Sour Beer Brewing with Michael Tonsmeire – BeerSmith Podcast #85

by Brad Smith on July 22, 2014 · 0 comments

PodNew200Michael Tonsmeire joins me this week to discuss his new book “American Sour Beers” which was just published by the brewer’s association. Michael shares some great tips on brewing sour beers including both ingredients and techniques.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (50:03)

  • Michael Tonsmeire joins me this week to discuss his new book “American Sour Beers” (Amazon affiliate link) published by the Brewers Association. His book covers a wide variety of sour beer techniques and ingredients. Michael also has an extensive blog at TheMadFermentationist.com
  • We start with a short discussion on how Michael developed his new book on Sour beers
  • Michael explains some of the differences between American and other sour beers from around the world.
  • We discuss the equipment needed to brew sour beers, as well as the importance of segregating some pieces of equipment
  • Michael explains sour beer wort production
  • All sour beer depends on microbes (bacteria or yeast variants). We discuss some of the microbes available for creating sour beer
  • Michael discusses some of the methods available for producing sour beer
  • We talk about spontaneous fermentation and the use of wild yeast and wild bacteria
  • Beer can be made with 100% Brett – Michael explains how
  • We talk about some tips for fermenting and aging sour beers
  • Sour beers are often blended to achieve flavor balance – Michael discusses this option
  • We do a short segment on troubleshooting sour beers
  • Michael tells us where we can find his new book

Thanks to Michael Tonsmeire for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!

iTunes Announcements: I launched a new video channel for the BeerSmith podcast on iTunes, so subscribe now! At the moment it will only feature the new widescreen episodes (#75 and up). Older episodes are available on my revamped Youtube channel. Also all 81 audio episodes are on iTunes now – so grab the older episodes if you missed any.

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