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Author Topic: Sourdough beer  (Read 2579 times)

Offline morticaixavier

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Sourdough beer
« on: July 29, 2013, 09:11:27 am »
Well,

I have started another project. this weekend I boiled up 65 grams of DME in 650 mL of filtered water and stirred in one large dollop of my sour dough starter.

This starter is pretty sour and has a nice but still restrained funk.

So far it has behaved like a normal sacc starter with about .5 inches white krausen with a little brown gunk on top. I'm going to let it go for a while before trying to step it up into an actual beer so I will see if a pellicle forms or anything.

"Creativity is the residue of wasted time"
-A Einstein

"errors are [...] the portals of discovery"
- J Joyce

Offline chezteth

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Re: Sourdough beer
« Reply #1 on: July 29, 2013, 10:48:13 am »
Sounds fun and interesting! I'll be interested to find out how it turns out.
Cheers,
Brandon

Offline Gary Glass

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Re: Sourdough beer
« Reply #2 on: July 29, 2013, 10:58:59 am »
I've contemplated something similar.  I had an interesting experience this week with some sourdough pancakes. I swapped the sugar in my pancake recipe with honey (just a couple of tablespoons worth) and then ended up with some left over batter.  After a week, the batter and the resulting pancakes had a distinct aroma of fermenting mead.

Hmmm pancake beer: Wheat with maple syrup and sourdough yeast?
Gary Glass
Longmont, Colorado

Offline morticaixavier

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Re: Sourdough beer
« Reply #3 on: July 29, 2013, 11:15:23 am »
I've contemplated something similar.  I had an interesting experience this week with some sourdough pancakes. I swapped the sugar in my pancake recipe with honey (just a couple of tablespoons worth) and then ended up with some left over batter.  After a week, the batter and the resulting pancakes had a distinct aroma of fermenting mead.

Hmmm pancake beer: Wheat with maple syrup and sourdough yeast?

Mmmm maple syrup.

I made some sourdough pancakes last weekend. I realized that the sourdough pancake recipe in the Joy of Cooking is essentially sourdough starter with 2 eggs and a tablespoon of sugar added. Which is great because I hate throwing the starter away but it builds up so fast. If I can pull 2-4 cups every couple of weeks to make pancakes it makes it much more manageable.
"Creativity is the residue of wasted time"
-A Einstein

"errors are [...] the portals of discovery"
- J Joyce

Offline morticaixavier

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Re: Sourdough beer
« Reply #4 on: July 31, 2013, 09:31:26 am »
Well  Karausen dropped yesterday so I took a reading on this (refractometer may not be perfectly accurate after fermentation starts but I figured it would give be a ball park and only require a few drops)

Corrected reading 1.012, down from 1.037 so not great but I think that was mostly sacc. There is a pretty strong acetic character and a little lactic funk/sourness. I've got a brew day coming up weekend after this so I can brew an extra gallon or two of wort and pitch some of this into that to see what happens and what it taste like with some hops in the mix.
"Creativity is the residue of wasted time"
-A Einstein

"errors are [...] the portals of discovery"
- J Joyce

Offline chezteth

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Re: Sourdough beer
« Reply #5 on: July 31, 2013, 04:47:38 pm »
Are you concerned about the acetic character taking over and becoming unpleasant?

Offline morticaixavier

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Re: Sourdough beer
« Reply #6 on: August 01, 2013, 08:38:03 am »
Are you concerned about the acetic character taking over and becoming unpleasant?

I am, yes. However I am reserving judgement because a) no hops in the starter, b)pretty well aerated and over pitched, and c) My palette is notorious for mistaking acetic for other acids and vice versa.

So since it'll only be a gallon and I can probably get that just by sparging a little bit on my next batch it doesn't seem like much of a risk.

If the acetic character does immediately take over and overwhelm everything else, I will try something I read on another sourdough thread on here. According to that account the liquid portion of the starter is supposed to favor lactic while the solid favors acetic. I have no idea if this is sound science but I will let the starter rest for a while and separate and try again with just the liquid portion.

I have also been thinking about manipulating the temp during step up phases to encourage some organisms over others. We'll see.
"Creativity is the residue of wasted time"
-A Einstein

"errors are [...] the portals of discovery"
- J Joyce

Offline morticaixavier

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Re: Sourdough beer
« Reply #7 on: November 29, 2013, 04:28:07 pm »
Well, I pitched that starter into ~1.5 gallons of 1.055 very lightly hopped wort left over in the mash tun from another brew and it has been sitting in the spare room ever since, looking back over the dates, at least 3 months I would say.

The beer has dropped bright and has a thin white dusty pellicle. Just pulled a small sample which read ~5 brix which if beersmith is to be trusted adjusts to -.97 plato.

Aroma is sour and funky but not acetic. some lacto a little fruit.

flavour is slightly too bitter (hops not old enough quite or too many) but otherwise quite nice, still slightly sweet which is interesting.

Anyway, figured I should update.
"Creativity is the residue of wasted time"
-A Einstein

"errors are [...] the portals of discovery"
- J Joyce