Mike brewed two batches of beer. He made 10 gallons of wort each time which he split into two equal 5 gallon batches to have four different beers for us to enjoy. Even though I quote Charles Dickens, this is a tale of not just two sour beers but really four of them. Watch this video as Mike tells his story and we taste each of them.

The Sour Story

Mike started his sour brewing last year but he has been using the same culture. He used it for his two most recent sour beer batches. Splitting the 10 gallon batches, he has been able to make four distinct beers.

His grain bill for all the beers:

50% Pilsner Malt
25% Malted Wheat
25% Flaked Oats

Mike uses this grain bill to form what he calls is his “Golden Sour” base beer. The one he brewed last year, he split into two batches and added cherries to one of them. That unadulterated beer is now known as Golden Sour #1.

So for this post, we are tasting the sequels to that first batch of beer.

The Tasting Notes

Here is some information about each of the four beers and our thoughts after we evaluated them.

Golden Sour #2: Of the two Golden Sours, this one had strong sour notes. It matched up well with what I remember from #1. The body was thinner than the younger batch.

Flander’s Red: Mike looked at Jamil’s Flander’s Red recipe and steeped Crystal 120°L malt and some Munich II in the kettle before the boil for this batch. We thought this one tasted like commercial versions of this beer style. Mike thought that an oak addition would get it to taste more like a Rodenbach beer.

Golden Sour #3: It was fine but needed some age to get to the right sour.

Black Plum Sour: This beer has a peachy color and a strong plum aroma. Mike added six pounds of black plums (soaked in StarSan for 20 second before adding) to this batch and it really presented itself well, even at this young age.

Mike has some great potential here and we thank him for sharing.

Brew on!