Speaker: Kevin Lane
Sours are complex and trendy beers that belong to a long list of flavorful beer styles. Nowadays brewers are looking for flavor diversification, often achieved by mixed fermentations, but they also want a shorter brew time and high yield, which can present a challenge for craft brewers.
Kettle souring is an easy way to produce sour beers in which acidity is achieved through two wort boiling steps. The first boil sterilizes the non-hopped wort produced during the mash and acidifies the wort with Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) that triggers a controlled lactic acid fermentation. The second boil, along with the addition of hops, ensures the annihilation of the living LAB cells. Then, as in regular beer production, alcoholic fermentation occurs.
Fermentis has produced different sour beers with various fermentation combinations of LAB strains (homo or hetero-fermentative strains) and Saccharomyces yeast strains (neutral, fruity, POF+). For each of these combinations, we performed both biochemical analysis (fermentation kinetics, organic acid production, and more) and sensorial evaluation on the final beers and found that LAB strains have a clear impact on their flavor profile.
Learn more about what we discovered in this webinar.
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