After reading Sam's post about cost savings during sour production using the Lachancea yeast strain, I have been thinking about our own production methods and how they might compare.  We produce gose and Berliner Weisse via kettle souring, and do some barrel aging of beers with mixed cultures as well.

First, I would say that we do not have nearly 20% loss due to spoilage, it is closer to 5% and probably less than that.  We don't do anything special with our barrels really, we take a very light hand when it comes to cleaning them and we have had good results.  It takes about 30 hours to kettle sour to under 3.2 so we can get sours fermented and packaged in under three weeks.  We don't have to pay any royalties, but then we have the kettle tied up for a lot longer so there is an impact on the production schedule.

The kettle sours mostly do not go through barrels, although we have done a few trials of fermenting in barrels with fruit and brett after souring that have gone really well.  Kettle souring works for us as a good way of producing quick sour beers. We kettle sour using malt in the kettle, so it is a mixed culture of whatever happens to be on the malt as opposed to a pure culture pitched for souring.  I think there is a noticeable difference and improved flavor with the malt, but it is a bit more risky.  I have no idea how the flavor profile compares to beers made with the Lachancea yeast though.

That said, I am all about trying new things, so I reached out to the Lachancea company to see if we could get a sample to play around with.  It took them a very long time to respond and when they did it was with a number of questions for us.  It is not clear if we are going to be allowed to try the yeast or not, it seems like they are keeping pretty tight controls on it, at least for now.

I will keep people updated, but in the meantime I would love to know more about people's experience with the Lachancea company and the yeast itself.