Lactobacillus - where can I get it?

[gm-]

If you pitch it in something pretty acidic like apple juice you will avoid other nasty bugs according to the Mad Fermentationist. Seemed to work pretty well when I tried it with the culture, might try some grain next time.

[CartoonCod]

Thats a good point, I never thought of apple juice with the grains. I'll try that.

[Woody]

I've read 100-120 F as well for around 3 days. How do you guys keep oxygen out of the kettle? I can't picture how to do it with the co2 tank without it escaping.

[CartoonCod]

I'm doing a sour wort starter of sorts. I've got it in a growler with an airlock to grow them up.

[Woody]

I'm going to sour in the kettle I just need to figure out a way to keep the oxygen out.

[CartoonCod]

Would saran wrap work?

[NASH]

Saran wrap will work well but layer of co2 won't go anywhere unless there's wind blowing at it or a lot of convection, or something.

I hold the wort as close to 120 f as possible, no higher. My starters usually go for a week or 10 days. I make a starter with maybe a 1.035 wort. In 18 L I add 1/2 kg of malt of most any kind, Munich, pale, whatever.

I've made starters in ball-lock kegs with a heating pad duct-taped around it. Throw a blanket or something over it and presto, a week later it's awesome sauce.

It's usually different every time since it's dependent on what blend of bugs are on the malt you use but the idea is to always provide favorable conditions for lacto, not so much for the others.

One year I made two 18 L starters with two different malts. Both delicious, and very different from one another.

Synaptic Illusion and Rhubarb Pi were both made this way and were very different beers. Rhubarb Pi had no rhubarb in it of course, it was just how it ended up tasting. It's an element of surprise I'm okay with.

Anyhow, I'm a strong proponent of souring wort, not mash. On a homebrew scale it'd be pretty easy to do a whole batch with heating pads.

[Woody]

Great info! Thank you very much!

[LiverDance]

Thinking of doing a kettle sour beer. If I mash and sparge as normal then leave the wort at 120F for 36hrs with .5kg of acid malt in what do you think my results would be like? Is that enough time to sour the wort?

[CPR]

Weighin' in here..... Berliners and other lactic-soured beers are an interest of mine, and after dumping batch-after-batch I went directly to the best folks in the country doing the style, Bellwoods up in Toronto. I spoke to one of their brewers, Carmen, at length on the subject, and she's got some points she was pretty adamant about. One thing is that there are different strains of lacto, and each one will have a different temp window for producing clean/pleasant acidity in wort. (Dipping above or below that window, she says, will lead to off flavours from vegetal to down right shite-like.) They use the more common White Labs lacto, and for them that temperature window is a solid 111ºF/44ºC. They use a sous vide machine with a brink in it to grow up their starters. I've been doing some experiments with trying to get jars in water on my stove top to hold that temp for days at a time, and other than the evaporation of the water, I've managed to get the temp pretty solid. I've got several vials of lacto now and I'm going to try growing a clean starter (I've found that if your lacto starter has off flavours and aromas, your beer will have the same). Once I've got a clean/sexy starter, I'm going to try pitching into unboiled wort on the stove top and flood the headspace with Co2 under saran wrap, and hope that my stove elements can keep that stuff at 111ºF. They always boil once the PH has dropped sufficiently, but some breweries go with no-boil to allow for an evolution in flavours. That, for me, is a bit risky. I'll wait 'til I get my third degree black belt in brewing before trying it

[NASH]

Thinking of doing a kettle sour beer. If I mash and sparge as normal then leave the wort at 120F for 36hrs with .5kg of acid malt in what do you think my results would be like? Is that enough time to sour the wort?

Hard to say brother, depends on the bugs. Let taste and PH be your guide.

Synaptic Illusion = PH 3.45

Rhubarb Pi = PH 3.33

In my readings optimum temperature for delbruekii growth is stated to be 104 - 111 F, and killed off at ~ 122 F. It's also known to grow quite well across a pretty broad range, from 90 - 120 F. When I make wild sours I generally keep it a little warmer to stay further away from acetobactor et al temps. Just hoping to keep some of the other bugs at bay, also knowing full well there's likely a considerable amount of dissolved O2 in the wort/mash. I could be wrong but that's how I roll. If I were starting with a pure culture things might be a little different but to date, I've never bought a pure culture.

