What is the next step for my sour mash?

[keislir]

This post is for a sour mash belgian apricot ale. Apologies for the rambling!

I made the delightfully smelling sour mash, boiled for an hour with 4 hop additions, joined the wort with a belgian ale yeast and fermented for 2 weeks. I collected a sour yeast from the bottom of a Funkwerks sour that I intended to add to the secondary, but I know I'm doing something wrong.

This is my first "sour" experimentation and I've had a hard time finding the information/advice I need.

Do I need to combine the sour culture with a lb of DME before I rack it to the secondary? I'm under the impression that the yeast wont impart any sour characteristics if the primary yeast has run its course on the sugars.

Will the sour mash pair well with adding a sour yeast culture? Maybe the flavors will combat each other.

As you can tell there is really no organization to this brew, I just wanted to play with flavors and get a feel for sour beers. Any help is appreciated

 

[Natdavis777]

If you have only a small amount of the sour yeast, I'd make a small starter and pitch that in the secondary. If you have a decent amount, avoid the starter. One thing with sour blends is that they contain bacteria as well. The bacteria will eat more complex sugars that the sacc yeast leaves behind. That bacteria will then impart it's own sourness. If your beer is at a stable gravity when you move to secondary, then you shouldn't worry about any more sacc yeast overpowering the bacteria in the secondary because it would have ate it already in the primary... Make sense?


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[dcp27]

they will combine just fine, but the point of a sour mash is to get a quick sour, adding in the bottle dregs is going to make an extended wait (6+months). if you're ok with that, either just toss in the dregs or make a small starter with them and then add that.