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posted by CoolHand on Sunday August 30 2015, @03:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the drinking-on-the-job dept.

A little Lactobacillus for the weekend? NPR has an article about the increasing use of kettle souring by breweries:

If you're tuned into the world of beer, you may be aware of sour beers — a loosely defined style that has been made for centuries but is gaining fresh appreciation in today's craft beer renaissance. Brewers make these beers by deliberately adding bacteria and, sometimes, wild yeast to the brew, then letting them age slowly. It sounds weird, but sours can be delicious — tart and earthy, and redolent of things like leather, fruit and wood.

They're also very hard to make, requiring months or years of letting the beer gradually mature in the cellar. And all the while, brewers must take extra precautions to prevent the souring microbes from bursting out and contaminating the rest of their nonsour beers — a major logistical hitch and expense. That's why some brewers refuse to make sours: They're too much trouble. And those who do make them sell the beers at high prices, often $5 or $6 for a dainty 6-ounce sample. But a technique that makes brewing sour beers fast and easy is trending across America — making sours much more affordable. The technique is called kettle souring, and it allows brewers to produce a mouth-puckering sour in about the same time it takes to make any other beer. The result can be generous pours of acidic, face-twistingly refreshing beer for the standard price of a pint.

[...] Kettle-soured beers use some of the same critters as traditional sours to achieve a crisp, sharp tang: bacteria of the Lactobacillus genus, which munch on the sugars in beer and convert them into acids, while also turning out flavors and aromas. Some brewers will even use a dollop of yogurt made with Lactobacillus cultures to kettle sour their beers. (Traditional sours often also use Pediococcus bacteria and Brettanomyces yeast, but right now, most brewers who use kettle souring rely on Lactobacillus.)

But the key reason kettle-soured beers can be made cheaper is a change in the usual order of operations. With traditional souring, the microbes are added after the beer has fermented. That means hop oils and alcohol are already present in the beer. But hops can hinder bacteria, and alcohol slows down yeast. That's one main reason why the traditional souring process can take a long, long time — and part of the reason sour beers are intentionally made with few or no hops.

By contrast, with kettle souring, the microbes are added before the beer is fermented, so they can do their job quickly — literally, overnight in some cases, according to Lance Shaner, co-owner of Omega Yeast Labs, a company in Chicago that sells liquid Lactobacillus culture. Even when the souring takes several days, it's still lightning fast compared with barrel souring. Once the beer hits the desired level of acidity, it is then boiled to kill the souring agent. That eliminates the need for added safeguards — like a whole separate set of brewing equipment — to keep the microbes from escaping and unintentionally fouling other beers in the same brewery. The kettle-soured beer is then fermented and hopped, as usual. All in all, kettle souring means less cost, and less time. "So you're only adding an extra day to the production time," says Ben Love, the brewer at Gigantic Brewing.

[...] Jeff Grant, the owner and brewer at Draught Works, is also a fan of making kettle-soured beer, but he doesn't make them as stand-alone brews. Rather, Grant has been using his kettle-soured beer as an acidic blending ingredient to add to other beers. Edmunds, at Breakside Brewery, uses the same technique — much the way winemakers combine different wines to create a final product. "[Kettle souring] is an awesome tool for brewers to keep in their back pocket to add acidity to a beer," Edmunds says. He adds that kettle souring makes a unique and very simple style of its own — but it doesn't compare to traditional sour styles, like lambics and Flanders red ales. In fact, Edmunds says he is a little worried that brewers might try to use kettle souring to produce fast and simplified renditions of these slow-soured styles. "I really hope that brewers who embrace kettle souring see that it's not just a replacement for all those other aging processes that take more time, and which took hundreds of years to develop."


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:46AM (#229695)

    A couple of weeks ago we went across town to our local Trader Joes, looking for a favorite beer...but they were out of stock. Instead I picked a slightly more expensive ($11) six-pack of a craft wheat beer that looked interesting.

    Got home and we tried one -- it was weird, several different tastes hit one after the other and the final was very sour. Having no idea what was going on, I just returned the remaining 5 bottles this morning.

    Now I know that it was meant to be sour, thanks takyon! It's nice to read a little about the process but that doesn't change my initial opinion...not going to try that again anytime soon. Some years back I tried an expensive lambic ale, didn't like that either.

  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:56AM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:56AM (#229698) Journal
    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:12PM (#229892)

      Nope, a little searching turned it up,
            http://ithacabeer.com/beers/cayuga-cruiser/ [ithacabeer.com]

      Cayuga Cruiser is our slightly tart and exceptionally refreshing Berliner-Weisse style ale. Mildly hazy in appearance and light in body, this beer delivers the perfect combination of elements resulting in supreme and satisfying drinkability. Whether you’re on a boat or in your backyard, this beer is the quintessential summer refresher.
      Availability Summer
      ABV 4.2%
      Malt: 2-Row Pale, Pilsner, Wheat
      Hops: Lublin, Syubilla
      Yeast: House, Lactobacillus

      Sure enough, there's the *sour*, from Lactobacillus.

  • (Score: 2) by M. Baranczak on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:28AM

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:28AM (#229707)
    The last sour beer I tried tasted like lemonade that someone forgot to put sugar in, which then went bad. It's not a trend I want to encourage.
    • (Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:32AM

      by fritsd (4586) on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:32AM (#229737) Journal

      The last sour beer I tried tasted like lemonade that someone forgot to put sugar in, which then went bad. It's not a trend I want to encourage.

      I suspect that's how Kriek Lambiek [wikipedia.org] was invented ... ;-)

      My grandparents had a sour cherry tree: it was small (2-3 meters), and yielded abundent large pale-orange juicy cherries. If you put more than 2 in your mouth, your eyes would water and your mouth would pucker, they were *that* sour (when ripe!)

      A very different fruit from the similar-looking cherries.