UJSSM not sour

I'm on to my 5th gen of UJ but it's not developing the sourness I expected. I'm currently using flaked maize but have bought cracked corn for the next batch to see if that helps. Could it be due to it being so cold preventing the mash from souring? I have all product on various combinations of dominos but will drop it all into the 50L barrel i got off @punkin see how that changes the flavour.

Any input, ideas or advise? Might try an all grain on the next batch see what that turns out like?

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  • Depends if your in the camp that defines sour mash by starting with backset or if you define sour mash as lactic souring through the inclusion of lactobacillus.

    If you are in the bug camp, try adding feed corn or some malt if you want to inoculate the mash with lactobacillus. Flaked maize is going to be relatively sterile in comparison to feed corn or malt. However, if the flaked is working well for you, you don't need to replace 100% of it with the corn or malt, just enough to inoculate.

    If you are in the backset camp, what percentage of backset are you currently using?

  • I'm running as per UJSSM recipe in manual using 5L backset changing percentage of corn each gen also 10% rye. how do you roll?

  • I split the trub into 2 fermenters as I had about 5" of yeast cake at the start of the 5th gen swapped out about 50 percent of grains at same time.

  • edited August 2015

    Try an innoculation of pints method. You'll get all the sourness you want and you'll probably only have to do it once to infect the ferment.
    Don't give up too quick, follow the instructions all the way to step 17 and wait for the lacto smell after the really disgusting ones are gone. You'll have to use feed corn as @grim has mentioned, but you should be able to buy small batches of corn for chickens from a pet place i guess if you don't want a 25kg bag. The feed corn goes for $20` a bag at the feed stores so i'd be giving up on the flaked maize if it was me.

    Mashing Corn with Steam Injection @ AD

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • Cheers Punkin starter is brewing away, can i add this at any point or will i need to wait till beginning of next batch?? Hopefully this will give me the JD style of sourness.

  • Any point i'd guess. The aim is to infect the fermenter, so make sure that it smells like something you want before you tip it in. Goes from dogshit to vomit to sour milk to a sour lacto smell like good thai sauce.

    StillDragon Australia & New Zealand - Your StillDragon® Distributor for Australia & New Zealand

  • Or kim chee

    I'm more like I am now than I was before.

  • can always buy a vial of lacto from the brewshop. Have heard u can also add a dallop of yoghurt, but never tried that.

  • edited August 2015

    Yogurt will usually contain L. Bulgaricus/Delbruekii and sometimes L. Acidophilus (aka the probiotic) and a few others like L. Casei, and most certainly a few others like Streptococcus.

    If you wanted to try some probiotic pills from the health food store, you could try that too, but know that L. Acidophilus is most closely related to L. Delbreuckii I believe, and is not one of the most common strains found in distilleries:

    Characterization of lactobacilli from Scotch malt whisky distilleries and description of Lactobacillus ferintoshensis sp. nov., a new species isolated from malt whisky fermentations (PDF)

    If you haven't read Wilson's PhD thesis work, read it, it's an amazing amount of information on lacto.

    The effect of lactic acid bacteria on congener composition and sensory characteristics of Scotch Malt Whisky

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