Reddit reviews American Sour Beers
We found 29 Reddit comments about American Sour Beers. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
American Sour BeersPaperbackby Michael Tonsmeire
Reddit reviews American Sour BeersWe found 29 Reddit comments about American Sour Beers. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
The main differences between sours and "standard brews" is the addition of bacteria and Brett yeasts in addition to Sac yeasts, a much lower AA% to allow those bacteria to grow, a mash that allows some unmodified starches into the wort to feed the bugs, and... time- fermentation takes at least six months and more realistically years.
Get /u/oldsock 's book American Sour Beers and check our his Mad Fermentationist website.
It's super fun and rewarding to brew sours. You should do it and ignore all the people that say get two separate sets of gear. They are wrong and I will fight them.
The Mad Fermentationist has quite a bit of information on his blog about the production of sours and wild ales. Links to his site and the book he wrote below.
Site: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/11/brewing-sour-beer-at-home.html
Book: http://www.amazon.com/American-Sour-Beers-Michael-Tonsmeire/dp/1938469119/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427060330&sr=8-1&keywords=american+sour+beers
A great resource for this is American Sour Beers, and the author's site: The Mad Fermentationist.
Both great resources with some excellent recipes that I am making good use of now that I am getting into lambics and wild fermentation.
Also, Dr. Miller (aka Dr. Lambic) has a good site - Sour Beer Blog I think.
That recipe will work great for a base beer, but do give this a read first
Cheers! If anyone still needs to order, you can use this Amazon Associates link to give me a slightly larger cut at no cost to you!
I've read Designing Great Beers and it's a great resource as a style guide, but it leans much more towards the empirical side when it comes to explaining things. If you're looking for something a little more scientific and data-driven there are some other really good options.
Suggestions:
/ Yeast
/ Malt
/ Hops - Very specific and science driven focus on each element.
Someone might come along and tackle your list of Qs but sounds like you could use a book or two.
https://www.amazon.com/American-Sour-Beers-Michael-Tonsmeire/dp/1938469119
https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Brews-Beyond-Influence-Brewers/dp/0937381861
/u/oldsock's new book comes out April 7th. That seems like a prudent time to do an ABRT on Cat 17 :)
Depends on who you ask. If you ask someone who wrote a book about sours, the general answer is that no beers work well with a sour mash. Sour worting is the preferred method.
If you are still pretty new, you'll want to be comfortable making clean beers before trying your hand at sour and wild beers. There are so many factors that go into sour/wild ales, that you'll definitely want to have your brewing process down because one small variable can have a huge impact on the final product more so than a clean beer.
That out of the way, nothing says you can't start reading up on it. A good resource on sours is American Sour Beers by Michael Tonsmeire and his website The Mad Fermentationist, which has a bunch of recipes. I also highly recommend the Milk the Funk website, wiki, and Facebook group.
This is my full list of books from /r/homebrewing but it includes pro level books:
New Brewers:
Continued Learning:
Specialty/Advanced/Other:
Business Books:
Technical Readings (Textbooks might be expensive):
Brewing a sour can be only slightly more difficult (if kettle sour) or painfully tedious (if cold side sour) from a normal beer.
Assuming you know the standard process, kettle souring is throwing a bug into the sweet wort after you collect from the mash but before you boil (and depending on the bug, you might need to chill this first). You then get to sit on your pot and wait overnight to 2 days for the bacteria to get a foot hold and drop your pH to a respectable low 3 or high 2. Then you boil it and continue like normal.
Cold side sours are just like making a normal beer. The only major difference is you can't put a lot of hops in the boil since most sour cultures don't like them. Where it becomes tedious is after everything is done you need to super clean all of your gear or every beer you make from now on will be a sour.
Some great reading on how to make sour beer in your own home is the book American Sour Beers by u/oldsock
Yes, he lives in DC. He consulted (or consults?) with Modern Times in CA. He wrote American Sour Beers which I highly recommend. He's also pretty active in /r/homebrewing answering questions from people like me who are just getting into making sour beers.
It's all about taste and palettes. If you don't like sours, that's fine. A lot of folks don't. I gather the recent shift isn't far different than the lupulin threshold shift. It's my perception that sour fan-boi's are a bit more strong in their opinions and beliefs due to the amount of time and effort that goes into creating proper, delicious sour beers. An excellent IPA can be cranked out in less than a month, while sour beers require many months, even years to make, and require some advanced techniques such as blending in order to achieve a desired flavor or for consistency. Some may come off as elitists, or beer snobs because of this extra effort required, which isn't going to help them bring more to their cause.
It also may have something to do with the recent release of /u/oldsock's book back in June, which is one of the only really well written books on sour beers. Even if you don't like them, it's a great book to read through, as it really does open your eyes to just how complex they can be, and why their is such an appreciation for them among their loyal tasters.
If you're going the sour route and venture away from strictly Belgian styles, u/oldsock has a great book called American Sour Beers that I would recommend picking up.
Wild Brews is a great book if you're interested in Belgian style wild beers (i.e. Flanders and lambic style). As others mentioned, /u/oldsock's blog is a great all around resource, and he's also coming out with a book that's bound to be good.
I just picked up American Sour Beers, By Michael Tonsmeire and have found it to be VERY informative as well.
