How to balance sour and bitter?

[Owly055]

I'm wondering how to gauge sourness in a sour beer, and balance it against IBUs to achieve a pleasing result. Does anybody have any guidelines? I'm working on a semi sour saison, and winging it. The mash is souring right now... but not very fast, and I'm hoping to hit the "sweet spot" by tomorrow morning.

I will be measuring PH before the boil, and documenting the PH and or course the IBUs as per my recipe. I'm already having second thoughts on using 30 IBUs from the hops with a sour mash, and thinking about cutting the IBUs nearly in half......... I'm really winging it on this one, but based on experience with my Hibiscus wedding brew where the hibiscus tea is pretty tart, I'm thinking IBUs in the teens or even low teens might be best. This is a saison, and the sour is to add a bit more complexity to it.


Any advice based on experience? I know we have some sour beer folks here. I do not want a really intense sour/bitter experience here. Since I'm "kegging" with the tap-a-draft, I could of course back sweeten and kill the yeast, and that may be the best approach for all I know.

H.W.

 

[stpug]

I think it's pretty difficult to give a concrete answer for your question. Personal preferences play a HUGE role in whether or not the outcome is what you like.

This is all personal opinion below:

I will venture a guess that on a moderate gravity saison (1.050s) that finishes very dry (1.000-1.003) with a noticeable tart/sour character (but doesn't ring in as "sour beer") that IBUs in the range of 10-13ish would be good. The work will be balancing the beer between bitterness and sourness. The higher the finishing gravity then the higher you can increase the levels of the bitterness and/or sourness.

I brewed an experimental ale last year using belle saison yeast (along with 20% partial sour mash and brett brux). My OG was highish (1.075), my FG was fairly low after a 6-month brett secondary fermentation (1.004), and my bittering was ~20 IBUs. The sourness of the brew that comes through is "noticeable tartness" (think, slightly under-ripe fruit) but certainly not the level of a "sour beer". Additionally, because of the highish OG and cara malts there is some light residual sweetness that meshes well with the bitterness/sourness.

Because I'm assuming you will have a lower OG and equally low FG then I expect you won't have as much of that residual sweetness to mesh with the bitterness/sourness, which is why I suggest decently lower at about 10ish IBUs. Ten IBUs is enough to be noticeable on the back of the palate but not enough to balance most beers. I expect the rest of the balance to come from your sour mash lactic acid.

I think it's almost harder to predict how a beer will balance with both bitterness and sourness than either of the individual components. I would recommend to aim for the low side of both sour/bitter because you can do things afterwards to bring things into balance after the beer is finished. If you find you want a smidge more sourness then you can dose with a small amount of pure lactic acid to bring the balance into place; or if you find you want more bitterness then you can boil up a hop tea and slowly add until you find the right bitterness to balance the brew. After tasting this first experiment then you will have a much better idea of how to proceed on future batches, so keep this one as a "experimental" ale in your books.

All opinions of course.

 

[Owly055]

I think it's pretty difficult to give a concrete answer for your question. Personal preferences play a HUGE role in whether or not the outcome is what you like.

This is all personal opinion below:

I will venture a guess that on a moderate gravity saison (1.050s) that finishes very dry (1.000-1.003) with a noticeable tart/sour character (but doesn't ring in as "sour beer") that IBUs in the range of 10-13ish would be good. The work will be balancing the beer between bitterness and sourness. The higher the finishing gravity then the higher you can increase the levels of the bitterness and/or sourness.

I brewed an experimental ale last year using belle saison yeast (along with 20% partial sour mash and brett brux). My OG was highish (1.075), my FG was fairly low after a 6-month brett secondary fermentation (1.004), and my bittering was ~20 IBUs. The sourness of the brew that comes through is "noticeable tartness" (think, slightly under-ripe fruit) but certainly not the level of a "sour beer". Additionally, because of the highish OG and cara malts there is some light residual sweetness that meshes well with the bitterness/sourness.

Because I'm assuming you will have a lower OG and equally low FG then I expect you won't have as much of that residual sweetness to mesh with the bitterness/sourness, which is why I suggest decently lower at about 10ish IBUs. Ten IBUs is enough to be noticeable on the back of the palate but not enough to balance most beers. I expect the rest of the balance to come from your sour mash lactic acid.

I think it's almost harder to predict how a beer will balance with both bitterness and sourness than either of the individual components. I would recommend to aim for the low side of both sour/bitter because you can do things afterwards to bring things into balance after the beer is finished. If you find you want a smidge more sourness then you can dose with a small amount of pure lactic acid to bring the balance into place; or if you find you want more bitterness then you can boil up a hop tea and slowly add until you find the right bitterness to balance the brew. After tasting this first experiment then you will have a much better idea of how to proceed on future batches, so keep this one as a "experimental" ale in your books.

