Last year was my first serious year of brewing funky and sour beers. A lot of what I brewed was aiming for bold fruit flavors. I added fruit to my cherry wine and apricot sour very early in their fermentations, aiming for a depth of fruit flavors in the final products. The dark saison got zante currants as soon as it went into secondary.
I think I’ll still brew that way occasionally in the future, but in general I’m going to start waiting for the base beer to mature, and then decide what further additions to make, if any.
In this case I’m going for a pale sour similar to my apricot sour, but I’ll hold off on any fruit additions at first. I’m hoping the base beer will turn out complex, sour, and funky. When it’s ready, I’ll let its final character dictate where to go from there.
Some fruit options I’m considering are peaches, sour cherries, blueberries, or wine grapes. I’ll also bottle some of it straight if it’s interesting on it’s own.
Recipe
This base recipe is adapted from the “Sour American” recipe on page 326 of American Sour Beer.
Compared to my last pale sour, the differences here are higher mash temp, and a different yeast blend.
Batch size: 6 gallons
Target OG: 1.058
Target FG: 1.006
Calculated IBU: 12.5
Calculated SRM: 4.0
Grain bill:
7.5 lb Pilsner (62.5%)
3.0 lb Maris Otter (25.0%)
1.0 lb Wheat Malt (8.3%)
0.5 lb Flaked Oats (4.2%)
Mash (Batch Sparge): 158 °F @ 1.4 qts/lb
Hops:
0.7 oz Wilamette @ 60 minutes
Yeast:
ECY20 Bug County
Secondary Additions:
0.2 oz/gal french oak cubes boiled 5 min
Notes
2020-07-06 - Brew day. Mash started hot ~164. Quickly chilled with ice cubes to 159. Looking at my calculations, I forgot to update the grain temp from 72 to ~76 °F. Pre boil gravity was low. Added 10oz DME to compensate. OG 1.058
2020-07-11 - Racked to 6G pet carboy. I had the perfect amount of volume to fill it to the neck. Gravity is 1.017 It’s super cloudy. Looks like I shook flour into it. Tastes.. fine but a bit dull, as young sours usually seem to. Take a gravity reading at ~8 months (March 2021). Hope to add some fresh summer fruit in June/July
2021-01-10 - First sample since transferring to secondary. Nice clear appearance now. Gravity 1.002. Mild acidity. Mineraly and vinous. White grape juice. Nice overall, I’d be happy to drink it as-is. I’m interested to see what the next 4-6 months do.
This is progressing very differently from the apricot sour with the same base recipe. At this point in the apricot sour’s fermentation it was almost too sour to drink. I wonder if ECY20 sours less aggressively than ECY01. Or maybe the simple sugar addition from the apricots just supercharged the sour bugs in the ECY01.
Added 1.2 oz french oak cubes boiled for 5 min.
2021-07-03 - Sampling to decide what fruit I might want to add to this, if any. I remember this tasting a bit better at the beginning of the year. It’s still pretty good, but at bit less interesting than I remembered. Still has a white wine character, but not much complexity.
Sourness is at a medium level. I think this could take some fruit without getting too sour. I think I’ll do some small 1 or 1.4 gallon test batches with a variety of fruit.
2021-08-29 - Today the beer has an off flavor very similar to what happened to my cherry sour red after aging. Not sure what the compound is but I do not like it. This has gone from great to boring to disappointing with the three times I sampled it. There was basically no head space and when I did sample I flushed with argon. I don’t know what went wrong here. I don’t think my sampling is at fault.
The cherry wine cleared up a bit after more conditioning so hopefully this will get better too.
Bottled a case of 12oz bottles of the base beer primed to 2.8 vol. 1 gallon went on 0.5lb green gooseberries. 1.4 gallons got 1.5 lb/gal very ripe local yellow peaches, and another 1.4 gal got ~1.4 lb/gal 2020 sour cherries. Sour cherry beer also got 1.5 g/L potassium bicarbonate because from experience I’m sure this will be more sour than I want with that level of sour cherries.
I want some more oakyness in all of the fruited versions, so added 0.3oz mixed american/french oak cubes to each.
2021-10-16 - Bottled fruit versions. Peaches were my favorite. Really nice smell and taste. Peach aroma/flavor is definitely there, but not too in your face. Tasting way better than the plain base beer at this point.
Cherries weren’t bad. I regret the bicarbonate a bit. In the end the beer wasn’t sour enough to need it, and I think there’s a minor off flavor from the bicarbonate. Might still turn out well though. We’ll see.
Green gooseberries were my least favorite of the three beers. A bit grassy/green/vegetal. We’ll see how it develops with time.
Primed all to 2.4 vols assuming normal amount of residual CO2.
2022-05-22 - Tasting update. Still nowhere near as good as back in Jan 2021, but worth keeping for the most part.
The plain beer is significantly improved from last fall. Peaches are tasting good too.
Cherry not so good. I regret the bicarbonate that I added here.
Will try again over the summer. I hope they keep improving.
Changes for next time
I wish I had bottled/fruited this back in January when I saw the gravity was down to 1.002. It may still have developed the same off flavors as it did bulk aging, but I feel like it would’ve had a better chance.