Columbia, MD July 21, 2018

If there are superheroes in the beer making world, I met the Superman of sours – The Mad Fermentationist. In fact, I know his secret identity – Mike Tonsmeire.

I took the Sour Beers with Mike Tonsmeire at Columbia’s own, Maryland Homebrew, with fellow homebrewers, Pierce and dBear. We’ve been following Mike’s blog, The Mad Fermentationist and looking forward to the opening of his Columbia brewery-in-planning, Sapwood Cellars.

My 3 takeaways from the class:

• Sour = (ph or acid),
• use brettanomyces (Brett) to finish/clean up the fermentation. Start with whatever yeast you want, Brett will clean it up and tolerate higher alcohol conditions.
• blend different sours to get the flavors you want. We took 3 of Mike’s beers: (1) a dark saison, (2) a Flanders red, and (3) a XXX. Using puppets, we blended different amounts of each to get different flavors. My favorite was 2 parts each of (1) & (2) and 1 part of (3). I also learned Mike is way better at describing flavors than I am.

Kettle sour vs sour article

American Sour Beers: Innovative Techniques for Mixed Fermentation, by Michael Tonsmeire.

Cheers!

Warren