[James K]

Does anyone have experience with good belly or any other probiotic that could go into beer for souring? I want to try something, who knows what, but was interested in quantities used, length of fermentation, and when to pitch.

Seems like more an ingredient question than yeast or fermentation.

Again, have used ever used probiotics such as good belly for souring?

[Stevie]

Best info can be found here.

http://www.milkthefunk.com/wiki/Alternative_Bacteria_Sources
http://sourbeerblog.com/designing-brewing-berliner-weisse/

[MonyTenzel]

Yea, MTF wiki is probably your best bet if your looking to make something sour/funky. I would also check out Sour Beer Blog.

My experience with using good belly is to go the "kettle sour" route. My method is to make a simple berliner/saison grist (pils/wheat/mo), mash at 150, aiming for a gravity of 1.040 ish. Mash higher if you're worried about the beer being too thin. The beer is then boiled for 5 minutes, no hops, and racked to a carboy. Avoid aeration. I typically brew 5.5 gals and then top off with a half carton of Good Belly so that my carboy is filled to the neck. I keep the fermenter warm, usually around 105F. By the next day I'm typically somewhere around a pH of 3.2-3.6.

After this you conduct a normal boil to kill the lacto, drive off lingering dms, and for adding hops. Keep in mind that bitter and sour don't mesh well, so I'd keep it to late additions. I'm partial to some amarillo at flameout. From here you can pick your yeast. WLP644 works wonders, the fruity esters work great with the lactic lemony flavors.

I wouldn't recommend good belly for a long term souring, I'd recommend the sour beer dreg route if your looking to accomplish that.

[jjflash]

I use Good Belly for all my lambics and use the kettle souring technique.
Then gets racked to wood barrels for the next few years with Wyeast Roeselare.
Works great for me.

[austin6455]

I've used the goodly mango for a couple of Berliners. I pitched them in primary and let the sit around 90 for 2 days or so, then pitch my yeast. I usually get down to a pH of about 3.2-3.4 or so in 48 hours with two shots of it from the four packs.

I would highly recommend the milk the funk wiki. They have all the info you could ever ask for in regards to sour brewing.