The next batch was spot on. I think a lot of it comes down to not only the yeast’s ability to biotransform the hops but when they are adding those dry hops.