Sour Raspberry Wheat - Critique and Questions

[Darwin18]

Hello all!

I've tried several sour beers recently and really have enjoyed much more than I had anticipated. I'd like to try my hand at a few sours of my own. I've brewed a couple fruit beers recently with great success and I thought that I could apply that to a sour.

My thoughts are to do the following:

Start off with the all-grain Wheat Beer Recipe from Brewing Classic Styles (Kent's Hollow Leg). Brew the beer as described.

1) Pitch a pack of WYeast 5335 - Lactobacillus
2) 24 hours later pitch a starter of WYeast 1010 - American Wheat. Allow beer to ferment in primary at 64 F for three weeks. This will allow for the beer to ferment and all the trub/suspended yeast to settle nicely.
3) Tranfer beer to a secondary for 5 - 6 lbs of frozen raspberries. Set secondary at 64F for one week.
4) Transfer to keg and allow to carbonate at 38F for 3 weeks.
5) Drink and Enjoy?

What are your thoughts/comments? I've considered a sour mash, but many of the sources I have read have indicated that a sour mash doesn't provide the intricacies that using a lacto culture will.

 

[todd46]

So start to finish in under 2 months? I think if you want the said intricacies of a lacto culture you probably need to give it 6-12 months to cycle. At least based on the charts I've seen. A sour mash would be more suitable for your timeframe.

 

[Calder]

Keep hopping low, or the Lacto will not work. Minimize aeration, pitch Lacto, and keep warm (about 100 F if you can).

Taste the wort for sourness before adding the yeast. It could take 5 days or more to get where you want. Once the yeast start making alcohol, the lacto will slow down or even stop, so you want to get the sourness before you pitch the yeast.

Pitch a lot of yeast. About 2X what you would normally pitch. The acidic environment is hostile to the yeast. Aerate the wort when you add the yeast. Ferment at normal fermentation temperatures.

I think you will probably get a more complex beer from a sour mash. I've never done one, I have only used Lacto to make a Berliner Weisse, and it came out fine. I'm concerned about the creation of butyric acid from the Clostridium, and the associated smell. Supposedly you can boil off the smell, but it doesn't appeal to me.

This (using lacto) will make a simple sour beer quickly. I'm going to be using this method to make a sour stout in the near future.

Using a Lambic (or sour) mixture will result in a more complex beer that will more closely resemble the sour beers you tasted. However, sour cultutres take about a year to develop their flavors due to the slow activity of the Brett and Pedio used.