The backset sour mash myth?

[Prospekt]

Sorry to bring back a dead thread guys, but I need some further clarification on this one...

If you're doing a sour corn starter like in Brendan's post, you're starting a bacterial culture. With his method, you're inoculating that culture into your mash, and introducing a whole other range of flavours by the bacterial infection you've introduced. As a side-effect you get a low pH as well.

Once you've distilled that mash, the backset is boiled, and is as good as sterile. It might have the sour flavour, but you've killed off the bacteria that produce all the interesting flavours from generation I. Sure, you've got yeast nutes, and a low pH, but the 2nd gen ferment won't have the lacto infection and, therefore the unique flavours that come with it. So is a sour mash truly just for lowering mash pH? If that's the case, why not make the process less convoluted and use lactic acid or lemon juice etc to lower it?

Or, if it's the unique bacterial infections flavours we want, then we should NOT be using backset in our ferments, but perhaps the un-boiled lees, which would be loaded with living yeast and bacteria ready to populate the next batch.

I think what you guys are saying is that since we have backset as a waste product, we might as well put it to use and lower our next mash pH with it. It just happens to carry flavour as well, and this flavour has become a characteristic of bourbon. Therefore, lactobillus infections during ferments should not be encouraged or desired, unless you're first generation mash has an unusually high pH... and the flavours introduced by lacto would essentially be gone after the first couple generations.

[SoMo]

I think you are seeing it backwards, the flavor is a very concentrated one, what backset contributes is a very concentrated amount of flavors that even using a counter top sour starter can't copy or duplicate. The old timers didn't use litmus they used what made their product taste good and work. Try doing a mash/wash whatever is your bag, one with backset and one without you will see the depth of flavor that you can only find in backset.

[thumper123]

I keep a jug of backset in the reefer for the sole purpose adjusting PH. My enzymes call for a PH of around 5-5.5 for the alpha, and a PH of 4-4.5 for the glucose, and you have to add the enzymes in a two step process. It's a real handy "natural" tool, but I can't say definitively that I'm making sour mash bourbon this way.

[Bagasso]

Part of the science behind it is that acids and alcohols react to create esters.

From wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ester" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow:

Esterification is the general name for a chemical reaction in which two reactants (typically an alcohol and an acid) form an ester as the reaction product. Esters are common in organic chemistry and biological materials, and often have a characteristic pleasant, fruity odor. This leads to their extensive use in the fragrance and flavor industry.

[thumper123]

So that's what's happening. And I thought all this time it was just a way to get better sacchrification used by those who didn't make use of malt or enzymes.

I make small five gallon batches of mash, and I use enzymes in a two step process at different temps and different PH's. I use about a quart of backset to adjust the PH in the mashing phase, and then I add another quart before fermentation. Should I be using more? I've gone as high as 1:5 in the past, but I really didn't happen to notice a taste difference over the 1:10 ratio I'm using now. Do you think that maybe I should try some more experimentation with this, and perhaps a blind tate test? No shortage of testers at Christmas.

[MitchyBourbon]

Yes yes chemistry. If I recall, methanol reacts with butyric acid to produce methyl butyrate, which smells like apples or pineapples. Unfortunately, backset is a grab bag of different acids and not all of them smell like roses when they react. Worse yet some of them acids don't smell to good on their own neither. Butyric acid smells like vomit. If you don't happen to have enough methanol to react with all the butyric acid your liquors gonna smell like vomit. Maybe it would be better to add your own acids like lemon juice etc. at least you would have some control over the kinds of esters you produce? I love chemistry.

Sometimes I wonder if commercial producers just do this stuff cuz it is a cheap way to lower their ph, and they are able to clean everything up with their 30' columns and 3 dozen plates. Then they wax nostalgic about sour mashing and 30 feet of maple charcoal filtering.

[Jimbo]

Yes yes chemistry. If I recall, methanol reacts with butyric acid to produce methyl butyrate, which smells like apples or pineapples. Unfortunately, backset is a grab bag of different acids and not all of them smell like roses when they react. Worse yet some of them acids don't smell to good on their own neither. Butyric acid smells like vomit. If you don't happen to have enough methanol to react with all the butyric acid your liquors gonna smell like vomit. Maybe it would be better to add your own acids like lemon juice etc. at least you would have some control over the kinds of esters you produce? I love chemistry.

Sometimes I wonder if commercial producers just do this stuff cuz it is a cheap way to lower their ph, and they are able to clean everything up with their 30' columns and 3 dozen plates. Then they wax nostalgic about sour mashing and 30 feet of maple charcoal filtering.

+1

[Usge]

Just for reference...Dnder said he always understood sourmashing to mean reusing the lees/yeast from last round. Others have defined it differently.

The term "mash" has been no different in that regard....same as whiskey, "bourbon" or any number of other terms that otherwise can be strictly, or technically, defined by certain characteristics that may or may not be present. In that regard, Technically...UJ is a wash. But, if you define sourmashing as the above...then it's also a sourmash. There's never been a term "sourwash" that I'm aware of.

[Jimbo]

Elmer T Lee in a video someone posted up (great video) talked about the sourmash process and said they use 'stillage or backset' from the distillation run to create their sourmash. This is how we typically do it here in HD land. I have also seen distilleries follow the process you (Dnder) described using the fermented sourmash before distillation. Its got me curious how the differnet processes affect flavor. Backset is safer I would imagine, boiled and all. If you had something bad starting in yoru ferment, you'd give them bugs fresh food in the ferment forward process.

[Bagasso]

If you don't happen to have enough methanol to react with all the butyric acid your liquors gonna smell like vomit.

It will also react with ethanol, and there is more than enough of that, to produce an ester with an odor that resembles pinapple or orange, ethyl butyrate.

Sometimes I wonder if commercial producers just do this stuff cuz it is a cheap way to lower their ph, and they are able to clean everything up with their 30' columns and 3 dozen plates. Then they wax nostalgic about sour mashing and 30 feet of maple charcoal filtering.

Seems like a lot of home distillers wax on about it as well.

[SmokyMtn]

Elmer T Lee in a video someone posted up (great video) talked about the sourmash process and said they use 'stillage or backset' from the distillation run to create their sourmash. This is how we typically do it here in HD land. I have also seen distilleries follow the process you (Dnder) described using the fermented sourmash before distillation. Its got me curious how the differnet processes affect flavor. Backset is safer I would imagine, boiled and all. If you had something bad starting in yoru ferment, you'd give them bugs fresh food in the ferment forward process.

Through my research I would agree. The thing to remember is that they-( large distilleries ) use steam to heat a boiler. And by using steam do not have to separate solids from liquids. So when they add backset it contains both in the next ferment.