Local Lambic 2013/2014 Updates

I recently bottled last year's Acai berry sour. The color is closer to orange/red than purple, which is odd as the juice was a very dark purple.

Unfortunately, I lost most of my photos when I upgraded to a new phone, so I've lost photos of the brewday for the 2014 edition of the local lambic brewed in August... so these pictures of the bottling day of the 2013 will have to make due.

Ready for racking.

Local Lambic 2013: Açaí Berry Sour

For the last two years now I've been brewing a local 'lambic' - on Monday I posted an update on the 2012 batch; the 2013 batch has been in secondary for a little over a year now, so it was time to do something with it.

Much like last year, I planned to split the batch, fruiting most of it while reserving a portion for later blending. However, with nearly 5 gallons of beer this year (compared to 3.5) I still had quite a bit left over afterwards, so I decided to bottle it as straight lambic.

My philosophy with brewing is that I don't want to make something I can buy at the store (because what's the point?) so I always like to put a spin on beers. In the case of fruit lambics, it's using non-traditional fruits, especially fruits that would be cost-prohibitive on a commercial scale. As you might recall, last year the fruit of choice was one of my all-time favorites, boysenberries. This year, I settled on another fruit I enjoy, the much-hyped açaí berry. I was hoping to use frozen fresh berries, but given the limited areas in which they are grown that proved to be nearly impossible, so I had to settle for bottled puree - luckily almost every health store carries some form of this. Ignoring the health benefits of the fruit, I felt the berry and chocolate notes would pair well with a sour base beer. I will find out in about six months.

Until then, enjoy some photos from bottling day after the break.

Local Lambic 2012: Boysenberry'n it Up

Note: Still playing catch-up with the blog, so a lot of the posts you'll be seeing for the next few weeks are from last year. Thanks.

Back in April of 2012 I brewed the inaugural batch of local lambic - my take on the classic sours of Belgium, using a turbid mash, aged hops, and locally harvested yeast and bacteria.

The last update on this beer was back in February of last year, when I racked most of it onto boysenberry puree (and reserved a gallon for future use). After that, the beer fermented out and aged for another 10 months, finally getting bottled in December of last year.

I ended up getting almost a full case of 375mL bottles as well as a handful of larger 750mL ones. It will probably be another 6 months + before it's carbonated, but I'm very excited by how this beer has turned out. Stay tuned!

Local lambic 2013 + Local lambic 2012 updates

This weekend, I brewed the second annual batch of my local pseudo-Lambic. Last year's batch has  developed into a nice lambic base - assertively sour (but not overly so), with a great bouquet and good color and clarity.

For this years batch, I'm keeping the turbid mash, and using the same recipe - the only change being that I upped the Munich malt by 10% and reduced the boil time from two hours to 60 minutes. The hope is that the extra Munich will offset any kettle caramelization the extra hour would have given.

To make way for this year's batch, it was finally time to do something with the 5 gallons I brewed last April. I have been debating back and forth over whether or not to fruit the beer. I finally decided that the beer would work fine as a fruit lambic base and went back to the original idea to use boysenberries after the plan to use pinot gris grapes didn't work out as planned (with only a few ounces, the flavor and acid contributions were undetectable). I racked a little under three gallons of the beer onto 3 pounds of boysenberries (which I might bump up to five), and racked another gallon into a small glass carboy for extended aging - my intent is to use this in blending for a gueuze-style beer in a year or two.

Tasting notes: Red Flanders & Local lambic

Over the weekend, I got around to pulling samples from my two sours that have been in secondary. It has been nearly five months since I last sampled my cherrywood-aged flanders red, appropriately named Red Flanders, and this was the first time I'd tasted the local lambic.

Red Flanders update

 

Last night I took the first sample of my cherrywood flanders red. It has been a great test of my patience to not crack it open, but I knew that trying it any earlier than six months in would be a waste of time.

 

It was a bit thinner than I had hoped, but the color and overall flavor profile are showing promise. I was waiting on a taste test before decided whether or not I would add fruit, but I feel that the cherries will give the bugs some additional food to sour it up a little more.

 

I added 4 pounds of canned cherries (3 pounds of Montmorecy cherries and one pound of a sweet Queen Anne variety). I'm going to ignore it for another 3-6 months, and then hopefully it'll be ready to bottle.

