Bulldogs Bite - Golden Sour Ale - Homebrew Recipe

Bulldogs Bite - Golden Sour Ale - Homebrew Recipe

Daniel Mahoney
Time to brew up another sour and continue the journey down the rabbit warren of delights that is sour homebrewing.  Having already put down a West Footscrazy Red in the Flander Red style, it seemed opportune to repitch the growler of 'sour power' on a Golden Sour Ale and hopefully see some more 'bite' and 'sourness' emerge from the stronger second generation pitch of bugs!  Finding the Picobrew Zymatic an awesome machine for sour brewing as can make 10L and split off into 2 x 5L demijohns or 1 x 10L demijohn for secondary sour conditioning before bottling.  Rapidly accumulating glass demi's of sour ales and stashing them here and there in the garage and any and every nook and crany!  On with the recipe:

Bulldogs Bite Golden Sour Ale

Style: Straight (Unblended) Lambic

17.D Straight (Unblended) Lambic: A pale, very sweet, medium-bodied Straight (Unblended) Lambic. designed by: Dermott Dowling on  9/6/2015

Vital Stats:

  • OG/FG/IBU 1.0419 / 1.0105 / 8
  • SRM 5
  • ABV 4.1%
  • Batch Size: 9.46 L (Picobrew  - double all measures for 19L/5 gallon brew length)

Gladfield Malt Bill:

Bulldogs Bite Grain Bill.jpg  

Hops:

Adjuncts:

Irish Moss 3g @10 mins remaining on the Boil

Water Amendments:

  • Calcium Chloride 0.5 tsp

Mash:

Bulldogs Bite Picobrew Screen.jpg Single Step Infusion Mash @66.7 Celsius 90 mins (includes ramp up and mash off)

Boil:

  • 60 minutes

Yeast:

Sour Power Growler
  • Growler of Sour Power - my home made concoction of harvested bottle dregs and repitched and restarted yeast harvested from West Footscrazy Red Ale
You could try using some of the following new GigaYeast Strains

Fermentation Directions:

Bulldogs Bite Golden Sour Primary.jpg
  • Normal Ale Fermentation cool to 20.6 C and keep temperature consistent for 10 Days

Recipe Notes:

Bulldogs Bite Golden Sour Demi
  • Pitching onto West Footscrazy Flanders Red Yeast Cake Sun 6 Sep 15 - racked off into 2 x 5L glass carboys. Took FG 1.10 Tasting tangy, looking golden and cloudy and beautiful sick slic on the top of the fermenter - marvellous stuff so far.
  • Added wood chips at 1.5g to 1L ratio.

Bottling:

  • Sat 26 June 2016 - retrieved the 2 x glass 1 US Gallon Glass Demis from the Shed which had a lovely pink hue and small pelicle on the top and yeast haze at the bottom:
Bulldogs Bite Golden Sour Ale  
  • Made a bulk priming solution made up of 60g of Light DME + 40 gm of raw sugar
  • Pitched 1 x 11g sachet of Fermentis S-23 Lager Yeast to act as a priming yeast to the beer once racked onto the priming solution in the bottling bucket
  • Bottled off 10L into a mix of 750mL Champagne bottles and 500ml and 330ml beer bottles.
  • Tasting notes: mild acidity, mild complexity, golden hay straw yellow, lovely sour nose - very happy with progress and clean in terms of profile.
IMAG3193 IMAG3194 Sources & Credits: Jay @theRareBarrel 'The Sour Hour' golden sour base blend, homebrewtalk.com