[FifthandSacchs]

Hi everyone, this is my first post so i hope ya'll don't go too hard on me! A little background on myself, I am a student studying Fermentation Science, who, after spending time in the military and the corporate world, took a leap into the unknown to pursue my passion for brewing.

I was hoping this may be a good place to do some research and ask other home brewers some questions for a class project I am working on about common issues with brewing sour beer and potential solutions. Some common tropes you hear about sour beer-making is that it may be time-consuming, potentially risky in contaminating your equipment, or the final product may not be consistent if you try to brew the same sour more than once.

For those that make sours, do you find that these are actually issues for you? Or are they a minor inconvenience? Do these issues keep you from brewing more sours? Are there other issues I did not mention? I know there are many methods to making a sour such as kettle souring, adding fruit/acid, acidulated malt, etc., each with their own pros and cons.

If a new type of product was developed that could help make a quality sour in a fraction of the time without risk of contamination, would you as a home brewer be interested in using it? Some examples that come to mind are using another microorganism such as Koji (Aspergillus oryzae) which produces Kojic acid, or some sort of concentrated acidic solution derived from fruits containing any assortment of acids. These are just examples to serve as reference.

Thank you all your input!

*Please note, I am not trying to solicit business. This is for a class project. Mods, please let me know if I need to modify this post. Thank you.

[denny]

At the latest homebrew conference, I tried a beer made with an experimental strain of cervisiae that sounds a lot like what you're talking about.  It comes  from Lallemand and you can expect to hear a lot more about it in the coming year.

[TeeDubb]

I just picked up a copy of "American Sour Beers" by Michael Tonsmeire and it could be a good reference for you. Chapter 4 talks about different microbes used for sour beer fermentation. You may even want to reach out to Michael directly - he co-owns a great microbrewery in Maryland that offers a variety of unique sour beers.

[kramerog]

I probably would not use a commercial source of acid to make a sour beer although I would consider tweaking the acidity of a sour beer with a commercial source of acid.  It's kind of like purchasing alcohol to make beer.

I make sake and makgeolli and don't foresee using koji.  Koji is expensive!

[reverseapachemaster]

Check out milk the funk on facebook and their corresponding wiki at http://milkthefunk.com/wiki for the answers to a lot of your questions. There are so many different methodologies in use today to make sour beer that the challenges and applicability of common tropes depend on which method you want to discuss.

There are several years of discussions in milk the funk on using koji and other aspergillus oryzae sources for fermentation if that is an area of interest for you. I've tried beers using koji and they are pretty good. The orange-floral flavors you find in sake, produced by the mold, come through nicely.

As an aside--I have my first batch of makgeolli going and planning to bottle it this afternoon.