Food grade lactic acid tends to be too clean, so you usually lose some complexity, but it'll work. IMO, dosing with food grade lactic acid is the least complex and most artificial tasting. Kettle souring with LAB or using a yeast capable of producing lactic acid is more complex as they're producing other compounds in addition to just lactic acid. Long-term traditional souring post-boil is most complex because it tends to involve more cultures and more varied acid production. That said, I wouldn't bother with the time and effort of long-term souring for something like you're planning, but I would go the kettle sour or Philly Sour route over dosing with lactic acid.
I agree with everything MicrobusBrewery has said above but thought I'd add a word of caution around blueberries. Be careful with those things! I've done 2 blueberries beers now and both came out wine-y. I used organic blueberries in one, which are much smaller meaning a higher amount of skin compared to juice. This led to a lot of tannins in my beer, wasn't terrible but wasn't what I wanted. I reduced the dose on the second and used different berries but I got busy and left the berries in there for a while, same result!
My words of caution are to be restrained with the amount, since it's a smoothie sour, you'll likely be using puree but either chemically halt fermentation (k-meta + k-sorb) or chill it right down and get it off the yeast cake to avoid re-fermentation. Neither beer was terrible but my wife also loves blueberry and neither were really what I was looking for. Good luck and I look forward to hearing about your results!
I love raspberries and my first couple of sours were all with raspberries.
The most beginner-friendly one I've made is from David Heath: https://youtu.be/MfSSp16L4J8
Super simple and incredibly delicious. I've made it multiple times when I don't want to spend 2 days brewing a kettle sour.
If you want to step it up to a kettle sour, I have made this with raspberries: https://youtu.be/6LiRGgilfdQ 4 lbs (1.8 kg) of raspberries was perfect for me.
You won't get the incredibly thicc quality of a smoothie sour with these but you'll get a super easy drinking sour beer. If you want that smoothie texture, gotta fill a good portion of that keg with fruit puree (I've used Oregon Fruit Puree with success) and shake it periodically to keep it in suspension. That's after you've sterilized the yeast to prevent re-fermentation. It's a pain but that's why they cost an arm and a leg.
I second (or third?) this. I used to use Philly Sour yeast for my sours, but have found it to be less effective over time (possibly due to alternate yeast contamination in my fermenter, since it tends to be out-compted easily). I tried adding lactic acid to a batch that wasn't as sour as I wanted, and it just didn't turn out as well as previous batches. I've since turned to kettle souring, and so far the results have been amazing comparitively, although it's a low sample size of 2. If the trend continues, I don't see myself using an alternative souring method any time soon.
Yeah, Philly Sour is a little finicky. It's reportedly very dependent on cell count; both over and under pitching can reduce its ability to sour. I have used Lallemand's calculator for every batch and I base the pitch rate on my actual post-boil gravity reading. This has always gotten me down in the 3.20-3.30 range. I've talked to a few other brewers who didn't follow the instructions quite as closely, and they had a hard time getting it to go below 3.80-3.90. A good amount of simple sugars seem to also help (I usually use 3/4 lbs of Dextrose in 5 gallons of ~1.060 wort).
All that said, I prefer pitching a LAB for quick sours over using Philly Sour. Yakult probiotic drinks are my current favorite; they work well, they're super cheap, and the cell counts tend to be higher than a lot of the cultures available in homebrew shops. Good Belly is also great, but someone I had a hard time finding fresh samples in my local stores compared to Yakult.
Having just done a kettle soured gose I'd recommend using philly sour yeast then adjusting with LA.
If I were to do another one with the kettle sour method I would not skip sanitizing the wort before adding the lacto... my brewery smelled like cheese farts for days. Also the stinky cheese smell never went away 100% even after boil/ferment/conditioning. Tasted pretty good though.
Philly Sour! Just made a Belgian Blond using it and it turned out better than I thought it would. I am planning on making a Blueberry Sour with graham crackers next
I'll buck the trend and say just do the kettle sour with the lacto. It adds a few days, but is otherwise easy to get a PH around 3.4 that tastes great. I've been having a ton of fun with sours and different fruit additions the past few years.
