UPDATE: Let it grow, let it grow, can't hold it back any more...

Got this video clip from Matt Van Wyk at Oakshire Brewing this morning.  This is the blow off activity on my yeast pitch I gave him at less than 24 hours after pitching onto just under 1 barrel of 10* plato wort.  Ferocious!

RECIPE & PROCESS: WTWTA: Ira & Judith

As I look back through old posts, and try to organize the blog, I came to realize that I had made an initial recipe post for the clean beer that eventually became the two sour beers that are Ira and Judith. I also gave some random updates with lofty ideas about all this crazy stuff I was going to do, and on how things were going. But there was no single recipe to show for the beers, what I actually did with them, what the process was, aging times, fruit additions, blending, bottling, etc. If someone wanted real info on the beers and how to make them, I didn't have gathered source of all the information. So, here it is. I have given the original recipe and fermentation specs, then outlined the process from there on in the notes.

RECIPE: The Becca Begins (Solera Barrel 1st Fill: Belgian Blonde)

Barrel is all topped up

Ever since I started brewing sour beers, and especially after reading Wild Brews, I have wanted to make a sour and put it into a barrel to age.  Specifically I wanted to start a Sour Solera, fill it with one beer, sour it, pull a portion after 6 months, then refill the (now) empty portion of the barrel with new beer.  I can add the same recipe as the original keeping the base flavors the same, or I can add something different and shift the color, aroma, and flavor profile in a different direction for the next pull.  I just needed something to house the beer.

I had considered using one of the blue plastic drums from the Homebrew Store that previously housed Liquid Malt Extract, but the potential oxygen uptake on a project of this size was too much for me.  I had also tried to figure out a way to do it with a retired 1/2 barrel keg but couldn't find one through legal paths.  I had put out an email to the brew club to see if anyone had a lead on one, and a response I wasn't expecting came back: I have a 14 gallon wine barrel that I am not going to use that you can have.  Wow!  Jackpot!  

Saison and 5 Brett Strains

The barrel had set empty for some time so I had to do some work to get it to swell again as well as to clean it for holding my beer and not adding unwanted bacteria to it like acetobacter.  It took a couple days to get it to swell.  First i filled it 1/3 full with boiling water and stood it on each head.  I also filled the heads on the outside with boiling water to get them to swell.  After setting it back on its belly on the stand it was dropping water quite a bit.  I topped it up to about 1/2 full  with cold tap water and left it there for the day (went to finish my brew at Falling Sky).  I came back afterwards and topped it up to about 3/4 full as the water flow had declined (but not stopped).  The following day I topped it off to full after adding Potassium Metabisulfate (2g/L) and Citric Acid (1g/L) to it to kill any bacteria, mold, and anything else as well as keep the water fresh.  It was fully swollen and holding water tight by the next day.

Mash is Drained

I decided that I wanted to brew a Belgian Blonde for the first iteration to go through the barrel.  I wanted the light, fruity, spicy, funky, tart flavors to shine, let the yeast do the bulk of the talking on this one.  From here I can go wherever I feel fit.  I took a queue from Russian River's sour Blonde Sanctification and went with a lower OG than Belgian Blonde's usually have since the higher degree of attenuation from the primary yeasts, bacteria, and Brett will make it super dry and raise the ABV that way.  To give some character to the beer I used a fair amount of Belgian Aromatic malt and a home made Invert Sugar which lended a fruity alcohol note during fermentation.  I set up to brew 15+ gallons to ensure a full fill, but hit 16 gallons, and in the end, I still came up shy by 1/2 a gallon. 

Only time will tell where this one goes from here.

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Stats:

Gallons: 16.00

OG: 1.054

FG: 1.005

ABV: 6.40%

Added Invert Sugar to Hot Wort to Dissolve

IBUs: 22

SRM: 7.0

Efficiency: 92%

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Fermentables:

20.00# Weyermann Pilsner (80.0%)

2.50# Special Aromatic (10.0%)

2.50# Sugar, Invert (10.0%)

Mash 10 hours @ 154*F

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Boil 45 mins

35 2.00 oz Magnum 16.40%AA

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Kettle Additions:

Gypsum - Mash 1 1/4 tsp; Boil 1 3/8 tsp

Epsom Salts - Mash 1/2 tsp; Boil 1/2 tsp

Calcium Chloride - Mash 1 3/8 tsp; Boil 1 5/8 tsp
Lactic Acid - Sparge 1.4ml

Yeast Nutrient - 6 taps

Whirfloc - 1 each

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Fermentation:

Cooled to: 74*F
2 Better Bottles = JasperYeast JY43 Saison slurry from Enygma

1 Better Bottle = JY33 B Brux & 87 B Brux, ECY B Naardensis, B Custersianus, and B Nanus, Cascade Brewing Lactobicillus Brevis

