Sourdough Beer

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PhilT1

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Sep 28, 2016
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Anyone here have experience fermenting their home brew with a sourdough culture?

My Dad has a 3 year old sourdough culture he let me experiment with, I have absolutely no idea what cell counts I'm dealing with so who knows whether I've been over or under pitching... some promising results so far though:

1st try - Simple Saison Dupont clone recipe, pitched small amount of culture at 30C (sorry, I'm English), shot to 1.002 in 4 days for 6.5% ABV. Very happy with this one, it tastes like a cross between Duvel and Saison Dupont. As expected the hops stopped the lacto doing it's thing.

2nd try - No hop all pils, fermented at 30C, was shooting for around 4% ABV but the yeast took it down to 1.002 again, good level of acidity, added raspberry and apricot, perfect summer beer, just lacking a touch of bitterness to balance it out, otherwise very clean lacto sour (any suggestions for bittering without hops?).

3rd try - Used my smoked porter recipe and fermented around room temp (about 18-20C), fermented quick down to 1.008 for 7.9% ABV, yeast is remarkably neutral at this temperature and no acidity because of the hops. Dangerously drinkable.

I know results will vary depending on the culture but I'd be very interested to hear anyone else's experiences with sourdough fermentations!
 
A friend of mine did the opposite. He asked for some of my culture which was a combination of tons of Brett, pedio, lacto (might be dead), and sacch.

His friend used it in his sourdough and said it markedly improved the flavor, giving it much more funky character than he had been getting.
 
said it markedly improved the flavor, giving it much more funky character

I don't brew but I bake and the summer is when I bake the most. I'm sold on trying this as my sourdough culture is very neutral tasting (highlights grain changes well). How did you hand off the culture to your friend? did you do it after brewing like for spent grain? or fresh yeast straight from your culture?
 
I don't brew but I bake and the summer is when I bake the most. I'm sold on trying this as my sourdough culture is very neutral tasting (highlights grain changes well). How did you hand off the culture to your friend? did you do it after brewing like for spent grain? or fresh yeast straight from your culture?
When I bottle I dump the trub into a bunch of little sanitized containers with screw tops and stick them in the fridge. I just gave him one that I had at the time.
 
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