I might suggest a mashout for this one to save some of the body to balance the acidity. I pitched pure lacto and still feel like I got some Parmesan aroma from the grain. Possibly because I didn't mash any higher than 150F. If you want to pitch fresh grain for bacteria it's your call but I don't think it will be clean. If I do this again I will probably do a mashout, lauter, clean and sanitize my mash tun and do a "kettle sour" in the mash tun without the grain. Probably bring the wort to a boil, cool and pitch wyeast 5335 lacto buchnerii for about 24 hours, and boil as normal from there. BYO did an article recently comparing different lacto and were able to achieve a pH around 3.5 in less than 24 hours with that strain.
Won't doing this contaminate your equipment?
So I was just told by my local homebrew guy to be careful while sour mashing because the lacto gets airborne and could contaminate my future brews. Is this true?
That's funny....
Lacto is on the grain...so that could happen with any beer......
I'm not an expert on sours, so take my advice with a grain of salt, but the sour mash will only risk things if, after a sour mash batch, you mash a normal beer one night, sparge and drain into your kettle and come back the next to do the boil for whatever reason. This gives the sweet wort plenty of contact time with some kind of lacto residing in your mash tun from a prior sour mash. If you do it as normal, which is to say you mash and sparge into a waiting boil kettle, boil, cool and ferment immediately, there is no time for the bacteria to have an affect before you kill them with the boil. I'm not sure what he is saying by it becoming airborne, there are PLENTY of things that could affect a beer if you don't properly sanitize your equipment, not just "airborne lacto" from a prior sour mash.
Again, don't quote me, but Brett gives a little more funk than lacto. Lacto is a very acidic souring, with a little twang. There are multiple strains of "Brett" as well, but it isn't normally known as giving the sourness people think of, that is other bacteria. It often accompanies sour beers it seems, and is lumped into the same category.
Here's a discussion i found on BA:
http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/brett-vs-sour.27853/
Just made this again, but with an acid malt mash, and I decided to do the whole mash and sparge before pitching the spike grain. It took awhile to get any sourness, about 3 days. After the boil, the sour seems to all but have dropped out. I'll see how this ends up progressing, but I'm not sure it's going to be sour enough for me. My raspberry version is everyone's favorite beer that I've brewed, so I'll probably be going back to the original method next time, and I might try fermenting with some WLP644 "Brett" to add some funkiness to it.
Brewed this s few months ago and used white and yellow nectarines instead of peaches. It was creaking amazing and impossible to stop drinking. Needless to say, I make making another batch. I was thinking of adding organic probiotic yogurt to introduce lacto strains. Anyone use this approach? Thoughts?
It took awhile to get any sourness, about 3 days.
I don't have a heat pad or anything, so I use my igloo water cooler mash tun, and wrap it in a blanket/sleeping bag. It starts around 120 and by the 3rd day it's usually around 80 or so.
I'm looking at getting a heat pad for it to keep the temps up a little better.
Thats a great idea. If you could spare a cooler, I have a set up that runs about $30. It involves installing a 120v heating element and a MH1210F temp controller.
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