Beer Forum

Im getting ready to brew a strong belgian dark ale and I want to spit the batch and make half of it sour. How should i go about doing this? Brettanomyces? I also want to incorporate sour cherries and currants.

Depending on how sour you want this to be then I would most likely start by adding a pack of WY Roselare blend or WL sour mix. This will give you a good healthy population of brett, lacto, and pedio. Depending on your IBU levels and residual sugars remaining in the beer will determine how sour your beer becomes (and about a good year of time). If you want the beer to be moderately to intensely sour I highly recommend augmenting your original sour pitch with some bottle dregs of sour beers that you enjoy. Anything from Cantillon, Drie Fontenien, Russian River, and/or Jolly Pumpkin will kick the beer up a notch in terms of acidity, funk and sourness. Let the critters ferment the beer for at least 6 mos before adding the currants and cherries. This gives the wild ones more time to take hold of the beer before adding additional fermentables which will help further sour the beer. Currants and cherries have quite a bit of acidity, so tasting the beer before adding the fruit at the 6 mos mark will give you a good indication as to how much fruit to add if additional acidity is desired.

cool thanks. im probably gonna save making a sour for later due to being inbetween schools and cities, i wont be able to let a carboy sit around for that long.