The 4 EASIEST Ways to Make SOUR BEER! [+Recipe]

Sour beers can be intimidating for the beginner brewer, but today I'm going to walk you through four simple ways that you can make sour beer at home, and also some hacks, so even if you have limited equipment or skills, you can still make a delicious, tart, and thirst-quenching summer beer like this beautiful Key Lime Pie Goza. I never used to like sour beers. I thought they were all warhead level of sourness and undrinkable, but then I discovered that not all sour beers are equal, and some have the perfect combination of sweet and sour. It's more like the Sour Patch Kids of beers. Tart, but are still refreshing and easy to drink, especially in the summer heat, and there's no style of sour beers that seem to match that description more than a Goza. Goza is a German style of sour beer that's usually made with at least 50% malted wheat. It has an ABV around 4 to 5%, and a mild sourness with citrusy undertones. Sometimes salt or coriander can be added to aid in that lemony, refreshing quality. That combination of wheat malt and mild lemon tartness make it to be like the Gatorade of beers. Perfect for sipping poolside. Be sure to stick around to the end, and I'll share my Key Lime Pie Goza recipe. How exactly do you make a beer sour? Well, there's a few paths you can take depending on your equipment and time. Now, if you're a traditional sour brewer, you may want to close your ears for this part. All the methods that I'll be showing today are quick souring methods, or shortcuts to get a sour beer. I know, I know, I'll be shown by the traditionalists, but if you're just getting into sour beers or want to experiment, then these quick souring methods are the way to go in my opinion. You don't need any extra sour only equipment, and you'll get a finished beer faster. Then maybe once you have more sour XP, you can level up to the traditional method that usually takes several months or even a year-long process for some styles. The big thing you'll need for all these methods is a trustworthy pH meter. pH is the scale of how acidic or basic something is. The smaller the number, the more sour, and the higher the number, more basic. If you don't have one, you can try and guess how sour it is based on taste, but a pH meter definitely tells you the acidity level, and can help you repeat or hit target levels of sourness that you like. Alright, here are the four easy methods that you can use to sour your beer. Method one, lactic acid. This is probably the easiest, but not necessarily the most effective way to sour a beer, but it's something you can try right now. Grab a pint of your favorite beer, and add just a few milliliters of lactic acid. Lactic acid is what brewers use to adjust the pH or acidity of their mash or wort during the brew day. Upon taking a sip, you'll notice it becomes slightly more bright and a tad tart. You could then dose this up to the whole batch, but this method does come with a catch. While technically you are lowering the pH scale, the perceived sourness might not match. There's something called titratable acidity, which is just another way to measure perceived acidity. I'm not going to sit here and tell you I know everything about it and how it relates to pH, but what I can tell you is from my experience that just because you add a ton of lactic acid to lower the pH of your beer, doesn't mean it will be perceived as sour, or at least it won't be all that interesting. That more full sour experience comes from more complex acid creation, which the next few methods can supply. Method two, sour yeast. You might have heard of these popular yeasts by their brand names, Lalemans, Philly Sour, and Sour VCA, amongst a few other ones. What's cool about these options is that you can brew your beer as you would normally, and all you need to do is pitch one of these yeasts. They work to create lactic acid and ferment out the sugars during fermentation, making alcohol and making the beer sour in the process. Really, it couldn't be any easier than that. They're said to make a more mild sour, but there are some articles online on how you can manipulate them to make it more sour. But one thing to consider is that you are adding active wild bugs into your fermenter, so you'll either need to clean the fermenter heavily with brewery wash, or consider getting a separate fermenter for these semi-wild fermentations. Method three, sour mashing. Personally, I don't have any experience with this, but I'll try and sum it up for you. On every grain of barley, there is lactobacillus, which is a bacteria that creates lactic acid. And you probably know about lacto from fermenting other things like kombucha, ginger beer, or even something like pickles. So to do a sour mash, you start with a brew day, and right after you complete the mash, cool it down to around 120 Fahrenheit. Most of the lacto present in the mash will likely be destroyed by the heat, so you need to add some more back in. This can be done by adding in new malted barley, or by adding in a lactobacillus culture. More on that in the next method. If you go with just adding more malted barley, it can be a bit of a risky game because you're not exactly sure what's actually living on the grain. It'll likely be some lacto, but also potentially some other unfriendly bacteria. Either way, let it sit for a day or so until the pH drops and the desired sourness is reached. Then pull the mash and proceed with the rest of the boil, and ferment with normal yeast. And while this method can certainly work, it's not one that I would necessarily recommend for especially if you have a separate mash ton from your kettle. Any equipment that touches the sour wort pre-boil will be infected until it's thoroughly cleaned or sterilized. But I thought I'd just share this one for the adventurous ones. Method four, kettle sour. Lastly is my favorite method, as I feel like you have the most control over the sour process. While there are some steps to consider, it really isn't that hard as long as you plan things out. Kettle souring is actually quite similar to sour mashing, except after your main mash, you pull out the grains and bring it to a boil. Then cut the heat and cool down to around 100 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point a lactobacillus