I had the perfect plan: week one, brew a 2.5gal Saison. week 2, rack the first beer into the secondary then rack the big big Xmas beer onto the yeast cake. Perfect.
Well, after 10 hours of painfully brewing the Xmas beer with inadequacy equipment, I began racking the Saison into the secondary and noticed a little different smell, but didn't bother to think about it or even taste the beer (brain dead by this time). I then started to rack the Xmas beer then decided to taste the little bit of the first beer and it was "sour".
The second big beer has OG of 1.086 and IBUs about 40. Used pure oxygen (newest gizzmo)
What are the chances of the Christmas beer being drinkable/good? I was thinking if it fermented fast enough into the 10%+ alcohol range, it might make it very difficult for the bacteria to do much damage. Also the high IBU could help also.
Not a sour beer person (only had one before), but the saison didn't taste too bad. Kind of an apple-cidery taste, so I plan to bottle some of it and see what people think. My sister digs the sour beers so I can try and unload on her.