More on the Sour Pumpkin Wit

Do you remember me blending my my Rationalité Poison d'Ereeeek with my Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier? If you don't, no worries ... you can go check out my blog post at Blending the Sour Pumpkin Wit. Go ahead ... check it out ... we'll wait. You can continue reading this one when you get back.

So, I blended and bottled back in January. I primed with sugar just as I usually do when bottling. The 2-week carbonation period was over last weekend. I tried a couple of bottles this weekend.

On untappd, I called the combination Poison Pumpkin Sour Wit.

I like the beer.

Blending the Sour Pumpkin Wit

Today, bottled up some beer.

Remember when I brewed my Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier, I had about one extra gallon of wort that I let ferment in a separate fermentor? If you don't remember, you can refresh your memory at Whacko Wife Pumpkin Brew Day. I mentioned that my plan for that extra gallon was to blend it with my Rationalité Poison d'Ereeeek, which is my sour Flanders Red style beer.

It has been awhile, but finally decided to go ahead and blend the two beers and bottle up the result.

My bottling experience was a bit "old-school" for me. For quite awhile, when I've bottled beers, I have used my keg and Beer Gun to fill the bottles. Today, I decided to use my Mr. Beer "bottling bucket" and bottle-filling wand. I don't even remember the last time I bottled using this technique before today.

First, I transferred the gallon of Witbier from the fermentor to the bottling container. I added enough priming sugar to handle 2 gallons of beer.

On Whacko Wife and other things SheppyBrew

I am not brewing today, but the SheppyBrew Brewery had a somewhat busy morning.

I made a yeast starter for Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier . I am brewing Whacko Wife tomorrow, so I probably should have made the starter sooner. Of course if you have been paying attention to my last few brews that used yeast starters, you realize this has become somewhat typical for me. It does seem to get the main fermentation started quicker.

Whacko Wife is interesting. It uses a base of Whisky Wife Wit, which is a beer that I have brewed before as a partial mash. Very recently, I converted that to an all-grain recipe, but I have not brewed the all-grain version of the base, yet. So, for this pumpkin beer, I am brewing the derivative fruit beer before the main beer has been brewed. Just sort of backwards. It will turn out fine. It is just sort of interesting.

My #SourBeerDay

I would say that there are 3 kinds of people when it comes to sour beers. You love them or you hate them or you have not tried them.

Most people are in that "have not tried them" category. My wife is in the "hate them" category.

I am in the "love them" category.

As I mentioned last week, Saturday was #SourBeerDay. I really thought I was going to use the "holiday" as an excuse to stop by Crooked Stave's taproom and try a couple of Chad's beers. I never got around to it. Actually, I didn't even drink a sour beer and #SourBeerDay.

But what did I do?

SheppyBrew and the Sour Mash

I have mentioned a couple of times on this blog that SheppyBrew Brewery wants to brew a sour beer (most recently in 2012 Q1 SheppyBrew Stats). Unfortunately, I'm not quite as confident as Scott, my buddy at SNB Brewing with his Sour Ale Project. I just don't feel ready to introduce souring bugs into my fermentation process yet.

So, my solution is to try a sour mash.