All opinions of course.

I like your opinions..... as I usually do when they correspond to my own ;-)

I propose a conversion chart where IBUs and PH are converted for the purpose of countering sweetness. Essentially both, though not the same on the palette have the same effect of countering sweetness. This would be subjective...... but might make a good study. Both give a pleasant "bite" that counters sweetness.

A good way to test this would be to use lactic acid or acetic acid in an unhopped wort, or just water and DME. And in parallel use a hop shot in another batch. In a blind taste test with a group of volunteers, set an IBU of say 15 with the hop shot in one, and adjust the PH in the other, asking the tasters to decide which was "sweeter". When you crossed the line, with the results documented, adjust the IBUs to 30 and repeat, then try it again at around 50.

While the tasters are never going to agree when the sweetness matches, there will be a statistical mid point where the majority of tasters change their opinions of which is sweeter. This could give us a valuable tool for this sort of thing.

I'm using Belle Saison by Lallamand in this brew, and shooting for a "lawnmower" class beer with some character at a little over 4% ABV. OG should fall around 1.044

One of the things I want to do in brewing this year is make a foray into Brett yeasts, probably starting with Brett C. There is in fact a saison yeast that is a blend of a saccharomyces and a couple of Brettanomyces strains sold by Yeast Bay. It would be interesting to try, but expensive as they recommend against a starter........ and presumably against cropping because the balance will be altered. It's sold as a phial intended to be direct pitched to 5 gallons.

Having spent most of my life around livestock people this reminds me of the Black Baldy cow. An ideal cow in many ways, it's a cross between Herford and Angus. The next generation is not as good, and so forth, so those who raise Black Baldys are stuck with raising a Herford herd with Angus bulls, and buying replacement heifers from an all Herford herd, or running essentially two herds.

H.W.

 

[Calder]

I replied to your other thread. I think you would be better with making a small (half gallon) sour batch and mixing to get what you want. A lot more control than guessing where to stop.

I think you want low IBUs. My perfect lawnmower beer is 3.5% BW with zero IBUs, and a little dry hop of something like Nelson Sauvin. I know you don't want it that sour.

It seems you are struggling with raising temps. You might not want to start your Brett adventure with Brett-C. I have found you need to keep the fermentation temps above 80 F to get any character out of the yeast. I'm making the assumption you plan to use it as a primary yeast - as a secondary yeast, you can be at regular temps, but it takes a long time.

 

[mabrungard]

Yes, both tartness and bitterness are counters to sweetness. Either can be employed to achieve an acceptable balance in a beverage.

 

[stpug]

The "conversion chart" proposal is an interesting idea and perhaps something worth pursuing to some extent. Determining the useful variables may prove challenging since different gravity worts and different FG beers present their own unusual variable, but I'm sure something useful could be extrapolated from an experiment of this sort - granted, the results would be skewed to the tasting panel. Regardless, it sounds like fun (and potentially a fair amount of work). Keep me informed of the results

When you mentioned Belle Saison and lawnmower 4% beer, it made me reconsider my initial suggesting of 10-13ish ibus. If you really went with a beer like that, using a very fermentable grist, then I would say 10 IBUs should be the maximum because Belle will dry it out completely (0.999-1.002) which will cause both the sour and bitter to shine through with no prejudice. On the other hand, a 1.044 OG finishing that low will actually yield about a 5-6% beer. I've learned the hard way with saisons and low finishing gravities. Something to think about anyway.

I was recently given a vial of WLP670 (American Farmhouse Blend) which is a blend of sacc and brett (some posts around the web suggest potentially Brett C). Anyway, it was past it's best by date so I brewed a 1.040 grist and pitched just the vial. The ferment put off a fair amount of sulphur but the beer tasted very good, and non-sulphury, when moving to the keg. My tasting notes were that it had a very wit beer-like character of coriander and orange, but none was used. Along with that was some tropical character from the citra I used as a late addition. A delicate/dainty pellicle had developed in the bucket over the course of a few weeks which was fun to see. Because I wasn't detecting much brett in the character I've decided to let the keg age to give the brett some time to work on anything remaining and hopefully bring the FG down to 1.000 (from the 1.003 I measured at racking). I'm hoping it'll work out to be a nice easy drinker for the early summer. I collected a couple jars of slurry from the beer and have since used one to finish a berliner that went to town for 4 days with L. Plantarum.

In other words, I don't see any reason not to pitch a single vial of an unusual blend into a low OG beer just to collect the dregs for a future beer. I say do it and find out what happens.