Highly recommend this book...http://www.amazon.com/American-Sour-Beers-Michael-Tonsmeire/dp/1938469119/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1425833232&sr=8-1&keywords=American+Sour
I realized over the weekend, to give credit where it's due, I got this information from Michael Tonsmere's book and not from Chad Yakobson. Sorry!!! (It's a great book FYI, definitely worth a read)
http://www.amazon.com/American-Sour-Beers-Michael-Tonsmeire/dp/1938469119/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
Well you can spontaneously ferment the beer using wild yeast in the air, use the yeast leftover from the cider, or pitch a lab culture of sour yeast, just as you would for regular yeast. The easiest method would be to clean and sanitize the 1 gal carboy and your 5 gallon carboy on your brew day, and then rack 1 gallon into the smaller carboy then rack the rest into your 5 gallon. Then, pitch a sour culture into the smaller and your other yeast as you would normally into the 4 gallon carboy. http://www.milkthefunk.com is a good place to read about these other yeasts, and I would recommend reading http://www.amazon.com/American-Sour-Beers-Michael-Tonsmeire/dp/1938469119 as well.
Might as well pick this up and learn from the guy whose yeast you're using!
I'm "advanced" over there and can attest that those fairs mean nothing.
oldsock, the guy who wrote the book on American sours, also has "advanced" as well as someone who told me the other month that you can just drop frozen fruit in your beer and not worry about it souring.
Je te conseil ste livre la : https://www.amazon.ca/How-Brew-Everything-Right-First/dp/0937381888 sinon, son site web gratuit : http://www.howtobrew.com/ Je sais pas si il est a jour comparer au livre. Ya eu plusieurs découverte de brassage depuis quelques années. C'est un super de bon livre avec la grande majorité des choses que t'as besoin de savoir concernant le brassage de la bière et c'est super bien expliqué.
r/homebrewing peux t'aider aussi. Super belle communauté consacrer au brassage de biere et plein de gens qui veulent t'aider. Incluant John Palmer lui même (auteur de How to Brew).
Ya aussi ste gars la qui fais des cherches sur des bieres historique anglaise : http://barclayperkins.blogspot.ca/ Super de bon stock qui t'apprend les ancien type biere avant la révolution industriel et les guerres qui a eux qui a tout changer.
Je recommande aussi http://brulosophy.com/. Super de bon blog qui teste des mythes de brassage de façon scientifique et les prouve correcte ou non.
Tout ca c'est le brassage de biere de type Anglais. Si tu veux du stuff de biere belge (ce qu'on a beaucoup au Quebec) je te recommande la serie - Brewing Farmhouse Ales, Brew like a Monk et Brewing with Wheat. https://www.amazon.ca/Farmhouse-Ales-Craftsmanship-European-Tradition/dp/0937381845/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519234800&sr=1-1&keywords=brewing+farmhouse+ale&dpID=51oI7VkdTwL&preST=_SY264_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch
Si tu cherche du stuff des biere Allemande/Czech je te conseil ste livre la : Brewing Lager Beer : https://www.amazon.ca/New-Brewing-Lager-Beer-Comprehensive/dp/0937381829/ref=pd_sim_14_18?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=YJKTZ5QSPD8KH7MZQ48Z
ET Si tu cherche plus des recettes qui fonctionne que son selon les styles BJCP, je te conseil ste livre la : https://www.amazon.ca/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500/ref=pd_bxgy_14_img_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=S5CFF5PGSYQN6YW5HNZH
Si tu cherche du stuff concernant les biere surrette (Lambic, Brett, Lacto etc) regarde ste livre la : https://www.amazon.ca/American-Sour-Beer-Michael-Tonsmeire/dp/1938469119/ref=pd_sim_14_9?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=DF5N9XVQ8FWQCNK6NKS3
Je connais malheureusement pas de literature en francais.
Sur ce bonne chance et lache pas! C'est super interessant!
The Mad Fermentationist, aka /u/oldsock blog, is a great place to start and also check out his book on amazon.
check out www.themadfermentationist.com There is a lot of good information there about sour beers. There is also a book on American sour beers that was recently released. If you are really interested on learning everything about making sour beers you should get this book.
Coincidentally, I just read a tiny bit about this topic in American Sour Beers this morning! Russian River tops off their barrels and haven't noticed a significant difference. It's recommended to rack it in to keep the pellicle intact as much as possible.
I don't think I'd be able to add anything from experience on this type of beer. I know with mead, we add them right in the beginning and so there is a lot of CO2 production eliminating oxygen in the fermenter (and we do punch downs and pump overs for the first 4 days to keep the fruit cap wetted). I'll have to defer to /u/oldsock on this - if you haven't, I suggest picking up his book American Sour Beers --- I'll have to go back and review some of the advice in that book about when to add fruit, for how long, and if cap management is suggested for fruit in secondary. Honestly, it might be mold but your beer is probably fine regardless. I'd be more worried about oxidation but if you have some brett in there you might not have a problem. You'll have to use your organoleptic faculties to make your own determination in the end, I guess.
For a detailed source on the topic, I recommend this book. While it focuses on American sours, it also discusses the origins of them in Europe.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1938469119/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_GUH7yb1V0QZRT
I've got something similar, but what I'd like to try the hefe at least but I'm not a big fan of Breck's NVP compared to the regular? The BJCP guidelines are just a bunch of them in Europe. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1938469119/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_GUH7yb1V0QZRT.
What did you think of Water? I thought it was quite an interesting read... big fan of Palmer's writing style.
Have you checked out American Sour beers by /u/oldsock ? I have it, but haven't got a chance to read it yet.