Sour Question

[grod31]

This thread has helped me gain insight already. thank you.

[beer_crafter]

There are some widely held beliefs about Roselare (and other blends) that people tend to follow (because experts state them) which could prevent your beer from being as sour as you'd like.

Belief #1: It's best to use a primary ale yeast strain and only use Roselare in the secondary. Roselare contains saccaromyces, and in my experience functions best as a mixed culture, pitched into wort with unfettered access to the sugars.

Belief #2. Don't make a starter or otherwise grow your culture, it will throw off the balance of organisms in the culture. While over many generations, this will be true, it isn't necessarily the best advice in the first generation.

Grow up a culture from your smack pack, directly pitch it into beer. Harvest and re-pitch. After a few batches you will notice a few things. The first is that the beer will get sour quickly. It won't be years, or even months. It will be weeks. At this point you can choose to use your culture on beer that has already been fermented in primary with ale yeast, or just pitch a healthy starter of ale yeast with your Roselare culture.

The final thing I'll say about Roselare is that it really works BEST in an oak barrel. It might be the Sherry Flor it contains, but every beer I've had that I made with Roselare in a barrel had a depth of complexity that glass-fermented Roselare beers just don't have.

[beer_crafter]

The other thing I'll add is that your best bet to make a VERY GOOD (as opposed to just "good) beer at this point is to keep your beer as-is, and brew a new beer where your target is to be very sour, and then work on blending them together.

[grod31]

Do you think adding oak chips could be adequate substitute for the "flor". I mean obviously adding a lil bit of oak cube is not a substitute for aging in barrels but if there is a relationship surely adding some oak would help.
another reason i'm thinking the barrel would help is because all the bugs have a place to live and hide inside of all those cracks like a sponge.
Id thats the case i would assume adding oak would still help for that same reason.
beer_crafter do you have experience adding oak staves/chips/cubes to sours? If so please share.

[brewinhard]

I can tell you that oak cubes/chips/staves, while good, do not compare to the depth of character you get from aging in a barrel. A barrel tends to provide more of an oaked roundness, rather than tannins like the former do. As for sour beers in barrels benefitting, this is also true due to the extended, slow micro-oxidation that occurs from the barrel itself over time slowly giving the wild yeast and other microbes dissolved oxygen to maintain their chemical processes allowing them to become more complex in character.

[beer_crafter]

Usually when I add spirals or cubes to a beer it is so that I can give the organisms a place to live, as opposed to really contributing an oak character. I agree with brewinhard though that they don't really compare to a barrel.