Considering I have the space and also tons of carboys I am wanting to make the venture into brewing a few sours. They happen to be my favorite style of beer but for reasons I have shy’d away from brewing them. Was wondering if anyone had any good tips for starting out. And also if you use dregs from a bottle how you go about adding them. (Timeframe, amount etc)
This is my favorite resource for sour beer brewing.
http://web.archive.org/web/20100410025103/http://www2.parc.com/emdl/members/apte/flemishredale.shtml
However, my first flanders red is only 6 weeks old, so I don’t have full experience.
Bottle dregs can be a mistery - a fun experiment but I wouldn’t go that route for my first batch. Use a commercial culture to get more reliable results.
You can do both. Start with the Roselare/lambic culture and add sour dregs to the carboy later.
If you’re going for more of a Flanders Red/Brown type of beer, go with Roselare, and transfer out of primary into secondary, then add dregs from other sours.
If you’re going for more FUNK (lambic), start with a lambic blend from Wyeast/White labs, keep the beer in primary, and add sour dregs.
In either case, I wouldn’t start tasting for at least 6 months (except for a final gravity reading).
Use the resource given above, its great! Also, Mike Tonsmire has some great info on homebrewing sour beers on his blog, TheMadFermentationist.com. He provides a short list of commercial beers worth harvesting here:
Will this be an extract or all grain batch?
All grain
I would recommend a copy of Wild Brews
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- “Wild Brews” is the book to get on the topic. Way more to discuss there than you will get here. Also check out the burgundian babble belt forum.
Keith beat me to it. The two exact things I was going to say
There is a great presentation about making Berliner Weiss, which can be used to make other kinds of sours although not authentic to other sours, from NHC 2012. Go to http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/lets-brew/homebrewing-seminars