The first beef my family got was from a hybrid cow of angus and something else, probably herford. The rancher (new to raising cattle) sent it to market too early, and my understanding was that bone size in this type of hybrid we bought was also greater than average, so the loss was significant. The beef was pretty good (not great) but the $/lb was not. IIRC, he had picked this variety of hybrid cow because he said the temperament of the angus was more than he wanted to deal with and that you got the best of both worlds by hybridizing them this way. Now I'm wondering perhaps we got a generation or two down the road. Hope my berliner and future batch don't taste like a Black Baldy

Here's a shot of the dainty pellicle:

 

[d_striker]

Personally, I don't think sour and bitter go well together. We do quite a few kettle soured beers at our brewery. I typically do about 10 IBU's from a single addition. Pick up a few more from dry hopping one of our sours. Any more than that and its off putting to my palate.

 

[Owly055]

On your advice, I'm dropping the IBUs considerably........ about 9. Using a very late addition ..... One ounce Zythos pellets at 2 min (2.5 gallon brew)

I think the conversion chart should work regardless of gravity as we are comparing the perceived sweetness in relative terms. With liquid with a brix of 2 for example, you might find that a PH of 4 leaves the liquid with the same perceived sweetness as 10 IBUs. You would do this across a range of brix values. The results would then be translated into IBUs so you could use a standard "hoppy/malty" chart to get an idea what the resulting beer will be like.

I'm chilling wort right now, and tasting the result..... I've been boiling while writing. It has a distinct lemony taste overlaying the hop flavor......... It's quite decent at this point...... but will it be drinkable after fermentation? That remains to be seen. It should be quite sour......... I tasted the wort shortly after adding the pellets and immediately shut the flame off and dropped the chiller in. I should be an interesting beer if nothing else. Gotta go lift the chiller out, aerate, transfer and pitch now.........

H.W.

The "conversion chart" proposal is an interesting idea and perhaps something worth pursuing to some extent. Determining the useful variables may prove challenging since different gravity worts and different FG beers present their own unusual variable, but I'm sure something useful could be extrapolated from an experiment of this sort - granted, the results would be skewed to the tasting panel. Regardless, it sounds like fun (and potentially a fair amount of work). Keep me informed of the results

When you mentioned Belle Saison and lawnmower 4% beer, it made me reconsider my initial suggesting of 10-13ish ibus. If you really went with a beer like that, using a very fermentable grist, then I would say 10 IBUs should be the maximum because Belle will dry it out completely (0.999-1.002) which will cause both the sour and bitter to shine through with no prejudice. On the other hand, a 1.044 OG finishing that low will actually yield about a 5-6% beer. I've learned the hard way with saisons and low finishing gravities. Something to think about anyway.

I was recently given a vial of WLP670 (American Farmhouse Blend) which is a blend of sacc and brett (some posts around the web suggest potentially Brett C). Anyway, it was past it's best by date so I brewed a 1.040 grist and pitched just the vial. The ferment put off a fair amount of sulphur but the beer tasted very good, and non-sulphury, when moving to the keg. My tasting notes were that it had a very wit beer-like character of coriander and orange, but none was used. Along with that was some tropical character from the citra I used as a late addition. A delicate/dainty pellicle had developed in the bucket over the course of a few weeks which was fun to see. Because I wasn't detecting much brett in the character I've decided to let the keg age to give the brett some time to work on anything remaining and hopefully bring the FG down to 1.000 (from the 1.003 I measured at racking). I'm hoping it'll work out to be a nice easy drinker for the early summer. I collected a couple jars of slurry from the beer and have since used one to finish a berliner that went to town for 4 days with L. Plantarum.

In other words, I don't see any reason not to pitch a single vial of an unusual blend into a low OG beer just to collect the dregs for a future beer. I say do it and find out what happens.

The first beef my family got was from a hybrid cow of angus and something else, probably herford. The rancher (new to raising cattle) sent it to market too early, and my understanding was that bone size in this type of hybrid we bought was also greater than average, so the loss was significant. The beef was pretty good (not great) but the $/lb was not. IIRC, he had picked this variety of hybrid cow because he said the temperament of the angus was more than he wanted to deal with and that you got the best of both worlds by hybridizing them this way. Now I'm wondering perhaps we got a generation or two down the road. Hope my berliner and future batch don't taste like a Black Baldy

Here's a shot of the dainty pellicle:
View attachment 278837

 

[Owly055]

**** Lots of good input on this thread....... too many to respond to individually. ****

My brew is chilled and pitched @72F with Lallemand Bell Saison, clean up is done........ It's all over for a couple of weeks when I'll see what the results are.

I missed my OG.... overshot it by 11 points for some reason.... Brewhouse efficiency was significantly over 90%. My grain weights and water volumes were correct, so I have no idea what happened. Mashed at 152 for a full hour. I use Brewer's Friend with the default 75% efficiency, and nearly always overshoot into the low 80's. I usually mash with nearly all my water. This time I left out 25% and dunk sparged....... Oh well, it definitely will NOT be a "lawnmower beer", as it will probably come in about 5.5%.

My initial taste test of the wort points to the fact that the advocates of low to zero IBUs are right. My souring went much further than I had realized..... My next attempt at a sour will have zero IBUs, and whirlpool additions at about 160, using the sour to sub for the bittering entirely. I chose Zythos hop blend because it makes things simple and has a good flavor.

At this point with the level of sourness which is far more than taste testing the sour mash would have suggested, and anticipating the drying out of the wort as it ferments, I'm wondering what I could dry hop it with later that would make the fruityness really "pop". I anticipate that it will be much more sour than I had intended. Of the hops I have, Amarillo, Cascade, Motueka are three that might individually or in combination give me a fruityness to go with the sour. I have a pile of hops....... someone suggested Nelson Sauvin.... my favorite hop, but I'm down to about an ounce of it and this year's crop from NZ hasn't arrived yet..... everybody's out of stock.


H.W.

 

[d_striker]

On your advice, I'm dropping the IBUs considerably........ about 9. Using a very late addition ..... One ounce Zythos pellets at 2 min (2.5 gallon brew)


H.W.

As far as how to gauge sourness, the best way is titration. A pH of 3.5 with one water profile may have a completely different concentration of lactic acid as a pH of 3.5 with more alkaline water.

The easiest way is to check pH and taste the level of acidity. Then calibrate your own palate to how a certain pH is perceived against other sour beers.

If it's just a slightly tart Saison, maybe more IBU's would have been appropriate. I was referring to kettle sours with a pH of 3.2-3.5 clashing with bitterness.

Either way, I think your beer will turn out good. Log your data and modify for next time.

 

[Owly055]

As far as how to gauge sourness, the best way is titration. A pH of 3.5 with one water profile may have a completely different concentration of lactic acid as a pH of 3.5 with more alkaline water.

The easiest way is to check pH and taste the level of acidity. Then calibrate your own palate to how a certain pH is perceived against other sour beers.

If it's just a slightly tart Saison, maybe more IBU's would have been appropriate. I was referring to kettle sours with a pH of 3.2-3.5 clashing with bitterness.

Either way, I think your beer will turn out good. Log your data and modify for next time.

I'm having trouble getting a good PH reading. I just recalibrated my meter and it's reading about 4.6. I need to get some litmus paper.......... The meter is finicky to say the least.

I'm not unhappy with the results of this experiment even though it was kind of a slap dash operation where I was making last minute decisions based on the input I was getting, balanced against my own instincts, and tasting. The sourness is nice though a bit more than I had intended, taking into account the sugars in the brew that will attenuate out. It's nearly impossible to predict what the final result will be considering the contribution of the saison yeast. It's far more propitious than my previous experiments were.

I anticipate keeping some bottles of this for a baseline. My initial reading of 4.2 was flawed due to calibration.....It should have been 4.6 instead of 4.2... PH shouldn't change in the boil where the loss is made up.. I'll check calibration next time. I have fluids for that. My original reading should have matched my final reading due to the water held back for sparging......... which was my intention. Next time I'll shoot for a PH a full point higher... about 5.5 or so, assuming that the "sweet spot" will be somewhere between. I'm reminded of doing square roots using a paper and pencil and interpolating. I suppose most elementary school students these days never did this.... Our choice was a chart, or interpolation...... The electronic calculator had not yet been invented.


H.W.

 

[d_striker]

4.6 generally isn't very sour. Most all ale and lager yeasts will lower your pH around or below that level within 48 hours of fermentation.

If you plan on doing more sours or want to get serious about it, bite the bullet and get a good pH meter. I like the ones where the bulb and temperature probe plug into the unit and can be replaced easily.

It's good practice to cool your wort before taking pH readings.

 

[stpug]

pH will change for LOTS of various reasons, and yes boiling a solution has the potential to change pH as well. This is not to say your meter is not finicky, just that pH can and will move for lots of reasons.

Additionally, I would not judge your beers sour character so early in the process. My experimental beer from last fall initially tasted more sour than I had planned only to finish up at a nice, refreshing tart after months of aging.

pH coupled with titratable acidity (TA) is probably the single best way of judging the sourness of a solution. pH alone can give you an indication but without knowing the concentration of the acid (TA) in the solution then you really can't confidently say how sour/acidic a solution is from testing devices alone.

And, like d_striker said, "normal" beer generally floats around 4.1 pH after fermentation all by itself (lagers a smidge lower, ales a smidge higher)