Blending sours

[darkalex]

Hey BN Army,

I had a Flanders red and Belgian Specialty in secondary (both on Roeselare blend) since Jan 2011 and just went in for a taste. The Flanders is a little too acetic and the Specialty, while funky, didn’t sour at all. My solution was blending the two beers (70:30 and 30:70,) which I did in purged Cornelius kegs. The plan is to maintain about 5 psi of head pressure on the kegs and keep them at 63F for a couple weeks or months before tasting. Do you agree? What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Alexander

[brewinhard]

Sounds like a good plan to me! Did you blend with those ratios before kegging to see if they would work for your or just wing it and hope for the best? I have blended many sours (some for the better, and some for the worse). If the blend does not work out at first for you, then you could always save it for a later blending session which it might work better in. Sometimes asking other brewing friends if they have any beers for blending works well too and helps to increase the complexity of the blended product.

[darkalex]

I withdrew just over 100 ml of each beer using a wine thief and did the blending in a 100 ml graduated cylinder. I tried the ratios 70:30, 50:50, and 30:70. My favorite was the 70:30 un-soured to soured beer. I then blended the beers into the Cornelius kegs, one non-offensive beer and one acid beer. To your point, I have a friend that brewed a Flanders that he had difficultly souring over the year, so a blending session may be the only choice for the acid beer that I have.

Alexander