The Bar Towel

The principle behind a sour mash seems to be that you can get everything over and done with in about a day, before you even start brewing. No wonder the beer tastes unlike anything else.

That may be a side benefit but strictly from a brewers perspective, confining live lactobacillus to one vessel (the mash tun) before the wort boil kills it, is relative insurance it won't infect any other equipment in the brewery thus souring/ruining other beers....for a brewer making several varieties of beer to which lacto is a full blown infection issue, this makes sense.

I note that the major Euro sour ale makers make only this single style of beer in one facility ( eliminating infecting other beers they may make with the lacto).

As for the aromas and tastes that tasters are getting from the "good" version...these are certainly not to BJCP style template...but, as I say we have never had full sour mash ale before...and then there's the possibility of whether the lacto is the proper strain for the style and the quantity correct....sour cheese smells indicate that maybe this isn't ale strain lacto.

At any rate I have to try this now, fresh. and in a year or so from cellared bottles to judge is sour mash ale is my cup of tea.

I have to agree with Pootz that beer handling in a facility is the biggest issue in putting out a product like this. We spend all of our time trying to control bacterial growth in our brewery and the notion of rampant growth of beer spoilers is a daunting thought.

That being said, GRB is presently working on a sour red ale but I hope to deep six it into aging for an extended period in our grundy tanks and I hope not to cross contaminate the rest of the system while doing it. Sometimes you have to take a chance. I look at it as a beer we can hold and release when it is appropriately aged.

Rob Creighton wrote: That being said, GRB is presently working on a sour red ale but I hope to deep six it into aging for an extended period in our grundy tanks and I hope not to cross contaminate the rest of the system while doing it. Sometimes you have to take a chance. I look at it as a beer we can hold and release when it is appropriately aged.

Sweet! Good luck Rob.

Rob Creighton wrote:I have to agree with Pootz that beer handling in a facility is the biggest issue in putting out a product like this. We spend all of our time trying to control bacterial growth in our brewery and the notion of rampant growth of beer spoilers is a daunting thought.

this is the part that always makes me curious: if it's so terrifying to have these bugs in the brewery, what about the fact that grain is covered in them? do you go through level 3 hazmat cleanup after grinding/mashing/etc to make sure the bugs don't get elsewhere? do you confine grain/mash to far away from your fermentation/bottling area?

even if you do all the above, won't cleaning+sanitizing kill it all anyway?

there are breweries that do a mix of bug and non-bug beers and it works out ok. russian river, lost abbey/port brewing, new belgium, new glarus, and others too. i'm sure there's some measure of caution to be taken, but some folks make it sound like "life or death", and it really can't be that bad

i have bags of grain all over my basement, right beside my fermenters, right beside where i'm transferring/bottling/etc. never had a problem here. i'm not foolish enough to grab a handful of grain and stick my hand in a fermenter, but i'd feel perfectly comfortable if i washed + sanitized in between.

grub wrote:this is the part that always makes me curious: if it's so terrifying to have these bugs in the brewery, what about the fact that grain is covered in them? do you go through level 3 hazmat cleanup after grinding/mashing/etc to make sure the bugs don't get elsewhere? do you confine grain/mash to far away from your fermentation/bottling area?
even if you do all the above, won't cleaning+sanitizing kill it all anyway?

Simple answer - Upper Canada Brewery - Once you let a beer spoiler loose in a controlled environment, it becomes a creeping menace. "The Upper Canada flavour" characterized everything from their .9 to their stout. I stood at their tasting bar in the mid '90's and found very little difference between any of the beer I was served and it wasn't completely gone but it also wasn't very pleasant. Sleeman made a point of not contaminating their brewery with it when they bought them out. Ask Michael Hancock about this flavour.

The issue is the nature of the bug. It is a 'beer' spoiler and will hang on despite the efforts of some good lab programs. Some very serious problems have been outlined to me by Euro brewers where they described the use of fogged formaldehyde to try and kill a persistent bug. We're not talking homebrewing here but day-to-day production breweries with shift changes and set procedures to follow. Two different worlds.

Cheers!

Rob Creighton wrote:We're not talking homebrewing here but day-to-day production breweries with shift changes and set procedures to follow. Two different worlds.

indeed, world of difference between the two. thanks for the info.

Rob Creighton wrote: Once you let a beer spoiler loose in a controlled environment, it becomes a creeping menace.

Cheers!

