Sourdough beer

[CartoonCod]

Has anybody experimented making beer with a sourdough culture? I was thinking of fermenting a growlers worth of some DME with a O.G. of about 1.040, and maybe a few hops. Scouring the net, I found a few blogs where people tried this with decent results. I've already got the sourdough culture going, and I read that it can have some Lacto. some Brett. as well as a few different yeast species. I'll try to get this going within the next week or two, and I'll post the results.

[mr x]

That just sounds crazy enough to work.

[Jayme]

I think Basic Brewing Radio has a podcast on it IIRC.

[RubberToe]

Barley hooch!

[LiverDance]

Pilsbury dough beer Looks like a fun experiment for sure.

[Graham.C]

You might want to boil the hops for 10min or so. Is DMS an issue with DME?

Keep us posted on the results. I got a great sourdough that might as well be making me beer too.

[CartoonCod]

I just started my sourdough beer experiment. Here are some of my notes. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.

1) 500 mL water mixed with 50 g of wheat malt extract boiled for 15 minutes
2) Cooled to ~15 degC, and pitched 1 tsp of sourdough starter
- Sourdough starter was in the fridge for 3 days since its last feeding of whole wheat flour
- Sourdough was cold (~4 degC) when pitched into wort
3) Set out on the counter in a growler with foil on top. Temp varies from 15 degC at night to 20
degC in the afternoon and evening. Stiring a few times a day.
4) Will let it grow for a few days then monitor taste and aroma, then step up the culture with more
wort and maybe some hops.
5) Let it ferment to completion, decant and taste the "beer", then harvest the yeast and start another batch

[CartoonCod]

Day 5 update:
Its been 5 days since I started my 500 mL starter of sourdough in a growler with a foil cap. It reached a "high krausen" at day 3 and is settling down but looks as though its still fermenting. Every day I give it a spin and take a smell. The first day it didn't smell like much, but on the second day it smelled like vinegar. The vinegar smell now seems less prevalent and a fruitiness is becoming more apparent. I assume the vinegar smell is do to Acetobacter spp. so I hope when I step up this starter to 1.5 L and put an airlock on the growler the yeast will consume all the oxygen with will keep any vinegar production at bay.

[gordonsbeachbrewer]

this is interesting, keep posting please

[CartoonCod]

Here are a few pics from day 1 of my sourdough test.

[CartoonCod]

Time for another update of my sourdough beer project:
- The beer fermented for about 2 weeks room temperature with a tin foil cap
- I refrigerated the beer for a week in hopes that the bugs would drop to the bottom
- I decanted the beer, and the final gravity was about 1.006 (85% attenuation). There were no apparent "barnyard" smells or tastes, but there was a slight vinegar and fruity taste. Also the beer was very viscous, something I've never seen any beer. A quick search online and I found that "ropiness" as some people call it is: "the development of a complex polysaccharide slime in beer produced by certain bacteria" (http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/a ... -mr-wizard), and could be from Pediococcus damnosus, or Acetobacter sp.
- Last Thursday (31-May), I added 1.5 L of 1.032 wort (boiled for 25 minutes with 3 g of E.K.G. hops), capped it off with an airlock and put it in my basement which is a constant 15-16 degC.
- The fermentation took off after about 18 hours, reached high krausen and then dissipated after 3 days (I was away for those three days so I couldn't monitor the krausen properly).
- I don't plan on opening the airlock to taste the beer or check the gravity because in case there is still some Acetobacter left in there, I don't want to give it any oxygen.

[CartoonCod]

That just sounds crazy enough to work.

So its been almost a year of aging at a not quite so constant room temperature and I just bottled a full 3.5 bottles of this experiment. After a small sample, I've got to say it's not that bad, pretty pleasant actually. Once they are carb'ed up I'll bring some to a brewnoser meeting (hopefully next April or May).

[Jayme]

Nice! I'll look forward to that