Im putting a recipe together for a gose and had 2 questions…
The recipe for the gose is simple, so I will not bore yall with it(traditional gose). I had bad luck on my last sour mash this past time(i have sour mash plenty in the past with great results) so I was considering either mashing my grain, then after conversion throwing in around 2, or 2 1/2 # of acid malt for another 60 min mash. Then finishing the gose off normally. Or after conversion dropping a few ml of lactic acid into the wort. Any thoughts?
I guess I just didnt want to bother with keeping my mash tun warm for 2-3 days till my pH got where I wanted it. Since lacto is just producing lactic acid anyway. Cant I just toss either in and save the trouble?
I don’t think you will get the same character as souring with bacteria. The MTF guys like to pre-sour their worts to about 4.5 pH to help prevent the off flavor causing bacteria from taking hold. They also promote pure, or at least taste tested, cultures.
You definitely won’t get a lot of love for sour mashes from the folks on MTF. I am less opposed to them but you have to accept that sometimes it just doesn’t turn out the way you want. These days finding good, pure lactobacillus cultures isn’t hard and the need for the risk of a sour mash going bad isn’t really worth it. Lots of people like the good belly shots you can buy in the grocery store as a source. I’d suggest taking a look at the Milk the Funk wiki for guidance on how to use these cultures.
There’s no good reason for using acid malt the way you suggest. It would be far easier to just dose the wort/beer with lactic acid pre-boil, post-boil, or post-fermentation. However, any of these processes tend to produce very flat, bland sour beers.
Sour mashing is a fool’s errand. I would never do it that way. If you have a keg, you are far better off by running off your hot wort from the tun into the keg. When its down to the proper temperature, pitch your lacto. I’ve found that wrapping my heating pad around the keg does keep the temp in the preferred 100F range. You don’t have to worry about CO2 production since lacto generally doesn’t make much, so you can put the keg lid on and close it. Burp the blow-off valve every day, if you are worried.
Remember, lacto is easy to kill with typical sanitizers, so when you pour out the soured wort, you can easily knock out any infection risk.
That is typically the way I have donenit in the past woth great results, but i wrap the keg in a germination blacket i can set for 110. I also give the keg a shit of co2. Not enough to carb obviously, just enough to fill head space.
Ive read a few articles on goses and was curious of the masses responses here as Ive beem given excellent advice so far. I guess I will just continue to sour mash the way ive had success in the padt and call it good…
I just brewed a gose and I kettle soured the batch. I brought the temp just up to 190 to kill off most critters, held it there for an hour and then lowered the temp to 80. Pitched a lactobacillus culture and waited till the pH hit 3.8 and then boiled, added hops and salt and corriander. It’s not completely done fermenting yet but it’s close and it tastes pretty awesome.