Saw this and decided I needed to try it. http://www.betterbeerblog.com/index.php/2011/12/27/homebrew-session-experimental-sour-dough-ale/
I made a partial mash .5 gallon batch of beer with light DME and several adjuncts (molasses, honey, oats, wheat berries) and hallertau hops. Came out 1.053 and I poured the watery top of my sourdough starter in. My starter is several years old and has a champagne like smell to it. It is now fermenting very well. Probably not the best idea, but I am very curious.
I’m curious. can’t wait to here how it turns out.
Me, too. I’ve got a lot of sourdough starter and it would be great to have something else to do with it.
The results are in the link in the original post. Bottom line it appears the yeast outcompeted the lactobacillus first in the starter and than in the wort. Perhaps there will be some post-ferment souring over time?
I am not expecting much in the way of sour taste. My starter is wild caught yeast and I would call the yeast mild compared to a traditional San Francisco sourdough. If you have wild yeast like mine I would say results will vary depending on the character of the yeast in your area. It makes me think I am just doing a type of open/spontaneous fermentation with an element of control involved by having already harvested the yeast.
Bottled this one today. My wife and I both tasted it and agreed that the yeast has more of a wine or champagne character to it. It also has a very up front “wild” character to it, very complex, more than I had expected. I forgot to check the FG on this :-, but it has a dry finish so I am sure it is done fermenting and had good attenuation. Will update when the bottles are carbed and ready for testing.
So I cracked a bottle open tonight and my wife and I had a tasting. She has better taste buds than I but we both had trouble describing the taste. She says it has a slight pear taste with a clean bread aroma and a slightly sour aftertaste. It is different from anything I have tasted, the yeast seems to be very up front in the flavor, with some definite funk and slight sourness at the end. Has a strong aroma also. Overall I would say it is a good beer, I wish I had a few more. I will make sure to keep one for a while and see how the taste changes. If you are curious I would try it out on a small batch first and see how it works. I may do a split recipe in the future so that I have a control to compare it to.
Just a side note that I forgot to mention. The blogger cited above said he had flocculation issues. I could see the haze of yeast near the top of the bottles for some time but after about 4 weeks in the bottle they cleared and I had no haze in the finished beer, so the yeast does settle when you give it time.
Lactobacillus needs warmth, so I think you’d need to keep the starter at 110 to get any sourness. I’d have two starters. One warm to promote the lacto, one cooler for yeasts. Cool the wort to 110, pitch lacto and let it cool to 70 on its own, then pitch yeast starter. Seems like starches might cause a problem too.