Beer from sour mash

[FinnAgain]

So I decided to take a portion of my UJSSM wash and added rye and about 8 IBU of hop bitterness and primed and bottled it when it was done fermenting. It has a pretty cool sour taste -- like a Berliner weisse, which I know is a hard beer to find in America. This beer of mine is about twice as high in ABV as any other sour-style beer (7% ABV). Head retention is pretty poor, too, but so it is berliner weisse. I've heard of kentucky common beer, but have seen differing recipes for it. Some with roast grain. Has anyone ever heard of the type of beer I made and if so, where can you buy it?

[slowpoke59ds]

Sounds like party gyle brewing used by the Scotts to get 2 diferent gravitys from a single mash.

[Kapea]

There is a style of beer that used to be made in American before prohibition that is known now as Pre-prohibition Pilsner - aka prepro pils. My friend George Fix did a lot of research on the style and recreated the recipe for pre-prohibition American pilsners. It was much more flavorful than the canoe beers that are passed off as American light lagers these days.

The grain bill for prepro pils contains a lot of corn. American six row malt has a large excess of conversion enzymes. American brewers took advantage of this excess of enzymes and the very plentiful grain they had on hand, corn, to make a uniquely American style of beer.

Your beer sounds like a variation of a prepro pils - soured style.

FWIW - Berlinerweiss uses wheat, not corn.

[zedzedtop]

Look up a style called Kentucky Common.

[sugarcreek]

Funny you mention Kentucky Common. There's a brewery here in Indiana, New Albanian, that does a KC brew. It's called (if my memory hasnt failed me) Kentucky Komon. I think it's only a seasonal beer. It was interesting. Dark color, nice and tangy. Almost a APA/saison style hybrid. Very low carbonation -- reminded me of a cask-conditioned English ale. It was memorable if only because it was so difficult to pin to a single style. Maybe @FinnAgain is on to something!

[Kapea]

Look up a style called Kentucky Common.

Cool! Until I read this thread I'd never heard of Kentucky Common. It is a medium gravity ale with corn at around 30% of the grain bill, and 2% soured malt. Definetly sounds like a whiskey making influenced beer style.

[FinnAgain]

Hey thanks everyone for the input. I am familiar with the prepro pils. I think it's surviving incarnation is the CAP style -- Classic American Pilsner. The Kentucky Komon sounds alot like what I made, kind of a brownish-yellow (not pretty in the beer sense so I could see using other malts for esthetic purposes), not intensely lactic as a Berliner weisse which even the germans add syrup to in order to make it palatable. Its more tangy and spritzy. A big foamy head that vanishes pretty quickly. It started as an idea for me to show the guys in my brew club what sour mash tastes like before it becomes white dog or whiskey. I decided to add hops bitterness and make it a beer. I have it entered in the specialty category in a few competitions this fall. If I'm lucky, I'll get a judge or two who knows what to make of it and give it a fair evaluation.

[Kapea]

Yeah... I know it's called CAP now. I've never liked that name for it much though. A goofy name for an awesome beer.

Classic American Pilsner... it's so... PC. It makes me want to skip!

[FinnAgain]

Agreed.