Devonhomebrew
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Basics Of Sour Ales
Just a warning for everyone this is not for newbs that have just started mainly because you need to have some understanding of how to make beer and also you need to have a seperate amount of kit because the homebrew sterilizers aren't strong enough ti kill this bacteria and if you are using plastic kit only use it for Sours never use it again for normal ale or wine.
To start of with don't think ewww sour ale it must taste like vinegar if you don't know what I mean by sour ales. (You are imagining your first extract brew that went off in the fermenter because you didn't think you needed to clean every piece of tubing and every spoon you used)
Forget what ever you think of ale and lager just forget it. Think of it like this your normal beer is like a normal Cheddar it is used in many things and mainly everyone likes it. Then you have blue cheese which is another world of its own. Imagine a blue cheese beer. (If you understand what i mean by that)
A Lambic beer is a beer that has been spontaneously fermented with wild yeast and bacteria. Mainly what happens is Saccharomyces cerevisiae (normal brewers ale yeast) takes over to start with then after that calms down and the sugar has been eaten up with that and they are happy they will sink and the magic happens another world is born in your fermenter. Brettanomyces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brettanomyces) forms what is known as a pellicle on the top of the ale a common mistake with that is that people think this is what causes a beer to become SOUR but no it might give the beer a slight tartness but it certainly wont make it extremely mouth puckeringly sour at all. What does this is mainly two lactic acid forming bacteria called Lactobacillus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactobacillus) and Pediococcus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediococcus) This are the big daddies of souring the beer.
So there is very weird rule that says you cant brew a sour ale with out a coolship which is a huge flat container allowing the wild yeast and bacteria to get into the wort and that you cant brew a lambic without being in Belgium because you wont get the right amount of things from the air like brett or the bacteria.
You can buy cultures from both Wyeast and Whitelabs and they have the brett yeast and also the bacterias all in the culture so you dont need to worry about wild yeast if you dont feel confident enough for it.
All Brett Fermenting Beers
If you are still reading this and havent got scared off by the fact that weird bacteria will be making your ale then well done.
This is the properly the most interesting thing that has happened to me as a brewer in the commercial world and also as a homebrewer. You would think that brett. would make a beer funky and tank but the intail fermentation is very very very fruity on the nose as you know we all smell fermentations every now and again so i stuck my nose into a brew that i have made resently and well it shocked me to think that something that i thought was going to make my beer funky and tank would smell this fruity and this tropical. It was a whole other world of smells.
Seeing as brett. is a type of yeast you can imagine that it will ferment a beer but brett. is strange because it doesnt just ferment the simple sugars like sacch. it also ferments and eats the longer chains of starches which gives the beer its funky and tartness. It is weird to think that something so simple can cause such different flavours. Brett forms a pellicle (i am going to upload pictures later on with alot more information on how the fermentations go but for now it is a thin layer that floats ontop of the beer (like in Grays malolactic fermentation) it forms a film on top of the beer which converts all the long chain complex starches into alcohol and other flavours. Again as the fermentations go on i will upload many more pictures from every day on initial fermentation to how the pellicle forms.
There are many different strains being sold as brett. but you mainly get two different strains (http://www.themadfermentationist.com/20 ... three.html) this dude can explain it alot better than me have a read through this aswell it is a very interesting read.
But i digress i will upload a full diary of how my fermentations are getting on with loads of pictures and moe information on lambic and all brett beers aswell as my recipes. Hope this inspires some people to brew some funky sour ales. Also just have read on the internet there is a brewing tv episode about sours which will also teach you even more about them (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xonwaRtCHuo) Also watch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3sijnoW5HU) to learn what a coolship is.
Hope this is helpful im out for now.
Just a warning for everyone this is not for newbs that have just started mainly because you need to have some understanding of how to make beer and also you need to have a seperate amount of kit because the homebrew sterilizers aren't strong enough ti kill this bacteria and if you are using plastic kit only use it for Sours never use it again for normal ale or wine.
To start of with don't think ewww sour ale it must taste like vinegar if you don't know what I mean by sour ales. (You are imagining your first extract brew that went off in the fermenter because you didn't think you needed to clean every piece of tubing and every spoon you used)
Forget what ever you think of ale and lager just forget it. Think of it like this your normal beer is like a normal Cheddar it is used in many things and mainly everyone likes it. Then you have blue cheese which is another world of its own. Imagine a blue cheese beer. (If you understand what i mean by that)
A Lambic beer is a beer that has been spontaneously fermented with wild yeast and bacteria. Mainly what happens is Saccharomyces cerevisiae (normal brewers ale yeast) takes over to start with then after that calms down and the sugar has been eaten up with that and they are happy they will sink and the magic happens another world is born in your fermenter. Brettanomyces (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brettanomyces) forms what is known as a pellicle on the top of the ale a common mistake with that is that people think this is what causes a beer to become SOUR but no it might give the beer a slight tartness but it certainly wont make it extremely mouth puckeringly sour at all. What does this is mainly two lactic acid forming bacteria called Lactobacillus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactobacillus) and Pediococcus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pediococcus) This are the big daddies of souring the beer.
So there is very weird rule that says you cant brew a sour ale with out a coolship which is a huge flat container allowing the wild yeast and bacteria to get into the wort and that you cant brew a lambic without being in Belgium because you wont get the right amount of things from the air like brett or the bacteria.
You can buy cultures from both Wyeast and Whitelabs and they have the brett yeast and also the bacterias all in the culture so you dont need to worry about wild yeast if you dont feel confident enough for it.
All Brett Fermenting Beers
If you are still reading this and havent got scared off by the fact that weird bacteria will be making your ale then well done.
This is the properly the most interesting thing that has happened to me as a brewer in the commercial world and also as a homebrewer. You would think that brett. would make a beer funky and tank but the intail fermentation is very very very fruity on the nose as you know we all smell fermentations every now and again so i stuck my nose into a brew that i have made resently and well it shocked me to think that something that i thought was going to make my beer funky and tank would smell this fruity and this tropical. It was a whole other world of smells.
Seeing as brett. is a type of yeast you can imagine that it will ferment a beer but brett. is strange because it doesnt just ferment the simple sugars like sacch. it also ferments and eats the longer chains of starches which gives the beer its funky and tartness. It is weird to think that something so simple can cause such different flavours. Brett forms a pellicle (i am going to upload pictures later on with alot more information on how the fermentations go but for now it is a thin layer that floats ontop of the beer (like in Grays malolactic fermentation) it forms a film on top of the beer which converts all the long chain complex starches into alcohol and other flavours. Again as the fermentations go on i will upload many more pictures from every day on initial fermentation to how the pellicle forms.
There are many different strains being sold as brett. but you mainly get two different strains (http://www.themadfermentationist.com/20 ... three.html) this dude can explain it alot better than me have a read through this aswell it is a very interesting read.
But i digress i will upload a full diary of how my fermentations are getting on with loads of pictures and moe information on lambic and all brett beers aswell as my recipes. Hope this inspires some people to brew some funky sour ales. Also just have read on the internet there is a brewing tv episode about sours which will also teach you even more about them (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xonwaRtCHuo) Also watch (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3sijnoW5HU) to learn what a coolship is.
Hope this is helpful im out for now.
