When life gives you blood oranges, make sour beer with it. I think that's how the old adage goes. Something like that. At least that's what I decided to do in this case. My wife and I went to a local farmers market a couple of weeks ago that sells all organic produce. After sampling blood oranges at a couple of booths, I couldn't turn them down. They were calling my name. I had already been planning to make a Gose, so I figured these strange beautiful fruits could only enhance the beer.
For this beer, I decided to kettle-sour with probiotics. I have been hearing about a lot of brewers using Lactobacillus Plantarum recently, as it's known to sour beer very quickly. A company called GoodBelly makes probiotic drinks with Lacto P, so I picked up a couple of their SuperShots, which are advertised to have 50 billion cultures per shot. Since this is only a 3-gallon batch, I figured 2 shots should do the trick.
As a side note, I think it's funny how quickly opinions and trends change in the American craft beer world. It was less than a year ago that I was seeing rants all over the place about quick-souring techniques and how they produce subpar beer. If anyone was making sour beer that wasn't aged long-term, it was considered inferior. Fast forward to today, and it seems like everyone and their brother (including some very well respected breweries) is kettle-souring and it's a totally acceptable practice. While I agree that a kettle-soured beer can't match the complexity and nuances of a 2-year old barrel-aged sour, I think it's a great technique for beers like Gose and Berliner Weisse where you want that straight forward lactic note.
So anyway, for this beer, I mashed and sparged with my normal process, drained to the kettle, then I pre-acidified the wort down to a pH of 4.5 using lactic acid. This prevents some funky bacteria from developing and is also rumored to help with head retention. I then dropped in my wort chiller and boiled for 15 minutes. It wouldn't be necessary to boil that long - a minute or two would do the trick, but I went ahead and boiled for 15 minutes just in case there were any funky bugs living on my wort chiller. After boiling, I cooled the wort down to around 115 degrees, pulled out the wort chiller, and pitched in the two GoodBelly shots. I covered the top of the kettle in plastic wrap and put on the lid.
It turns out Plantarum is quite an animal. After 10 hours, the pH had dropped to 3.93. The next morning, about 19 hours after pitching the GoodBelly shots, the pH was down to 3.56. Pretty impressive stuff. I was shooting for the high 3.4 range, so I left it a few more hours until it hit 3.48. I didn't want this to be a mouth-puckering sour - I was shooting for more of a gentle, subtle acidity. Plus, I know that adding the blood orange juice would further drop the pH, so I didn't want to go too low. I should also note that I didn't do anything to maintain the warm temperature. I started it off at 115 degrees and just let it cool naturally. It was room temperature by the next morning. Below is a fancy chart showing the drop in acidity over time.
Once I hit my target pH, I boiled the wort again for about 15 minutes. At the end the boil, I added sea salt, coriander, and the zest and juice of 5 blood oranges. I took a pH reading after adding the blood orange juice, and it was down to 3.42. Once the fermentation is under way, I'm planning to add the zest of 5 more oranges. Lastly, to provide some more complexity, I decided to ferment the beer with the Sacch. Trois strain.
Recipe Specifications
Batch Size (fermenter): 3.10 gal
Estimated OG: 1.032 SG (before adding fruit)
Estimated Color: 3.0 SRM
Estimated IBU: 0 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Boil Time: 30 Minutes (15 min before souring, 15 min after)
Fermentables:
50% - Belgian Pilsner Malt
50% - Wheat Malt
Hops:
None!
Yeast & Bacteria:
2 GoodBelly SuperShots (for kettle-souring)
Sacch. Trois (WLP644)
Other ingredients:
.30oz Sea salt (1 min)
.38oz Crushed coriander (1 min)
Zest and juice of 5 Moro blood oranges (flameout)
Zest of 5 More blood oranges (added to secondary, 4 days)
Water:
RO water with 3.1 grams of calcium chloride added to strike water.
Mash:
Single-infusion @ 148 degrees
Notes:
Brewed on 1/30/16.
Also added 4oz of rice hulls to the mash.
Made starter with 1 vial of WLP644. Started with .5L, fermented for 2 days, then stepped up to 1L. Pitched whole thing. Started fermentation around 71 degrees.
2/6/16 - Transferred from 5-gallon carboy to 3-gallon carboy. SG at 1.008.
2/18/16 - Added the zest of 5 more blood oranges.
2/22/16 - Kegged - shooting for 2.8 volumes of carbonation.
Tasting update:
This beer has a light-to-medium clean acidity, a touch of complexity from the Trois strain, a super juicy taste and aroma, and just a touch of saltiness on the finish that keeps you coming back for that next drink. The orange character really comes through. It's almost like drinking a more complex, alcoholic version of orange juice. Yum. I don't think would change anything if I were to brew this again.
