year of the sour mash Archives - Five Blades Brewing

Optimal Media for Lactobacillus Growth

June 29, 2015 by Derek Springer

I have been meaning to run some experiments for Year of the Sour Mash to determine the optimal medium to grow Lactobacillus, but it seems I have been beaten to the punch! Sam over at Eureka Brewing recently published an excellent writeup on evaluating starter media to propagate Lactobacillus that is far more comprehensive than anything I would have been able to produce. Take a look and I will share my thoughts below.

What I want to share today are the results of an evaluation experiment I performed a couple of months ago to look for MRS media alternatives to propagate lactobacillus at home. MRS media is kind of the golden standard used to propagate lactobacillus. It works very well but with the disadvantage of being a quite expensive media. I therefore tested a couple of cheaper alternative media and compared the growth/propagation efficiency with MRS.

Source: Evaluate starter media to propagate Lactobacillus sp. | Eureka Brewing

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Berliner and Beyond

June 18, 2015 by Derek Springer 4 Comments

I know I have been under a rock for the past month or so; I have been keeping my head down and focusing on my presentation Berliner and Beyond: Sour Mashing and its Applications which I presented this past week at the National Homebrewers Conference. NHC was an awesome time and I really feel like I nailed my presentation, but without further ado I wanted to be sure I get my slides up as a reference.

I will see if I can get a copy of the audio recording and post it up here or a dedicated page. In the mean time, please feel free to ask me any questions you might have about sour mashing!

Update: Grabbed the audio and threw the slides and audio up on a dedicated page.

Lactobacillus Starter Guide

April 19, 2015 by Derek Springer 82 Comments

Brewers make wort, yeast make beer.

Part of the Year of the Sour Mash series.

If you have been homebrewing for even a short amount of time you have probably heard that statement. As much as we would like to think that we are in control, it is our microscopic little friends that determine the quality of our batch; brewers are little more than glorified yeast wranglers. Thus, when fellow homebrewers ask me what they can do to improve the quality of their beer the first thing I always tell them is: “make a yeast starter.” Proper amounts of healthy, happy yeast make delicious beer free from off-flavors; simple as that.

Time to let you in on a little secret: yeast are not the only things that make beer! Myriad organisms such as Brettanomyces, wild Saccharomyces, Pediococcus, and Lactobacillus will happily feast upon the wort you just created and leave you with beer (and those are just the organisms that produce favorable characteristics). Indeed, it is these organisms that folks interested in making sour or funky beers will harness to produce the character they are looking for. However, whether you are making a clean beer with “regular” yeast or a sour/funky beer with these other organisms, one thing remains the same: proper amounts of healthy, happy <insert organism(s) of choice> make delicious beer free from off-flavors. When folks tell me their sour mashes go bad I liken it to folks saying their regular beers went bad, only to find out they pitched a single vial of old yeast into 1.090 OG wort at 95ºF. A little bit of preparation practically guarantees a successful souring; whatever your organism of choice is, make a starter!

lactobacillus – isis325

If you have been following along with Year of the Sour Mash you will know we are primarily interested in the fast, clean souring of Lactobacillus to sour our mash/wort. Whether you are pitching a pure culture of Lactobacillus or growing a wild culture from grains, I have created this Lactobacillus starter guide to help you propagate the quantities needed to ensure your beer sours cleanly.

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Intro to Sour Mashing

March 1, 2015 by Derek Springer 27 Comments

Part of the Year of the Sour Mash series.

Sour beer, the homebrewer’s final frontier. Many homebrewers spend their entire brewing careers fighting infections, but there are some that crave them; choosing to harness the organisms that would otherwise spell ruin to make something magical.

To many, the idea of making a sour beer seems like an impossible dream: the time, equipment, and expertise required ensures that many homebrewers view sour beer as a pastime for the brewing elite. My friends, do not despair, sour beer is within your grasp! There is a fast, easy method to get active making sour beer: the sour mash. Sour mashing is a technique for any beer that would benefit from a crisp, tart, or funky edge.

I am kicking off the Year of the Sour Mash with this overview of sour mashing. I will be covering many of these topics in greater depth in future posts, but in the mean time I hope to convince you that sour mashing is not something to be afraid of, but a fun process that is easy to be successful at if you follow a few techniques. Without further ado, let us get started!

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Year of the Sour Mash

January 19, 2015 by Derek Springer 3 Comments

Now that the 2015 NHC Seminar List has been published I feel better about announcing this in a more official capacity: I have been selected to speak at the 2015 National Homebrewers Conference to give a talk titled Berliner and Beyond: Sour Mashing and its Applications. To commemorate this auspicious moment (and to focus myself for the conference) I am hereby dedicating 2015 as Year of the Sour Mash. It is my hope to not only inspire and inform my fellow homebrewers about the techniques and applications of sour mashing, but challenge myself to elevate the state of the art through experimentation and education.

Why sour mashing? Sour mashing is a fun, fast, and easy way to begin experimenting with sour beers, a topic more and more folks are getting interested in. I want to equip homebrewers of all skill levels to be able to successfully perform a sour mash and work it into a variety of their beers. A review of the conference seminars of past few years show that there have been no presentations dedicated to sour mashing and I want to be the one to change that.

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Recent Posts

Optimal Media for Lactobacillus Growth

Berliner and Beyond

Lactobacillus Starter Guide

Intro to Sour Mashing

Year of the Sour Mash

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