Brewing Sour Beers with Michael Dawson – BeerSmith Podcast #108

Michael Dawson, former cohost of Brewing TV joins me this week to discuss brewing the perfect sour beer. Michael shares some amazing tips for quickly brewing a Berliner Weisse as well as Lambic in this special episode recorded at the National Homebrew Conference in San Diego.

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Topics in This Week’s Episode (41:52)

Michael Dawson, former cohost of Brewing TV and brand manager for Wyeast Labs joins me this week to discuss how to brew a variety of sour beers.
This week’s show was recorded on the noisy National Homebrew Conference show floor in San Diego, so there is some crowd noise in the background
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Michael starts with his experience with sour beer brewing and an overview of many of the sour beer styles people may be familiar with.
We share some commercial examples and some of the major methods for brewing sour beers.
We discuss using a sour mash to make beer and how that can be an effective technique for adding a sour twang to your stout.
Michael covers some of the bugs used in brewing sour beers including Lactobacillus, Pedio and Brettanomyces
We talk about the proper time to add bugs to your beer and some fermentation techniques
Michael walks us through brewing a Berliner Weisse in great detail including tips to brew this beer quickly by adding the Lacto before fermentation
He also covers brewing a Lambic in detail including techniques used and aging this rare beer
He provides some closing tips on sour beer brewing
We discuss some of the new products coming out of Wyeast labs, and Michael’s closing thoughts

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

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