Sour Wort: Wild Red Velvet

I think a lot of fans of sour beers such as Lambics and Flanders Reds have been intrigued by Matt Lange's "Funk with Less Fuss" sour mash technique described in Zymurgy, 34:2. The process, in short, is to first create a "sour starter" bacterial culture from a pint of water, a tablespoon or two of raw honey, and a couple of tablespoons of crushed malt. You keep the culture at 100 ºF for three days, growing a Lactobacillus bacteria with the smell of sour green apples. You then use this bacterial culture to inoculate the boiled and cooled 100 ºF wort, and again let the wort sour at a constant 100 ºF over a twelve to twenty-four hours.

Pint jar containing malted grains, water, and raw honey, sitting inside my fermenting cabinet wrapped in a heating blanket.

In my research around the homebrew forums, I dug up a few items about a beer style from before Prohibition that was called Kentucky Common Sour Mash. The style is one of three styles created in the United States, along with Cream Ale and California Common, or Steam Beer. Though we might also need to add India Black Ale to the style books if modern brewing history is taken into account.

My friend, Sean, and I were both interested in making a Red Ale, so I somehow talked him into pitching in on the 7 Bridges Organic Red all-grain kit from, you guessed it, 7 Bridges Co-op. The kit seemed like a nice choice for a Red, but I then dug up a more interesting higher gravity example from the AHA website called Red Velvet, created by Donny Hummel. By the time I bought the grains and hops I would need to upgrade to Red Velvet, our expenses had nearly doubled from the amount we had spent on the kit to begin with.

I need a bigger mash kettle. And a second kettle for the boil. Any heat addition caused the mash to overflow my 8 gallon kettle. Photo: Sean Frego

Then, as brew day crept closer, I kept thinking about sour mashing. In his article, Lange included a recipe for a Sour Brown Ale that made me think, "A Brown is not all that different from a Red, and some of my favorite beers are Flanders Sour Reds." So three days ago I started the culture, and today we inoculated 6 1/2 gallons of wort with indigenous Lactobacillus. I can't wait to see how this comes out.

I've never smelled anything quite exactly like the bacterial culture from malt and honey. But now, after becoming familiar with it, I catch whiffs of it all around. Photo: Sean Frego

Half empty or half full jar of inoculant. At this point, the thought crossed my mind, "what if this ruins a perfectly good batch of Red Ale?" Photo: Sean Frego

I carefully pour the Lactobacillus culture into the 100 ºF wort. Photo: Sean Frego.

After a short boil and cool down of the wort, we carefully laid aluminum foil across the top of the kettle to help reduce the surface contact with oxygen, then pressed the lid down and set the pot into my insulated brewing cabinet. The compartment is thermostat controlled to a constant 100 ºF with a heating blanket from the winter months.

Keep the wort temperature as close as possible to 100 ºF for 12 to 24 hours.

Meanwhile, I boiled down and perhaps somewhat caramelized the 1 1/2 gallons second runnings till it was a thick and tasty syrup that fit into two pint jars with a few spoonfuls left over. I'll add this back to the boil kettle once the proper amount of sourness is achieved from the Lactobacillus.

24 hours later, I continued the boil with hop additions. During the boil, my son yelled 30 feet across the driveway to me, "Dad, it smells like blackberries. Are you making a fruit beer?."

I racked just over 6 gallons to a 6 1/2 gallon carboy, pitched the yeast, and begin fermenting at a cool 60 ºF. Original gravity came to 1.052, but after 24 hours I added a pound of boiled and cooled organic cane sugar to the fermenter to raise the OG a little.

Here's the recipe and directions I came up with for this first try at an India Sour Red Ale:

Wild Red Velvet

All Grain

A full bodied sour red ale, with a mix of West Coast hop bitterness and Kentucky sourness along with a touch of mellow American oak.

Ingredients for 6 gals:

14 lbs. Briess organic pale 2-row malt


3 lbs. Organic Flaked Rye

3 1/2 lbs. Briess organic Munich malt

1 lb. Briess organic40 °L crystal malt


1 lb. Briess organic caramel 60 ^oL malt


8 oz. Briess organic caramel 120 ^oL malt

10 oz Victory malt


4 oz. Briess organic chocolate malt

1 pound organic cane sugar made from 1 lb cane sugar and juice of one lemon


1 oz. Magnum hops, 14.4% A.A. (60 min)

1/2 oz. Organic American Summit hop pellets- bittering (25 IBU)
 (60 min)

1 oz. Summit whole hops, 16% A.A. (20 mi)

1 oz. Organic American Cascade hop pellets- flavor (8 IBU) (7 min)

½ oz. Organic New Zealand Hallertaur hop pellets- aroma (5 min)

½ oz. Amarillo Gold hops, 7.5% A.A. (0 min)

1 ½ oz. Centennial hops, 8.5% A.A. (0 min)

1 ½ oz. Amarillo Gold whole hops (dry hop 7 days)

1 ½ oz. Centennial whole hops (dry hop 7 days)

White Labs WLAB001 California Ale yeast

Irish Moss (15 min)


Servomyces capsule (15 min)

Armagnac soaked oak cubes (7 days)

OG: 1.052 before candi sugar syrup addition.
FG: 1.016

DIRECTIONS

Create Bacterial Culture: Three days before brew day, take two tablespoons of malt and add it to a pint of 100 degree F water and a couple tablespoons of honey in a canning jar. Solution should be low gravity, about 1,030 OG. Loosely fit the lid to the jar, and keep at 100 degrees F for three days. pH should end up between 3.8 and 4.3. Strain out the grain and use the liquid to inoculate the wort. The culture should have a pleasant, tart smell, not unlike green apples.

Mash grains at 152 °F (66 °C) for 75 minutes. Add 4 teaspoons of gypsum to charcoal filtered mash water and 1 teaspoon of Burton Salts.

Bring Wort to a boil, then cool to 100 ºF and pitch Bacterial Culture. Sour the wort for 12 to 24 hours at 100 ºF. Smell or taste the sour wort to decide when it is sour enough. Keep in mind that the beer will taste more sour once most of the sugar has been converted to alcohol by the yeast.

Once the wort is sour to your liking, boil for 90 minutes, following the hop additions schedule.

Oxygenate wort and pitch yeast at 60 °F (16 °C). Ferment at 66 °F (19 °C). Raise temperature to 68 °F (20 °C) as fermentation slows (after about 1 week). Dry hop finished beer at 68 °F (20 °C) for 7 days. Crash to 30 °F (-1 °C) for four days. Bottle and carbonate for one week at room temperature. Condition for two weeks at 54 ºF.

Lightening Strike Brewery converted Ikea cabinet with insulated fermentation pods.

Sour Red Velvet Ale with ice packed around to bring primary down to 60  ºF.