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Hey all,
Anyone have something I can use for a base sour recipe to add fruit to? I am hoping to use kettle souring and no brett. Also if the recipe doesn't use wheat that would be a bonus. I have never tasted a sour beer before so I am pretty open minded. Some of the fruits I am hoping to experiment with are apricots, cranberry, cherry, raspberry, maybe blueberry.

For a kettle sour search here for Jimmy's Berliner recipe. I think that would be a pretty good start.

Oops. That one has wheat I think. <- bonehead

Use the same technique with a light pale ale grist.

Thanks Rob. Being completely ignorant about sour beers, why do people use high doses of wheat? Am I going to be missing anything by not using it? Any suggested subs if I use a pale ale as my base recipe?

Mike, for the most part when people talk sour beers, especially the coveted ones, they're referring to the kind you ferment for a year or more.

Those are usually fermented with a blend of saccharomyces with a combination of lacto, pedio, brett, or others. In that environment the "bugs" take a really long time to digest the carbs and remaining sugars to produce acids and complex flavours.

So most commonly a "base" sour recipe is a basic 70/30 (ballpark) 2row / wheat grist. Unmalted wheat is also used a lot in this context too. It gives more longer chain carbs for the brett and bacteria to go through slowly.

I think a Berlinner Weisse has a lot of wheat just because that's the style! Those beers are very light and low abv so I imagine you get a bit more body with the malted wheat.

Now, there are many other modern incarnations of quick soured / sour mash / kettle soured beer. This creates a completely different product than traditional / long sours. You could make a kettle soured pale ale, APA, IPA, or whatever you can think of. Best bet is to make something from a tried and true recipe for your first time IMHO.

The laco in a quick sour is in a high sugar environment - wort, not fermented beer. It's introduced after the mash and before the boil. The result is usually a one dimensional sour that can get quite sour. Less complexity and usually without the funk from a wild / long sour beer.

If you're interested in brewing sours I recommend the books Wild Brews and American Sour Beers. I've read them both in anticipation of my sour projects. I haven't brewed a kettle sour yet though.... soon.

Wheat often helps add body to sours.

I would replace the wheat with some oats since you're looking for lower gluten content.

Maybe 80% pils, 10% vienna, 10% oats, 1.050 OG or so? Not entirely dissimilar to the rare barrel's golden sour base but without the spelt and wheat (and a bit more oats)

Thanks Mitch. What Rob said about pale ales got me thinking that that might be the way to go for me. Im still formulating a plan but I think the oats is a brilliant idea. I will use your suggested recipe for batch 1 and go from there.

From what I'm gathering from blogs etc the sweetness to balance the sour will come the fruit additions so I don't need a lot of character malts to balance things out. Is that the basic idea, balance the sour against fruit like you would maltiness with bitterness in a normal beer?

Any tips on doing this with a Grainfather?

Mike, we've done several Berliners in the Grainfather, and they turn out beautifully. Jimmy's instructions suggest purging with CO2 to remove the oxygen, but all I have done to date is mashed in, reduced the Grainfather temp to 110F, dropped in a bag of unmilled grain, and covered the surface of the wort with plastic wrap to keep the oxygen out (because I'm lazy and purging with CO2 sounded like work...). I generally leave it for about 36 hours, but you can give it a light stir and check your pH periodically until you hit your target.

Jimmy is a wealth of info on this. He talked me through the first one, and the rest is history. I have a raspberry Berliner on tap now, and we're loving it.