AG#62 Blueberry Kettle Sour
I've fancied making a sour for a while - in fact one of the first craft beers I tried was a sour from Siren Craft Brewery. More recently I've been spurred on by
@MickDundee ' s fairly recent Raspberry Kettle Sour. I guess mine is pretty similar but I've put my own spin on it and gone down the blueberry route.
Today was the day for making and souring the wort. This will stay in the Klarstein for a couple of days around 35degC while the lactic culture does it's thing. Then once it's ready I'll boil it up as normal - add some hops, chill, pitch yeast and ferment as normal
15L tap water, 20ml Lactic Acid 80%, 2g CaCl, half a Campden tablet.
(That's way more lactic acid than I'd normally use (20ml vs. 5ml) but the aim here is to pre-sour the wort to around pH 4.0-4.5 so the lacto culture is more at home.)
1250g Lager Malt
1000g Wheat Malt
2.25kg Total
(A modest grain bill even by my standards!)
60min full-volume no-sparge mash @ 67degC.
(Well, I was aiming for 67degC - normally the Klarstein is fairly stable but today it insisted on heading to around 70!)
Boil 5mins - this is just to kill off any residual bugs to yield a sterile wort. I'll do a proper boil and add hops after the souring.
Chill to 40degC then transfer the Klarstein to the garage set to 33degC. The lacto culture wants to be between 30-40degC. I figure it'll wander up and down a bit - if it's too low I guess the lacto will just work a bit slower, but too high could kill it, so I'm erring slightly on the lower side. I can set the Klarstein for 24hrs, so I just need to remember to reset the time and temp once a day for the next day or two.
Before pitching the lacto culture I drew off 750ml wort to a snitised bottle and pitched a full 10g pack of MJ M44 - effectively a vitality starter to give the yeast a proper head start before they get pitched into a more hostile and acidic wort than normal.
Then I pitched my lacto culture, Lallemand WildBrew Sour Pitch. The pack says 10g is actually enough for 100L! I wasn't sure how much to use so I went with a third of the pack, 3.3g. If you're interested, it's a powder like sherbert, rather than tiny grains like dry yeast - I just sprinkled it on top of the wort and whisked it in.
Final step, I laid some cling carefully over the top of the wort to limit oxygen exposure and other undesirable bugs. Then I sealed it up and tucked it in a 33degC.
All being well, more to follow in a day or two