[LiverDance]

Alright fuck it, i'm going to start putting some results to all this what if business Mashing in on Thursday eve then transfer to my kettle and let sit till Saturday morning on a 1/2kg of acid malt at 115F, taste and test pH every 8 hrs or so. Blanket of CO2 and some plastic wrap over the top and the kettle lid should keep the O2 at bay. Wish me luck

[gm-]

Alright fuck it, i'm going to start putting some results to all this what if business Mashing in on Thursday eve then transfer to my kettle and let sit till Saturday morning on a 1/2kg of acid malt at 115F, taste and test pH every 8 hrs or so. Blanket of CO2 and some plastic wrap over the top and the kettle lid should keep the O2 at bay. Wish me luck

Good luck! Will be interesting if you get something decent, or if you end up with 5 gal of vinegar

[mcgster]

FWIW i just tried a partial sour mash for my Saison to give it a bit of bite.

After reading Tonniere's book i had a few different ideas on how to try this but i ended up going with something a little off label. I had an aquarium heater heat a water bath to 110F and after mashing 10% of my grain bill (just pils and vienna) i added 2oz of acid malt and put it in a ziploc bag and squeezed all the air out. I set the bag in the water bath for 36hrs before

Next time i would just put it in a 1 gal jug and blow some co2 over the surface but i thought the bag would allow me to see what was going on and gauge how much co2 is being produced.. turns out alot lol.

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[LiverDance]

How does it smell and taste?

[mcgster]

It was very sour (would cause a bit of a pucker) and had a slightly apple taste to it. I added it into the saison, i may pull a sample today and taste it but the wort before i pitched was tasty with a bit of twang.

[LiverDance]

It was very sour (would cause a bit of a pucker) and had a slightly apple taste to it. I added it into the saison, i may pull a sample today and taste it but the wort before i pitched was tasty with a bit of twang.

awesome, sounds like it's headed in the right direction

[mcgster]

Just pulled a sample it dropped from 1.052 to 1.010 in 2 days, you can definitely taste the bite in the beer from the souring. It is full of sediment so i'm just going to set it in the fridge and let it settle out and try it again.

[gm-]

Just acquired a programmable hotplate, wondering if that could be used for a sour starter. Thinking about making some DME starter, adding some acid malt, and keeping it at 44°C for a week before pitching. Any objections?

[NASH]

Get on it! Work at keeping dissolved O2 outta yer wort.... boiling then cooling with no transfer would be ideal

[LiverDance]

Alright he's my update so far:

Mashed in on Saturday pH 5.4
In the Kettle for Souring at 6pm (temp ranged between 115F and 120F based on the PID settings)
pH @ 1pm on Sunday 4.3 (slight tartness)
pH @ 8pm on Sunday 3.8 (medium tartness like sweet lemon)
pH @ 8am on Monday 3.58 (lip smacking tartness)
Started boil

There seemed to be a certain smell/taste to it maybe like it was a bit oxidized? Nothing to keep me from continuing based on the taste samples. I've never done this before so I'm not sure if that is usual or not.

[NASH]

Sounds great!

I've encountered some 'odd' aromatics in sour wort but I wouldn't worry about it. Lacto doesn't smell the greatest at that stage to begin with Fermentation and time should turn it into a beautiful thing.

Speaking of which, I age 'em for months before tapping and they just keep getting better with time. With the low pH this is definitely cellaring beer.

[LiverDance]

Sounds great!

I've encountered some 'odd' aromatics in sour wort but I wouldn't worry about it. Lacto doesn't smell the greatest at that stage to begin with Fermentation and time should turn it into a beautiful thing.

Speaking of which, I age 'em for months before tapping and they just keep getting better with time. With the low pH this is definitely cellaring beer.

Sounds good, i'm thinking of putting it on some fruit and having it available for summer so that works out great. I've added some extra yeast as I've heard that sometimes it takes a bit to get going due to the low pH as well.

[mcgster]

The Tonsmeire book says between 100 and 120 F, but that is for ideal growth. Beers still get sour from lactobacillus at room temp, I guess it just takes longer. In any case I figured something would be going on with unhopped wort with some raw malt grains after two days. I figure the longer I give it the more change something nasty and potentially harmful can set in. Maybe thats why they do the sour mash so warm to give the lacto a chance before the others nasties set in.

That is my understanding as well, lacto is supposedly a very poor competitor when other microbes are around and quickly loses out bugs that are quicker to colonize.

I'm surprised you don't have any souring! After 24 hours mine was enough to make you pucker. I did add a small amount of acid malt which could have higher concentrations of lacto on the surface.

[CartoonCod]

I'm surprised you don't have any souring! After 24 hours mine was enough to make you pucker. I did add a small amount of acid malt which could have higher concentrations of lacto on the surface.

After about 7 days mine was really sour. It took a while to start, but after that feremented quite well. I don't have a pH meter but it was about definitely mouth puckering. Also there were no vomit or acetic notes, but lots of specialty malt notes (since thats all I used). Next time I'll keep it warm and get the whole process started quicker.