 

 

Red Flanders update #2

Yesterday I removed the cherrywood stave from my flanders red that had been given to me by my friends Rick and Daniel.

I had read about how traditional lambic/sour brewers use infected barrels to inoculate batch after batch of their beers with the same microorganisms, and how homebrewers have had success doing so with chips and cubes.

I let it air dry while I was at work and then loosely wrapped it in some wax paper for storage. I will use this stave, which was soaked in wort with Roesalaire blend as well as some bottle dregs, in my next sour in lieu of dregs or commerical cultures.

All dressed up with nowhere to go (for now).

Local lambic update

A couple weeks ago, I brewed my first true lambic. In addition to an extended boil and a turbid mash, I also planned on using wild yeast to supplement the Wyeast cultures.

I pulled off enough wort while transferring to the carboy to fill a 12oz. jar. I covered it with a fine mesh bag to keep out any bugs, birds, etcetera and left it outside for a few days.

On the 3rd day I already had signs of activity. I smelled and tasted the wort and it seemed fine, so I left it for a couple more days just to make sure nothing too gross was growing in the jar. On Tuesday, I noticed the yeast had slowed down and the krausen was beginning to fall. I took a final taste test - it smelled fainly lemony, with a bit of a woodsy, funky, earthy smell that I can't quite describe. It had an otherwise unremarkable, fairly neutral taste as well. Since I didn't see any red flags (mold, vomit smells/tastes, and such) I went ahead and pitched it into the carboy.

The wild yeast seems to have kickstarted a second round of fermentation, with the same smells that I got from the jar. I don't know if I managed to capture any wild bacteria/brett, but I'm hoping that I did. I won't know if this was a good or bad idea for at least a few more months, so I will try and taste it every few weeks and make sure it is progressing nicely.

Brewday: Local lambic

As I venture deeper into the rabbit hole that is sour beer, I find myself wanting to brew more-and-more challenging styles. I have had limited success souring beers I had brewed, but haven't brewed many beers that were made for souring. I decided after a recent Cantillon tasting that my next beer would be a fruit lambic.

On Saturday, I finally got around to brewing my psuedo-lambic. Even though it's my first attempt at the style, I tried to stay as on-style as possible - I used a very simple recipe of flaked wheat, pilsen malt, and a touch of munich to give the bugs more food to chew on. I also lucked out, as the homebrew shop was clearancing out some 1.5% AA hops, perfect for a sour beer. Aged hops would have been better, but they don't sell any. Thankfully I bought a few extra packs that I plan on leaving out in the open to age for the next sour beer I brew.

Never heard of 'hopsteiner select' but hey, 1.5% AA.

The entire brewday took well over seven hours, as not only did I do an extended boil to really drive up the dextrins in the wort, but I also performed a turbid mash to leave a lot of extra unfermentables in the wort as well.

Mashing In

Half-way through the boil.

Cooling.

After a 2.5 hour boil, I cooled the wort down - I didn't use whirlfloc or whirlpool the wort since it will be aging for so long, plus the brett and bacteria can eat the trub and hot break so I wasn't too worried. I actually overshot my gravity by about 10 points, but I also was a gallon short on volume so I topped off with chilled RO water in the carboy.

Rather than risk an entire 5 gallons of beer on a hunch, I am being a bit more controlled with this first batch of lambic. I played it safe and pitched a smack pack of Wyeast lambic blend.

However, I have had a lot of beers that used only the cultured yeast/bacteria blends and it's a very one-dimensional final result, so I also filled up a sanitized jar with some of the wort during transfer. I covered the jar with a mesh bag and set it out overnight in the hopes of capturing some wild yeast and bacteria. If I'm lucky, I will catch some bugs in the jar, and I plan on smelling and tasting whatever ends up in there to make sure it isn't anything nasty. If it seems up to snuff, I plan on pitching that into the beer to add some additional complexity. If not, I'll probably culture up some dregs from a Drie Fontainen or a Cantillon.

In 8-12 months, I plan on adding about 3 pounds of fresh boysenberries and letting that ferment for a few more months before bottling.

Red Flanders update

Today I racked my Flanders red to secondary. It's been in primary for a little over two weeks and activity seems to have slowed down enough for me to transfer it.

After having some difficultly with my racking cane/carboy cap, I ended up using my trusty auto-siphon (I will have to buy another one for non-sours, oh well!) to transfer the beer to secondary. I pulled off a sample to taste, and it hasn't really started souring yet, but has a nice flavor so I have confidence it will turn out well.

