Any tips for using sour mix yeast (WLP655)?

Stoat on a rope · Post by **Stoat on a rope** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 4:10 pm

Hi all

Ive recently taken a shine to lambics but due to their price and limited availability i bought some WLP655 sour mix yeast in an attempt to poduce my own sour beer.

Has any one used it before and have any tips for grain bill?

Also, can i get away with a standard mash if im using this yeast? I assume this yeast removes the need for a sour mash but do i need to so something at special at mashing to feed the brett. ped. and lac.?

I know there are many brewers out there that would rather drink from mystery containers in hospitals than drink sour beer, so any help from other freaks such as myself would be greatly appreciated

Cheers!

dave-o · Post by **dave-o** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:06 pm

My "sour" experience is with Berliner Wiesse, not Lambic, but there are a few similarities.

Berliner Weisse wort has only a 15 minute boil, and is still very cloudy when it's put into the fermenter, but still gets down as low as 1.001. I would assume this is because Lacto doesn't really need much encouragement to get stuck into whatever vaguely-fermentables it's offered!

I'd think you'll get so much sourness from the non-yeasty beasties than you don't need to do a sour mash too.

This is probably not a great deal of use but i've enjoyed talking about Berliner Weisse and Lacto anyway!

Stoat on a rope · Post by **Stoat on a rope** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 5:32 pm

Cheers dave-o, its certainly a start, i will have a look into the style. it will be interesting having a beer finish so low, ive never had one go below 1010 before!

i had some wheat arrive yesterday so im tempted to use that in the brew now too.

Patterd Ale · Post by **Patterd Ale** » Thu Jan 05, 2012 10:10 pm

Of no value to your question Mr Stoat, however I love your brewery logo and would like to apply that king of style to my scribblings. May I ask how you went about it? I have little IT talent! Cheers PA

pantsmachine · Post by **pantsmachine** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:23 am

Buy 'Wild brews' and read it a few times. Excellent source.

Stoat on a rope · Post by **Stoat on a rope** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:51 am

I too am computer illiterate, it's taken me several months to just get my profile picture back up! I started by drawing up some sketches on paper and got a friend of a friend to use them as inspiration to make the logo in exchange for homebrew! I then tweaked the logo on the computer. I used Corel draw x5 at work, I've had to learn how to use it for a project, after a bit of playing around its fairly straight forward, and I understand other programs like illustrator and photoshop are pretty similar. The problem with these program's is they can do anything you want, it's just not always easy finding how to do it.

I'm pretty fond of the logo, last year my parents registered it as a trademark for my birthday

Stoat on a rope · Post by **Stoat on a rope** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 12:52 am

Excellent thanks pants, will check it out!

richc · Post by **richc** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:01 am

I did a Lambic using the wyeast lambic yeast over Christmas, obviously I've no idea if it will turn out any good but here is what I did....

The basic recipe was

3kg Pilsner Malt
2kg Unmalted Wheat

25g heat aged Mt Hood Hops.

Firstly the heat ageing, the hops sat in an 80C oven for about 90 minutes until they started to brown.

Next a cereal mash, the unmalted wheat and .5kg of the Pilsner malt plus 8l of water was held at 60C for 20 minutes then boiled for half an hour.

The resultant sludge was put into the mash tun and water added to adjust to 65C.

The rest of the grain was added and 70C water to get the temperature back to 65C. A conventional 1.5 hour mash and batch sparge followed. Interestingly this gave a very cloudy wort, which I sort of expected at 1.033 (25l).

1.5 hour boil and cool went very normally leaving 18.5l at 1.042. Pitched the wyeast lambic blend yeast (yes, sort of cheating) and we will see what we end up with next year.....

Stoat on a rope · Post by **Stoat on a rope** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:26 pm

I've got pilsner malt, I was thinking using it too. My wheat is malted so won't need to do the cereal mash. Might contemplate a stepped mash though.

I like the aged hop process. Most of my hops are punchy, typically new world stuff. Could be an opportunity to try something a bit different...

dave-o · Post by **dave-o** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 1:31 pm

Patterd Ale wrote:Of no value to your question Mr Stoat, however I love your brewery logo and would like to apply that king of style to my scribblings. May I ask how you went about it? I have little IT talent! Cheers PA

If you can create a logo in any format that can be emailed, i can do the "IT stuff" for you to get it in your sig if you'd like.

Patterd Ale · Post by **Patterd Ale** » Fri Jan 06, 2012 6:03 pm

Thanks for the advice, and thats a very kind offer dave-o. I will see what I can do. I love the stylised look of the stoat and would like my logo similar, except it is of two terriers! Cheers both, PA

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