28C Wild Specialty Beer
Wild Sour — House Culture
In fermenter OG1.048 FG1.002Grain bill
| Gladfield Pilsner Malt | 2.5 kg | 50% |
| Gladfield Wheat Malt | 2.5 kg | 50% |
Adjuncts
| Whirlfloc | 1 tablet @ 10 min |
| Yeast Nutrient | 4 g @ 10 min |
| Dextrose | 60 g |
Hop schedule
| Hop | 60 min |
|---|---|
| Pacific Gem | 10g |
Yeast
| Matt's house wild culture (multi-source dregs + Brett, 2025/26) | ~1L stepped-up culture pitched 2026-02-02 |
Water additions
| Calcium Chloride | 1.5 g |
Tasting notes
2026-07-29
About This Beer
The second of two parallel brews on the same gueuze-style base wort. Brewed 11 January 2026, cubed, and pitched on 2 February into a 30 L all-rounder in the upstairs wild workshop, onto a house culture built from bottle dregs over the preceding three months.
The sibling brew five days earlier went onto Paul Fantham’s 5 Magics trub. Identical recipe, 50/50 Pilsner and wheat with a single small bittering charge. The only variable is the culture.
The house culture
Built from scratch rather than inherited. The microflora came from just two bottle-dregs additions, 2 Bites on 4 November and Rua / CLM on 6 December. Every other entry below is a wort step-up.
A couple of those step-ups used leftover wort from other brews rather than DME starter wort. No yeast or slurry came across with it, only the wort.
| Date | Step |
|---|---|
| 2025-11-04 | 2 Bites dregs into ~300 mL wort, the last runnings of Phill Funky. Full ferment |
| 2025-11-21 | Crash, tip off beer, repitch onto 30 g DME / 500 mL with a pinch of nutrient |
| 2025-11-29 | Crash, pour off, tasted clean, repitch onto 60 g DME / 1 L |
| 2025-12-06 | Rua / CLM dregs added, 60 g DME / 1 L |
| 2025-12-10 | Leftover Flanders Red and Dusty Zombies wort plus DME starter. Wort substrate only |
| 2025-12-19 | New wort onto the existing cake, lineage unchanged |
| 2025-12-27 | Split into two 250 mL starters, one kept and one to Owen |
| 2025-12-31 to 2026-01-30 | Five further step-ups at 1 to 1.5 L on DME wort, building activity |
| 2026-01-26 | Sample: SG 1.001, pH 3.7 |
| ~2026-02-02 | Final starter, 60 g dextrose into ~1 L as a quick-fermenting boost right before pitch |
Pitch and the long haul
Away within 48 hours, good yeast foam and a steady bubbler. Days 4 to 5 the yeast layer broke up into the larger CO₂ foam; day 6 no surface activity but heavy gas every four seconds; day 7 the bubbler began slowing.
| Date | Days | SG | pH | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Feb | 12 | 1.008 | 3.9 | Sweaty socks aroma, tasting ok, not very sour |
| 21 Feb | 19 | — | — | Strong blue cheese, suspected B. lambicus. Pellicle starting |
| 28 Mar | 54 | 1.004 | 4.0 | No pH drop from February. Flavour more balanced, less cheese |
| 11 May | 98 | 1.002 | 3.8 | Improving, fruity, still funky, not particularly sour |
| 29 Jul | 177 | 1.002 | 3.5 | First real pH drop since February. Sourness beginning to feature |
For the first five months the stalled pH was the story: through the sugars at 1.002 but showing modest souring power, sitting flat at 3.9, 4.0, then 3.8.
The July sample is the first genuine movement. Gravity has not budged, but pH is down to 3.5 and sourness now features in the glass rather than being something you go looking for. The funk shifted too, and not in a straight line: the blue cheese that dominated February faded to fruity funk by May, and now horse-blanket has come back up strongly while the cheesy edge recedes.
That settles an open question. The plan through autumn was to consider topping up with a stronger acidifying culture to rescue the souring. Patience was the right call. The LAB got there on their own, on a timescale measured in half-years rather than weeks.
Same room, same day
The Sixth Magic cube next to it was sampled the same day, which makes a clean comparison.
| House (this brew) | Sixth Magic | |
|---|---|---|
| Culture | Bottle dregs, ~3 months of step-ups | Paul’s Gen-3 5 Magics trub with whole muscat grapes |
| Days at sample | 177 | 73 |
| OG → SG | 1.048 → 1.002 | 1.056 → 1.002 |
| pH | 3.5 | 3.6 |
| Character | Horse-blanket funk, slight cheese, cleaning up | Clean, fruity, sourness emerging |
Same gravity, within 0.1 pH of each other, and this one took more than twice as long to get there through a considerably rougher flavour phase.
The same holds against the collab brew on Paul’s second-generation trub, which was kegged inside six weeks. An active second-generation wild trub is a much faster path to a finished sour than a culture built from dregs. The dregs path is slower, less aggressive on acid, and makes you wait through the cheese.
What is next
Still in the fermenter alongside Sixth Magic in the upstairs room. With gravity static, pH and flavour are the only meaningful signals left. No packaging decision yet: it needs more time on the funk to clean up further, and the acid trend is worth letting run now that it has finally started.
Lineage
- Parallel sibling on Paul’s culture: Paul Fantham Collab, 5 Magics
- A portion of this house culture went to Owen’s Wild Sour, Split Fermentation