By Ricky Alexander
It was the mid-90s in the Midwest. Patterned colorful shirts and baggy jeans were all the rage. The cool kids all cut thumbs holes in the cuffs of their thermal undershirts. OJ Simpson was on trial in the court of law and Bill Clinton was on trial in the court of public opinion. It was a different world, back before two planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City. But my friends and I didn’t care about those things yet; we were focused on learning how to Rock the Baby with our Yomega Brain yoyos, flipping Pogs, and watching Ren and Stimpy or Beavis and Butthead when our parents weren’t around. We were the last generation of garden hose drinkers, riding our bikes all over town until the street lights came on. American consumerism was in full swing with a new hyped product being released each year on Black Friday, driving frenzies of soccer moms to wait in droves outside of WalMarts and other retail establishments for hours in the November cold. Tickle Me Elmos, big screen TVs, camcorders, Gameboys, and household appliances were literally fought over to save a few bucks. Hollywood even made a Christmas movie about it where Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to ridiculous lengths to find that year’s hot-ticket toy, which is obviously sold out everywhere. And through this haze of grunge music, technological advancement, and increasing globalism we found a particularly nostalgic candy in our stockings; Warheads sour candy.
My childhood nemesis
Warheads burst onto the scene in America in the mid-90s, after being imported for the first time from Japan. These small hard candies were mildly fruit flavored, although you couldn’t tell because they were coated in malic acid, which dominated the entirety of your taste buds. Advertised as “intense flavors” of “extreme sour”, when you put a warhead into your mouth, you got smashed with a nuclear explosion of tartness, like if you made lemon juice into a potent extract and somehow mainlined it into your taste buds. It is blindingly sour, often resulting in its victim making the puckered face shown on the candy’s label. I can only assume the creator is a masochist. After you suck on the candy for a few minutes, the acid coating dissolves away, relieving the victim somewhat. I never made it that far without spitting it out, so while some of my friends couldn’t get enough of this stuff, it obviously wasn’t for me.
That is how I feel about typical American sours. I recently purchased a key lime sour that advertised itself as a Berliner Weisse with lime peel and lactose. That sounded lovely; I enjoy the flavors of key lime pie; graham cracker, key lime, with a dollop of creamy sweetness and vanilla. Like I said; lovely. What I got instead was punched in the mouth with one of the most acidic things I have ever put in my face. My eyes squeezed shut and watered, and my jowels swelled and clamped up. I sucked on my tongue as hard as I could to try and reverse the damages of the assault. I switched to water and gave the rest of the four pack to an unsuspecting friend for sport. They reported similar results. I understand there is a market for this, but I have a feeling most people aren’t chasing that 4th grade euphoria of sucking on Warheads for bragging rights.
Therefore, when I make sours, I shoot for a little higher pH than that ‘peel the enamel off your teeth’ vibe I often find in commercial examples. I recently took a 45 out of 50 in a BJCP sanctioned competition with a mezcal sour (gently pats self on the back), so I suppose there are some folks who would agree that this is a good approach. I sometimes think of my sours in terms of cocktail creation. I want the acidity to be cut with a bit of sweetness and complimented with a bit of bitterness to create a nice balance of sensations on the pallet. Depending on what I’m going for, I sometimes use lactose to get some of that sweetness, as I find this gives a subtle vanilla flavor and creaminess. Another thing I’ve learned about my pallet is that I don’t always love the flavor of fermented fruit in my beers. Your mileage may vary there, as this has been a popular technique for a long time. However, the fruit I’m adding to my beers is adding zero fermentables, as I stabilize the beer with sulfites and sulfates prior to adding fruits. To me, this gives the most representative fruit character and provides the right amount of sweetness to the beer.
