Life Fermented.: A sour brew day and improvements to the brewery.

Well, I have made some recent improvements to my brewery. The first seen above is the purchase of some bulk hops. Lately I have been having trouble finding what I wanted at my local home brew store, so I did some reading and went to hopsdirect.com and ordered five pounds of hops. The price at my local hbs has also been a factor, as I have been paying 3+ dollars an ounce for hops.
Including shipping, I am looking at 76 cents an ounce for the hops I got. Not bad. Of course the bad thing is that you can only buy in pound or more increments. I got hops that work with the styles I like to brew and if I do need anything else, I can get them by the ounce at the hbs.

The next, seen above, is a cajun cooker. I got it from a seller on Ebay, but they can be found all over. It is a portable outdoor propane powered burner. One of the major problems I was having with my stove was boiling 5+ gallons of liquid. I had to keep a lid on the pot to get it to boil and keep it boiling. So this 185000 BTU burner should really help there. Today I would say it boiled around 7 gallons in maybe 20 min. Not bad!

And last, a larger brew pot! This is actually an old keg I obtained and cut the top off of using my angle grinder. This way I can do all the boiling in one pot. I have been splitting my all grain batches into a 6 gallon and a 5 gallon pot. It's worked fine so far, but has been annoying.
And onto the brew....
I have been reading a ton about traditional styles made in Belgium, but about those made in America? Unfortunately, much of our brewing history was lost in the great experiment. After prohibition ended, the lager style that is still popular today came in and took over everything.
One style that has been resurrected is California common, which is now brewed by Anchor as Anchor Steam beer. Brewed with lager yeast, but at ale temperatures, this style is a take off on beer that was brewed during the gold rush in the 1800's.
Another style, which I have tackled today, is called Kentucky common. Unfortunately, there are no producers of this style today. My goal was to brew an interpretation of what I understand this style to be using modern ingredients.
So what is it? What I can find -
-Brownish in color
-25-30 IBU's
-25-30% corn
-A percentage of soured malt
-Starting gravity of 1.040-1.050
With that in mind(and knowing what is used in whiskeys in the area), here is what I came up with.
6lb 13oz American 6 row pale malt
2lb flaked maize
1lb flaked rye
3oz chocolate malt
4oz rice hulls
1 oz Northern Brewer pellet @ 60 min
.5oz Amarillo leaf @15 min
.5oz Amarillo leaf @ 2 min
.5oz Amarillo leaf dry hop @ 1 week to bottling.
Wyeast 1056 - American ale
Estimated og - 1.051
Measured ig - 1.005
Final gravity- 1.004
6.25% Abv
92% Apparent attenuation
75% Actual attenuation
32 IBU
4/27/10- Mashed 2 or so pounds of the barley with 6 oz of corn and 3 oz of rye (approx 30% of grain bill) boiled for 60 min. Mashed at 145ish for 90 min. The temp pretty much varied from the low 150s to high 130s during that time. Let this cool down to 120 and then added a handful of grain to introduce lactobacillus. Left this in a cooler overnight to sour.
4/28/10- Boiled the corn and rye with water, burnt to the bottom of the pan a bit, but didn't taste bad. Mashed with remaining barley and rice hulls at 147 for 90 min, added sour mash to this (smelled alot like yogurt as lacto is one of the main bacteria in that) and sparged with 5 gal of 170 degree water. Dropped and broke my hydrometer again. Argh. I need to keep it in one of the lower cabinets. Boiled for 90 min, added to fermenter, straining through a bit of additional Amarillo hops, pitched yeast. At this point it tastes very sweet from the mash, but has a nice sour twang to it, as well as a definite hoppiness. Maybe more than I like. But we shall see.
I used my new burner and pot today. I managed to get a boil over from 7 gallons of wort in a 15.5 gallon pot. Go me. Also that pot when full is pretty heavy. Also the bottom gets very hot and I burnt a few circles into one of our rugs. I didn't even think about that since I have always set my other pot down and nothing happened. Oh well, now I know. I can just spray it down with the hose before I bring it in to cool it. Also installing a tap on the pot would be a great idea. I think once I get used to this system, my brew days will be shorter, though I still ran about 7 hours today. I had gotten used to my two pot boiling system, inefficient though it was.
5/4/10- Racked to secondary (5 gal better bottle). I got a new hydrometer that I hopefully won't drop for awhile. Gravity is at 1.005 which I guess is somewhat lower than I expected but at the low end of the range for what the yeast is capable of. Tastes pretty good, hoppy with a nice carmelly malt finish. Doesn't taste all that sour though. I have some plans forming for another sour mash beer though...
Racked to the secondary fermenter.

Intermediate gravity before racking. I think I will also dry hop this beer. The color looks like it should be a nice copper to red so I got that right at least.

5/11/10- Added .5 oz of Amarillo leaf to dry hop, plan to bottle in a week. Tasting more sour now possibly...

5/18/10- Bottled today with 5 oz of corn sugar boiled in a pint of water, should give me just under 3 volumes of co2. I added a jar of washed b. lambicus to half of the beer. I am thinking this will ferment some of the added sugars and help give it a more rustic taste. I am sure sanitation wasn't what it is today in the 1800's.
At this point I would say it tastes pretty good, though not really all that sour. I get a slight sour tinge right at the end. But it is a good American ale, nice hoppiness, and nice flavor. Despite the low ending gravity, I still find a good malty flavor/sweetness. I think my next sour mash beer will undergo souring in a different container and for a longer period of time. I feel adjusting those two things will give me the more sour taste I am looking for.
After being dry hopped for a week.