Sour beer over herbed with Basil

Question

Just brewed a sour with Basil thrown in at flameout. Now 6 weeks into the fermenter with WLP648 there's not much sourness and a bit (overwhelming) flavour of Basil.

I was wondering what my options were to fix this. The Basil flavour should be less intense, so my options are:

• Mixing it with another (probably pure) sour lambic without any herbs
• Wait for a few months to get it more sour and hope the herb taste fizzles out

I don't have a lot of experience with lambics or with herbs in beer, so wanted to get some feedback on what to expect after aging it for another few months.

Answer 1

Reducing the intensity of the Basil flavor is pretty much impossible, as this is the result of the amount of Basil used during brewing and you can't take some out. So your only option is to mask it with other flavors. Given that your sourness is low, increasing the sourness seems to be the way to go.

Sourness in a sour beer is, to all intents and purposes, the result of lactic acid which is produced from sugars. Once you run out of sugars, lactic acid production stops. You could add more sugar but that will also produce more alcohol. So adding a little lactic acid may help here. It may mask some of your basil flavors and restore your acidity to what you want it to be without upsetting the flavor balance of the beer, or it may not. You'll have to try.

Other than that, there's not much you can do. Write it off to experience, accept the experimentation as a normal part of this sort of brewing, and adjust it for your next brew.

Answer 2

I've noticed that my dry hop gets diluted if I purge a lot of CO2 through my keg. So you might try pushing a lot of CO2 through it and see if that removes the basil aromatics enough.

Or you could try just adding some liquid lemon or lime to sour it, but whatever you decide to do - do a small sample and test it first to see how it tastes.