[1vertical]

Taste an Orval. If you like that the bugs in that beer will rapidly colonize
your beer and make it sour.

[narvin]

A sour blend is a great place to start, but you'll get more complexity if you blend in dregs from commercial versions.  Pick one that you like and add it in to your beer in the secondary.

[hoser]

Taste an Orval. If you like that the bugs in that beer will rapidly colonize
your beer and make it sour.

I equate primarily lacobacillus and to some degree pediococcus with sour.  Brett is more "funk".  The only bug in Orval is Brettanomyces Buxellensis to my knowledge.  Don't get me wrong I love Orval and it's flavor, but there are varying degrees of funk and sour.  The wyeast roselare is your best bet for all of the above.  BTW, the roselare yeast is NOT a lambic blend.  It is a flanders blend, primarily Flanders Red (i.e. Rodenbach).

[thomasbarnes]

What i was thinking of using, just because i know it is at my LHBS, is the Belgian Lambic Blend (3278) from Wyeast. Maybe i could just brew a test batch with that and see how it turns out? Then i can taste other sours and get an idea of what mine is lacking and how to improve it.

It couldn't hurt to try making a regular beer with a lambic blend and see what happens; just back down on the hops, since hop bitter and sourness don't blend well. You'll need to be patient though, since some of the bugs in lambic blend can take a while to take off. Lambic brewing takes months and years of slow fermentation, and the beer will change in character over time. Also, initially, you might be tempted to throw the beer out when you taste it. Just let it go and see how it develops.

If you're set on making lambics, do a web search for "p-lambic" - there's a lot of good information out there. (The p- part is short for "pseudo-" since you're deliberately inoculating your wort rather than trusting to wild fermentation.)

Way back when, in the last millennium, Brewers Publications issued a "Brewing Classic Styles" book on Lambic by Pierre Xavier Guinard. It's long out of print and is expensive to buy used, but you can get a copy via Interlibrary Loan.

[thomasbarnes]

I'd say try out a Berliner weisse if you want to try out a sour ale for the first time. It's very straightforward, easy to tweak, and a rarity among popular beer styles today, which of course makes you cool.

It's also a delicious summer beer.