culture is added and allowed to grow over a day or so. The easiest and most readily available lactobacillus culture is something like GoodBelly, which is sold in most grocery stores and is filled with lactobacillus plantarium. But many yeast companies make their own version of this if you want to go with the trusted homebrew brand. Once it's reached its desired pH, somewhere around 3.0 to 3.7, you can then boil to pasteurize the wort and then proceed with adding hops, chilling, and then pitching with any normal yeast. What I love about this method is that all the souring and introduction of wild bacteria is done in the kettle, meaning you can just boil the wort and kill them off before introducing it into your fermenter or other equipment. And you don't need any extra equipment if you already brew in a bag. By the way, you can also do this method if you're an extract or partial mash brewer. All you need is a kettle. This has been pretty surface level so far, so if you have any questions, leave them down below. But I'll also leave a link to Milk the Funk, which is an extremely deep resource for all things sour and funky brewing. Now let's put what we've learned to practice and I'll show you how to make this kettle soured key lime pie goza. I'm going to kind of zoom through this so we can focus on the kettle sour specifics, but I'll leave the full recipe in the description if you're interested in making this one. And I highly recommend you do. It's absolutely delicious. Since this is a key lime pie inspired beer, I may or may not have added graham crackers into the mash. Shh, it's our secret. And big thanks to the channel supporter, Klawhammer Supply, who make awesome electric brew in a basket systems like this one. I'll be using it today for the kettle souring, but you can totally do this with a normal brew kettle and a heat wrap or by putting it in a warm bath. More on that later. Let's jump ahead to the mash. As the mash timer is about to wrap up, I pulled the grains and then took a pH measurement to see where we're at. This is our starting point. Right now we're around 5.2, and we know we want our ending point to be between 3.0 and 3.7. If you have lactic acid, our friend for adjusting pH, you can help kickstart the pH drop and help protect the wort from any potential spoilage in the coming days. By adding a few milliliters, I dropped the pH down from 5.2 to 4.5. Next, I brought the wort to a quick five minute boil to pasteurize any bacteria from the mash. And it's important not to add any hops right now, as that can mess up the lacto we're about to add. And then I cooled the wort down to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but anywhere from 80 degrees to 115 degrees Fahrenheit is the ideal range for lacto to do its work. And the warmer on the range, the faster it might work. I then pitched the lacto culture, which I'm using GoodBelly probiotic juice. If you use another source of lacto, your dosing may vary. And also don't worry about any flavor carryover. I've never really noticed any, so the flavor of GoodBelly doesn't really matter. I dumped in about a half of this carton. I then placed the kettle lid on and wrapped it in plastic wrap. This will keep any bad bugs from getting in and messing up our controlled sour. Optionally, you can add a bit of CO2 into the kettle to help further protect against anything we don't want to grow. And now we wait. You just need to keep the temperature of the wort between 80 degrees and 115 degrees Fahrenheit while it sours. Whether you have an electric system like I do, they can automatically turn on and off the heat for you. Or if you have a heat wrap and some kind of temp controller, you can tape on the heat wrap and set your temp so that it regulates the temp for you. Or if you're really on a budget, you can always heat up a tub with warm water and set your kettle in it. You might just need to replace the water every now and then to keep it in the right range, but I hear it can be done. For me, it took just under 48 hours to go from 4.5 to 3.5, which for me was perfect. I took a few samples every eight hours or so to check along the way, and I'll say that the longest part was going from 4 down to 3.5. So have patience if it's going slow as you get closer. But the nice part about splitting up the process is that you can spread the brûlée across multiple days. Not a bad thing, especially if you're strapped on time. So now we can move on to the boil and finish this brûlée per days. I started by bringing the wort to a boil. And a fair warning, the first few minutes as you get this to a boil can smell a bit wild, like gym sock funky wild. But that'll go away once it gets to a rolling boil. I'm keeping the hopping schedule pretty simple here. 0.25 ounces of Motueka at 30 minutes, and 0.5 ounces at flame out. Motueka is said to have a lime-like flavor and aroma, so I figured it would be perfect for this key lime pie beer. But I didn't stop there. I proceeded to zest 24 key limes, yes 24 of the world's smallest citrus, to put into a beer. It took forever. And in the end, I only had about 8 grams of lime zest. And along with about 5 grams of salt, added it all in at flame out as well. And boy was it smelling good now. I then chilled the wort down, added it to a fermenter, and then added some yeast. The only German ale yeast I had around was the Laume & Kolsch yeast, but you could go with any German or even not German ale yeast. I won't tell anyone. I let this ferment for a little over a week and then kegged it up. I also added a tiny bit of vanilla here. 2 ounces right into the keg, and then transferred the beer in for that little metaphorical cherry on top of the key lime pie flavor. After another week of conditioning and carbonating in the keg, all that was left to do was sit back and enjoy. Put the lime in the beer, and you drink them both together. Put the lime in the beer, and then you feel better. Put the lime in the beer, and then you drink them both together. Put the lime in the beer, and you make it disappear. So that's sour beer made easy. Not too bad, right? And this one turned out fantastic. Super limey, a little bit tart, but extremely refreshing. And speaking of refreshing, why not check out this one? A great summer sipper, and man does that look good. I'll see you over there.