Now that it's transferred to secondary, I play to let it sit in the closet for the next six months or so before getting a dose of red currants and pomegranite seeds. If all goes as planned, I hope to bottle this sometime around New Year's.

Batch 9: Red Flanders

I've been a big fan of sours for a few years now, but up until recently, hadn't considered brewing one of my own. I had previously made a Brett B. stout that turned out very good, so I decided I would try stepping up to a full-on sour with bacteria and all.

Dueling brew stoves.

When I was brainstorming what I wanted to brew, I remembered how much I loved both New Belgium's La Folie and The Bruery's Oude Tart, and knew I just had to brew a flanders red.

After talking to a fellow homebrewer, Adam, who had made a very good homebrewed flanders red and getting his recipe and feedback, I was on my way.

The recipe I used was a modified version of Jamil Z.'s recipe, but I bumped up the specialty grains by 20% per Adam's suggestion so that the bacteria and Brett would have more food. I also pitched the blend directly into primary, as Jamil's recipe suggests doing a clean primary and then souring in secondary, but this apparently creates a very restrained sourness that I wasn't looking for. I also substituted the wheat malt for flaked corn, which is similar to what Rodenbach uses in their beers. I will also be oaking and fruiting it later on.

I made a trip to the homebrew shop and was all set to brew last Saturday, but they were out some of the things I needed. I ended up having the owner order my the Wyeast 3763 Roeselare Blend and a 6 gallon Better Bottle that I can dedicate to sours. They came in the following Thursday so I moved the brew day to that coming Saturday.

I found out my buddy Rick was planning on brewing the same day, and figured that since it's always nice to have company that we would do a brew day together. I loaded up my car with my equipment and ingredients and drove over to Rick's.

Mashing in at 156°F.

I started my mash around 10AM and was able to sparge and get to a boil about an hour and a half later. Both me and Rick ended up having efficiency problems - he ended up nearly 20 points below his target FG and I came in on target but with only 4.5 gallons of wort. I figured that rather than top off I'd just go with it, so I went ahead and aerated and pitched my yeast at 60°F. I plan on fermenting at 65° and ramping up to 80° over the course of a week or so.

Afterwards I will transfer to secondary and let it bulk age and continue souring for at least 8 months, adding oak staves and some sour cherries once the gravity stabilizes (probably in ~6 months from what I have been reading).


Flanders Red
Recipe Overview

Date Brewed: 4 Feb 2012
Selected Style: 17B-Sour Ale-Flanders Red Ale

Target Pre-Boil Gravity: 1.050 SG Actual Pre-Boil Gravity: -No Record-
Target OG: 1.054 SG
Actual OG: 1.054 SG
Target FG: 1.012

Target ABV: 5.9%
Target ABW: 4.6 %
Target IBU (using Tinseth): 12.8 IBU
Target Color (using Morey): 15.3 SRM
Target Fermentation Temp: 65 degF


Fermentables
Ingredient Amount % MCU When
German Vienna Malt 5.00 lb 33.8 % 2.9 In Mash/Steeped
Belgian Pilsen Malt 4.50 lb 30.4 % 1.2 In Mash/Steeped
German Munich Malt 3.00 lb 20.3 % 2.7 In Mash/Steeped
Belgian Special B 0.65 lb 4.4 % 15.7 In Mash/Steeped
Belgian Aromatic Malt 0.58 lb 3.9 % 1.8 In Mash/Steeped
German CaraMunich III 0.58 lb 3.9 % 5.5 In Mash/Steeped
US Flaked Corn/Maize 0.50 lb 3.4 % 0.1 In Mash/Steeped


Hops
Variety Alpha Amount IBU Form When
German Crystal 3.5 % 1.01 oz 10.8 Loose Whole Hops 90 Min From End


Yeast
Wyeast 3763-Roselare Belgian Blend


Mash Schedule
Mash Type: Full Mash
Rest at: 156 degF
Duration: 60 min

Water Profile:  Brussels (BE)
Mash pH:  5.2
pH Adjusted with:  Five Star 5.2

Here are some more pics from the brewday:

Sparging.

90 minute boil to get more unfermentables for the bugs to chew on.

Chilling.

Filling up my carboy.

We keep it classy in Reno.