How much lactic acid to add in a 5 gallon gose?

Brewing Processes
1

Hi gang!

I’m going to be brewing my first all-grain gose in a few days (5 gallon batch). I bought all of the ingredients from a local homebrew store. Here is what was included:

4.75 lb Pilsner malt
3.75 lb Pale wheat malt
1 oz. Huell Melon hop pellets (@ 60 min in boil)
0.5 oz. coriander (@ 10 min left in boil)
1 oz. Brewer’s sea salt (@ 10 min left in boil)
1 oz. sweet orange peel (@ 10 min left in boil)
Wyeast 1007 German ale yeast

And it also came with a 5 oz. bottle of 88% lactic acid (to be added to taste right before bottling).

I’ll also be using all RO water from Walmart. I have some gypsum, but don’t know if I should add any.

I’ve seen a lot of different opinions on how much lactic acid is needed to get a good sour flavor–mostly in the 1 to 2 oz. range.

Any advice?

2

I have only done post ferment souring (months) or kettle souring (overnight) for the Gose style beers I have brewed, but I would imagine that it will take somewhere in the range of half to 3/4ths of that bottle to get a noticeable souring level remotely similar to a kettle soured batch.  I haven’t got a lot of faith in adding lactic 88% to achieve the traditional sour flavor, but I think it could be a “clean” sour.

3

While you could probably simulate a Gose by adding lactic acid. I’m not sure how realistic it would be.

Refined lactic acid is going to provide a single note to the beer. A real, sour-fermented Gose is going to present a multitude of sour notes and produce a more interesting and flavorful beer.

In the absence of the real sour-fermentation, I’m betting that it will still be an enjoyable beer.  I can’t recommend a dose since the buffering in a beer is different than in wort. The best advice is to add known amounts of lactic acid to a known amount of the beer and scale that dose up when you’ve found an acceptable result.

4

I would add anywhere from zero to maybe 1 oz. Traditionally you wouldnt really want it to be noticeable. That being said, Americans love to break tradition so if thats your take, go as crazy as you want with it.

And for heavensakes, same with the salt. Go easy on it. An ounce seems like far too much. Try 1 teaspoon then go from there. Add at bottling or kegging time until it tastes good.