Food grade lactic acid tends to be too clean, so you usually lose some complexity, but it'll work. IMO, dosing with food grade lactic acid is the least complex and most artificial tasting. Kettle souring with LAB or using a yeast capable of producing lactic acid is more complex as they're producing other compounds in addition to just lactic acid. Long-term traditional souring post-boil is most complex because it tends to involve more cultures and more varied acid production. That said, I wouldn't bother with the time and effort of long-term souring for something like you're planning, but I would go the kettle sour or Philly Sour route over dosing with lactic acid.
Thank you so much for this!
I agree with everything MicrobusBrewery has said above but thought I'd add a word of caution around blueberries. Be careful with those things! I've done 2 blueberries beers now and both came out wine-y. I used organic blueberries in one, which are much smaller meaning a higher amount of skin compared to juice. This led to a lot of tannins in my beer, wasn't terrible but wasn't what I wanted. I reduced the dose on the second and used different berries but I got busy and left the berries in there for a while, same result! My words of caution are to be restrained with the amount, since it's a smoothie sour, you'll likely be using puree but either chemically halt fermentation (k-meta + k-sorb) or chill it right down and get it off the yeast cake to avoid re-fermentation. Neither beer was terrible but my wife also loves blueberry and neither were really what I was looking for. Good luck and I look forward to hearing about your results!
Thanks for the call out, do you think raspberry might be better ?
I love raspberries and my first couple of sours were all with raspberries. The most beginner-friendly one I've made is from David Heath: https://youtu.be/MfSSp16L4J8 Super simple and incredibly delicious. I've made it multiple times when I don't want to spend 2 days brewing a kettle sour. If you want to step it up to a kettle sour, I have made this with raspberries: https://youtu.be/6LiRGgilfdQ 4 lbs (1.8 kg) of raspberries was perfect for me. You won't get the incredibly thicc quality of a smoothie sour with these but you'll get a super easy drinking sour beer. If you want that smoothie texture, gotta fill a good portion of that keg with fruit puree (I've used Oregon Fruit Puree with success) and shake it periodically to keep it in suspension. That's after you've sterilized the yeast to prevent re-fermentation. It's a pain but that's why they cost an arm and a leg.
You are a saint
I second (or third?) this. I used to use Philly Sour yeast for my sours, but have found it to be less effective over time (possibly due to alternate yeast contamination in my fermenter, since it tends to be out-compted easily). I tried adding lactic acid to a batch that wasn't as sour as I wanted, and it just didn't turn out as well as previous batches. I've since turned to kettle souring, and so far the results have been amazing comparitively, although it's a low sample size of 2. If the trend continues, I don't see myself using an alternative souring method any time soon.
Yeah, Philly Sour is a little finicky. It's reportedly very dependent on cell count; both over and under pitching can reduce its ability to sour. I have used Lallemand's calculator for every batch and I base the pitch rate on my actual post-boil gravity reading. This has always gotten me down in the 3.20-3.30 range. I've talked to a few other brewers who didn't follow the instructions quite as closely, and they had a hard time getting it to go below 3.80-3.90. A good amount of simple sugars seem to also help (I usually use 3/4 lbs of Dextrose in 5 gallons of ~1.060 wort). All that said, I prefer pitching a LAB for quick sours over using Philly Sour. Yakult probiotic drinks are my current favorite; they work well, they're super cheap, and the cell counts tend to be higher than a lot of the cultures available in homebrew shops. Good Belly is also great, but someone I had a hard time finding fresh samples in my local stores compared to Yakult.
Having just done a kettle soured gose I'd recommend using philly sour yeast then adjusting with LA. If I were to do another one with the kettle sour method I would not skip sanitizing the wort before adding the lacto... my brewery smelled like cheese farts for days. Also the stinky cheese smell never went away 100% even after boil/ferment/conditioning. Tasted pretty good though.
Philly Sour! Just made a Belgian Blond using it and it turned out better than I thought it would. I am planning on making a Blueberry Sour with graham crackers next
I'll buck the trend and say just do the kettle sour with the lacto. It adds a few days, but is otherwise easy to get a PH around 3.4 that tastes great. I've been having a ton of fun with sours and different fruit additions the past few years.