My typical starting point is a 50:50 mix of pilsner malt and white wheat malt, usually 6 lbs of each for a 6 gallon batch. I brew a little extra wort to account for losses to the fruit/yeast cake and usually end up with about 5 gallons in the keg. I mash low (148-150°F) for a highly fermentable wort. I mash for an hour, mash out, then bring to a boil for about 15 minutes just to sanitize the wort. After the boil, I chill to about 100°F then add in my kettle souring bacteria. I have used two souring techniques; one approach uses a pound of uncrushed pilsner malt in a sanitized mesh bag in the wort held at 100°F for a couple of days and the other is the same but adding a carton of Goodbelly probiotic drink in place of the uncrushed malt. I’m not certain I could taste a difference in a side-by-side, but I think the Goodbelly yields a slightly fruity wort/finished beer. You could also purchase any number of fresh pitch Lactobacillus strains from one of the major yeast producers; I’m sure they are also fantastic. I’m just cheap and my local supply shop is 45 minutes away. The important thing is to get the right bacteria, Lactobacillus plantarum, which is known for producing sourness quickly and cleanly. Other mixed cultures may be acceptable for more traditional sours, such as lambics, gueuze, and the like, but that’s not what we are going for here. Regardless of how I get the Lactobacillus into the brew, I hold the wort in a sealed kettle for two-three days. I pull samples along the way to help decide when it’s ready for fermentation based only on my pallet. I don’t use a pH meter or anything, but if you have a reliable one, this is a great way to figure out what pH range you prefer. If I’m planning to add a lot of sweetness, either via lactose or fruit, I will let it sour a little longer to help balance that out. If I’m doing a straight Berliner weisse, I will typically kill off the bacteria after about two days. Once it’s where I like it, I bring it to a boil, adding any hop additions or late additions (spices, citrus peel, etc.) along the way. After that, I chill as normal to pitching temperature for whatever yeast I’m using. I typically go clean here; US-05 or 34/70 are reliable work horses for clean fermentations.
Following fermentation, I cold crash and rack to a fully purged keg before adding measured amounts of potassium sorbate and sodium metabisulfite (SMB, also known as campden tablets). To be clear, by fully purged, I mean I filled the keg with sanitizer then pushed it out with carbon dioxide (CO2). Potassium sorbate does not kill the yeast, but sterilizes it, preventing it from reproducing. SMB can kill yeast and wild microorganisms, and has an added benefit of mitigating oxidation risk. However, be aware that some people have issues with sulfates/sulfites in their beverages (headaches are most common), so if you are serving to folks you don’t know, just give them a heads up that this is in your product. Same with lactose and other potential allergens. When I add the chemicals, I like to flow CO2 into the keg’s headspace to help displace any oxygen exposure being picked up by exposure to air. After I dose the keg, I close the lid and purge the headspace a few times. I then place the keg in the keezer to sit for 24 hours before adding fruit/spice additions. It is important to do this step in the keg; I once mistakenly added the chemicals directly to the fermenter, waited 24 hours, and added my fruit which promptly kicked off a secondary fermentation. The chemicals aren’t strong enough to kill off an entire yeast cake, and couldn’t penetrate down into the cake even if they could. It is also important to wait 24 hours before adding anything with sugars, as the chemicals haven’t had enough time to do their thing to the yeast. Arguably, if you are keeping it cold and you got it off the yeast cake, the small amount of yeast present wouldn’t be able to begin re-fermenting, but I think waiting 24 hours is cheap insurance.
Ok, that’s my process for sours. Now, let’s talk additions. I feel like tart ales are an excellent canvas for painting interesting flavor combinations. There is an excellent culinary book called Fat, Salt, Acid, Heat by Samin Rosrat about creating higher-level flavor profiles through the balance of these elements in food. I feel like these concepts lend easily to brewing; could it be silkier? Add some oats or rye. Could it be creamier? Add some lactose or oats. Could it be drier? Adjust your water profile and mash temperature. There are all kinds of levers to pull in creating beer, so why limit ourselves to traditional ingredients or traditional ways of thinking about them? I have learned a lot through trial and error. Orange peel? Fantastic at the end of the boil, but not great in secondary. Coffee? Almost unpalatable if added anytime during fermentation, but fantastic if the beer is stabilized first. Again, this is just my opinion based on trial and error.
That said, I think one of the best approaches to modifying non-beer flavors to beer is the “stabilize and back-add” approach. Even after primary fermentation there are a lot of enzymes and microorganisms hanging around in the finished product. Adding adjuncts after the facts, even if not sugary, will expose them to these elements and could potentially alter the flavor profile of your post-fermentation additions. I have found this to be the case with coffee, where I get a very ‘green pepper’ flavor instead of that classic roast flavor, or even more complex flavors from single origin coffees. I don't have laboratory evidence to back this up, but this has been my experience after about ten coffee infused brews. Side note, I wish I never realized that ‘thing’ was green pepper, because that's pretty much all I can taste in pretty much every coffee beer now, and I'm very sad about that. Sorry if I also ruined it for you.
Anyway, I recently set out to brew a tropical fruit punch sour and I snapped a couple pics of my process along the way, following the rulebook I laid out above. I am calling it Guayaba y Piña. Here’s the recipe;
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