I recall that there was a wild lacto in the system at the Heuther brewery that persisted for a year or more until they brought in Herold from the Brick to find the bug and nail it...turned out the bug stayed in the pump lines and fell as spore from dust from their milling (too close to the fermenters)....all I know is that once they nailed this bug, their beers went from marginally off tasting to more uniform bright and malty and full of flavour.

They now religiously follow a post racking routine of sterilzing and isolating ferment tanks and cold wort lines after cleaning.

Speaking of triple A clean brewing facilities , anyone visited Magnotta in Vaughn? Incredible sanitary processes....King Brewery is like wise a clean operation...must have something to do with the neat-freak culture in that neck of the woods.

Rob Creighton wrote:Upper Canada Brewery - Once you let a beer spoiler loose in a controlled environment, it becomes a creeping menace. "The Upper Canada flavour" characterized everything from their .9 to their stout. I stood at their tasting bar in the mid '90's and found very little difference between any of the beer I was served and it wasn't completely gone but it also wasn't very pleasant. Sleeman made a point of not contaminating their brewery with it when they bought them out.

Post-Sleeman Upper Canada Lager is noticeably cleaner than 1990's UC products were. I put it down to more consistent quality control (drinkable each time unlike the 1990's) but the Rampant Bug thing must be a piece of the puzzle.

(As an aside I thought UC did a very good job convincing a lot of people NOT to explore craft beer because it could be so off.)

I was an Upper Canada fan. It actually got me into craft beer. There weren't a lot of other selection packs available at that time either (not that we get many now).

The Rebellion Ale (not the Lager) was my first introduction to cascade hops & I liked the cattyness of the cluster as well. There was a pleasant maltyness to back it up too!

It may seem a little tame by todays standards, but this was the only Canadian Pale Ale listed under the 1998 World Beer Championships. It scored an 85 (right behind 3-floyds alpha king!).
http://www.stonebrew.com/wbc/

In "The Great Lakes Beer Guide", Jamie MacKinnon gives this 3 out of 5 stars and has some interesting notes:

5.2% alc./vol., O.G.: 1049
Ingredients: two-row pale, carastan and black malts; Cluster and Cascade hops

Appearance: mid amber; beige, fairly quiet and stable head; good lacing.

Aroma: toffee, peat, earth, gueuze-lactose-leather, hint of flowers.

Taste: toffee, butter-scotch, some early hop taste and bitterness. To finish, a grassy-earthy hop bitterness (29 IBU's), some plummy tartness, with residual toffee-flavoured viscosity.

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I think that gueuze-lactose-leather he describes was part of their house flavour/bug. When you got it fresh, this generally wasn't a problem.

I remember finding a lost bottle of their Dark at the back of my fridge (circa 1995). It was really 'off', but I drank it anyway... it was years before I tried their Dark again! (I'm still not a fan of Gueuze).

Wow, has this beer been torn to shreds on here, and in reviews on ratebeer. My father just called me to let me know he picked me up a bomber of this at Church key. I'm assuming they didnt make too mnay batches of this frankenbeer, so we'll see how this beer is with about a year of age on it. I'll report back.

I, too, have a bottle that is about a year old now. I tried it fresh and didn't mind it at all, and certainly liked it much more than most who tried it. I thought I'd put a bottle away and see what some age did to it. I don't think I'll open it quite yet, but maybe in a few months when the weather is chillier. I'll report back then...

Well i sampled by bottle that i'm assuming is about 10-12 months old. Its not that bad, i think the time in the bottle quelled the cheese funk! It's still there, but not as insane as i would have believed by reading prior reviews. you can find some of the subtle nuances in the beer now. Here is my review on ratebeer.

Bomber from the brewery, served in my very nice Church Key Snifter! I"m assuming this beer is roughly 10-12 months old. VERY dark pour, just the slightest bit of light comes through the DARk ruby color, just enough to let me know this isnt black. A nice full beige head, that lasts, and leaves a nice lacing. Ok, there is that notorious cheese aroma. Some provolone, some danish blue cheese, but once you get past the cheezy funk, there are some berries in there, and a touch of mollasses. Flavour is funky! Definetly the blue cheese, funk, but it’s not that bad, there is some nice sour apple, and some tangy berries. Leaves a nice twang in my mouth. This isnt that bad. I think the ageing in the bottle helped.

Try taking a (bomber) bottle of the Sour and decanting it in a wide based wine decanter. Allow it to breath for a while, sit back and enjoy.

This neat little trick was suggested to me by a person who knows the beer.