Any advice on making a sour porter? I’d like to try and come up with something like what the style was like back in the early days.
I have some Wyeast 3278 lambic blend that’s been used to brew one beer so far. I’m thinking of using it with a recipe for export porter, and letting it sit in the primary fermenter for 6 or 8 weeks before bottling. I’m unsure if that’s a good amount of time to let it sit, though. Is that long enough for the brett to do its thing?
Brett works slow… real slow. Also it’ll give you a little funk but not much sourness - some of the strains give off a touch more than others, but it’s still just a yeast. I’m not familiar with that exact blend, but I’d give it a bit longer than that for the Brett to catch up to the Saccro. I’d do a decently sized starter to give the Saccro in the blend a good head start. The funk associated with Brett only are produced when the Brett gets stressed out & produces those delicious phenols. If you do a 100% Brett beer they don’t stress in the beginning & produce a more estery & sweet final product. With either method, they still take a long time to attenuate out all the way.
I love my sours & most of them the more sour the better. I’d end up dosing it with lacto on top of the yeast blend, but that’s just me. I had a sour porter from New Glarus a few years back at GABF that was absolutely mind blowing. Definitely lacto & if my fading memory serves, Pedio as well.
According to Wyeast’s website, the lambic blend has two strains each of sacc and brett, plus lacto and pedio. It spent nearly two months in the primary before I collected it. From what I’ve heard this should mean that the brett and bacteria should be a lot more dominant than they were coming out of the smack pack - is that right?
As far as giving saccro a head start, what about just pitching S-04 or perhaps Nottingham (I’ve got a couple packets of both) to start with, and then pitching the sour blend after the krausen starts to fall? I had been thinking of doing it that way in order to let a British yeast do the bulk of the fermentation. Something about letting a Belgian ale yeast do all the work and then calling the result a porter just doesn’t seem right to me.
Man, I missed that one. I’ve never actually had a sour porter, I’m just intensely curious since sour beer and porter are my two great loves, and figured if I want to find out I better take matters into my own hands.
I made i pretty good sour mild a while back. I pulled a gallon of wort out pre boil and let it ferment naturally with what ever bugs were in the grain. I eventually boiled the gallon and blended it with the rest of the mild that was fermented with so4. came out pretty good, mostly lacto twang not much funk. was probably the most interesting beer ive made in a while that was also under 4% alc/vol.
it was on tap back in the summer and went very fast. a nice blend of choc malt, dry mineral, and sour. very refreshing
Haha, that phrase left me really confused for a moment. I’ve been reading a lot of back posts on Shut Up about Barclay Perkins lately. Maybe I should ease off.
I think I might have to steal that idea and give it a try. It sounds like just the kind of thing that I would be happy to let incapacitate me for a few weekends in a row.
[quote=“bunderbunder”]According to Wyeast’s website, the lambic blend has two strains each of sacc and brett, plus lacto and pedio. It spent nearly two months in the primary before I collected it. From what I’ve heard this should mean that the brett and bacteria should be a lot more dominant than they were coming out of the smack pack - is that right?
As far as giving saccro a head start, what about just pitching S-04 or perhaps Nottingham (I’ve got a couple packets of both) to start with, and then pitching the sour blend after the krausen starts to fall? I had been thinking of doing it that way in order to let a British yeast do the bulk of the fermentation. Something about letting a Belgian ale yeast do all the work and then calling the result a porter just doesn’t seem right to me.
Man, I missed that one. I’ve never actually had a sour porter, I’m just intensely curious since sour beer and porter are my two great loves, and figured if I want to find out I better take matters into my own hands.[/quote]
I think when I was at the brewery in New Glarus in September they actually still had some. Dan Carey said he’d never brew something like it again. They apparently got a lot of complaints about it, which is a shame since it really was quite delicious.
That’s too bad about not brewing it again. It wasn’t delicious, it was mind-blowing delicious! :lol: Amazing there was still some around. IIRC it was the 07 or 08 GABF, but hard to say since I didn’t miss a single session from 2006-2010 and only missed 2 in 2011. They all kind of blend together now. Funny how that works.
Unless you examine the collected sample in a lab, you won’t know. There’s a lot of variables involved. The only thing for certain is that it won’t ferment the same way & it won’t produce the same flavor profile. Fun to work with unless you’re trying to nail something specific. Flanders Red is one of my favorite styles & that’s one I don’t mess with. I use a fresh Roselaire pitch every time since they brought it back & put it into regular rotation. Other sours, experimental ones specifically, I’ll repitch. I also have a yeast lab here at the house, so that helps.
That’s a great way to do it. I would recommend it even more using a harvested yeast blend. I would let the primary yeast finish up, personally, but you shouldn’t have problems pitching the secondary blend at high krausen. Slightly different results, but I would suspect that either has the same likelihood of being delicious.
Edit: Now that I’m sitting here thinking about it, I would definitely let the primary yeast finish up before pitching the blend. I would be looking for as high of an alcohol level as the primary yeast is going to produce before introducing specifically the brett. It’s going to be a much more stressful environment with less sugar. The brett will produce less fruity esters that way. I don’t think a banana type sweetness would work very well in that brew, especially if it got too much in the front. You’ll get more of that clove-type phenol character which should help everything swing into balance. Just my observation & what my palette likes.
The lambic blend is going to give you more of a Belgian flavor. That is, the bugs in that blend are the ones that traditionally produce flavors associated with Belgian Beers. That might not be bad, and that might be the best you can do based on what’s available. But another options you could consider is using the Wyeast seasonal Old Ale Blend, or a mix of S04 followed by lacto and brett c (and/or dregs). From what I’ve read, beers in the “early days” were probably also pretty oxidized, so you may want to let this one get exposed to some air during/after fermentation. Good luck.
New questions!
I went ahead with pitching S-04. I haven’t bothered with a hydrometer reading, but it looks like active fermentation’s just about done. So next up is pitching the lambic blend and racking. But in which order? My first instinct is to pitch within the next few days to let the bugs get to work, but let the beer stay in the primary fermenter for the full 2-3 weeks before racking.
I also suspect that I might have more beer than will fit into the secondary fermenter. Can I safely bottle the rest of it, or will that invite bombs? I had been thinking I would skip the priming sugar if I do, on the assumption that there would still be plenty of food for the brett and other bugs left in the beer.
Thanks again for all the advice. :cheers:
