Sour Ale from Apricots

[DeMerchant]

Ok, so firstly forgive me if I ask anything stupid. While I've been brewing for a while my exposure to sours has been... non-existent really. Until...

A while ago I set out to make a blonde ale, which tasted fine and normal going into the secondary where I pitched it on to apricots. I had tried to sterilize the apricots by pouring boiling water over them, but my pot overfilled and I'm quite sure I did a horrible and ineffective job sterilizing them. The end result was an unexpectedly sour (although fairly pleasant) brew. I assume I introduced some 'contaminant' via the apricots.

I suppose there are a few questions this would raise:
- Any best guesses on what contaminat I may have introduced to my beer?
- If I wanted to brew a beer and re-introduce the contaminant what's the best plan? Should I use a typical recipe or do something different? Should I pitch yeast and the add the contaminant post-fermentation? Pre-fermentation? Without yeast? Should I add a full bottle of the contaminant or just pitch the dregs from a few bottles (I suppose there would be yeast in there as well)?
- Is this even a worthy venture on a path to get into sours, or should I follow some tried and true recipe with bugs from a yeast lab?

 

[m00ps]

I would just give it time and see if it actually starts to taste good. Do not use any plastic equipment you used for sampling/transferring that beer with any future ones (unless they are sours too)

If you really do end up liking whatever bugs got into your beer, do not try to replicate the process with the apricots again. Actual infections rarely turn out consistent or well. You should harvest yeast from your bottles and make a starter out of that to make the next sour beer