Sour Part 2: Restartering




 After figuring out what we did wrong, and there was a lot, we decided to give Sour Ales another chance. Not right away of course, we had to wait for that wound to heal. But now here we are, almost a full year later and wiser, ready to take another shot at it.

We did a lot of research this time around. The Milk the Funk Wiki was especially helpful to understand to science side of things, as was relentlessly asking questions to our friends who sour. Through this reading and badgering, we found the first thing that we needed to change: the lactobacillus strain we used was the wrong one.

So we got the right one. The other thing we didn't do, despite the strain, was start it. Making the starter, like you would with liquid yeast, will increase the volume of cells that you are going to incorporate into the beer. One of the myriad reason that our first attempt to sour took so long was that we didn't have enough bacterium to efficiently sour the beer. So we made a starter (procedure at the end) on Wednesday. 

One of the factors that we took into consideration with more fervor this time around was temperature. The bugs need to be within a certain temperature range to be the most active. So we got a FermWrap, a vinyl wrap that you plug in and it will keep stuff warm. In this case we wanted it to hover between 85-95 degrees Fahrenheit. What happens now is a bunch of waiting around for the bacterial cells to reproduce and we get 100-150 million lacto cells to add and sour up our beer. 

This process should start 5-7 days before the brewday so that the bacterium are ready and numerous enough to work properly. 

We did this on Wednesday, and now that it's a couple days later, we have seen some success in keeping he temperature stable with the FermWrap, so we are optimistic that our bugs are getting after it in the flask and doing their jobs.


STARTER

This procedure is for a 1L, 1.020 starter

Bring 1L distilled water to a boil.
Add 60g Light DME
Simmer for 15 minutes to dissolve the DME and sterilize it
Chill to 90F (32 degrees Celsius)
Pour starting solution into Erlenmeyer Flask
Add Bacterial strain
Cap and airlock the flask and figure out a way to keep it warm
Wait for 5-7 days 


Now we wait and see....

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