Barrel = WLP B Brux Trois, BSI B Lambicus, WY B Clausenii, Orval B Brux, Elysian's Mortis B Brux, Flat Tail Brewing "Brett F" wild yeast from local plums, Cascade L Brevis

74*F 2 days

78*F 2 days

85*F 10 days

Ambient Garage Temps for 6+ months

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Notes:

Maxed out my 17.5 gallon Kettle

7/16 Boiled 3 3/4 qts of water with 2.5# of Demerra sugar and 5/8 tsp of Citric Acid for 2 hours to make 2 qts of invert sugar. Next time I will add half the water volume and boil for 20 minutes. Think it might be too dark and rummy for a Belgian Blonde. 

7/18-19 Brewed alone, mashed all grains in at 8:30pm at 154*F. Dropped to 142*F by 7:30am, loss of 12*F over 11 hours. Sparged and boiled as one batch, added the sugar and end of boil. Cooled wort to 74*F and transferred via pump to 3 Better Bottles at 10:00am . Pitched 2 with JY 43 Saison strain slurry from Enygma, and the other with 5 Brett strains and Lacto. Set controller to 74*F. Positive pressure and bubbles in Saison yeast fermentors within hours, full krausen on all 3 by next morning. 

CO2 Force Racked Into Barrel

7/21 Jumped temps up to 78*F 

7/23 Jumped up to 85*F 

7/27 Pulled samples, tastes great. 1.006, 1.005, 1.004 on the refractometer. 

8/2 Wracked off of yeast into cleaned 15 gallon wine barrel. Samples of the JY43 version were lightly sulfury, higher alcohols, fruity, no phenols. The Brett and Lacto version had a bit of funk and over-ripe fruits. Came up short on volume some how, so I racked ½-1 gallon of the Too Small Sour Brett Rye Saison in with a bottling wand shoved into the picnic tap to avoid splashing and filled the headspace. This added BSI Brett Lambicus, Elysian’s Brett B, Wyeast Brett C, Orval Brett B, and Flat Tail’s Brett “F” to the mix as well as more Cascade Lacto. 

8/12 Pulled bung to see a pellicle has already formed and took a sample. Light Brett spiciness and funk mingled with fruity alcohol.

8/16 Was able to score some 4D Stainless Steel nails from a super helpful brewer in town that has an amazing barrel aging program. Drilled the head of the barrel about 3/4 of the way down with a 7/64" drill bit and then slid one of the nails into the hole. This gives me the ability to pull samples from the barrel over time and not have to open the barrel itself and expose the beer to oxygen.

Left in garage at ambient temps to age and sour (Max temp in August in garage was 122*F).

UPDATE: Prepping for Some Funky Stuff

In a couple weeks I will be brewing a big batch of Saison which will be split up a couple ways.  In preparation for this I have been busy culturing up and propagating different wild/sour/funky yeasts and bacterias.  I started by stepping up the dregs from an Allagash Confluence on the stir plate which had about 800ml of 1.020 starter wort in it.  After 24 hours it was rocking and by 48 was full bore.  I topped it off with another 800ml of about 1.040 wort to give it a bigger starter both in size and gravity.  A few days later it is still roaring.  This beer is a blend of Allagash's proprietary house Belgian strain that they use in the White and other Belgian beers (but not the Saison), and their proprietary Brett strain which was isolated from there coolship.  I am looking forward to how this blend will do with the 1.037 Saison in the works.

I also stepped up some older Brett strains from the slurries in my fridge like a Brett B I cultured from Elysian's Mortis, a Brett L from a local brewery that hooked me up with a pitch, and a new vial of WLP Brett Trios.  I also cultured the dregs from a fairly fresh bottle of Orval to get that funk it is known for.  I boiled up some ~1.020 wort and put it into mason jars and then cooled it down.  I pitched each strain separately to build them up and left the lid loose for CO2 escaping.  When I walk by I tighten the lid and give it a good shake then loosen it up again; by next morning a few were already giving off CO2 and foaming which is great.  My buddy Stephen from church plays with bugs too, and he gave me some Brett C from Wyeast and some Brett "F" which was cultured and isolated from plum skins by the brewer at Flat Tail in a neighboring city, Corvallis.  These will go into primary alongside some Lacto I cultured up from grains and I am hoping some Lacto from a bottle of Cascade that Stephen and I split the other night on my new deck.  He took the bulk of the dregs home to plate and isolate the Lacto, then grow it up, I took the last of the dregs and tossed them into a low gravity solution of Lactose sugar which I have sitting at 105*F right now to try to get some good growth before I brew.  All these strains will be pitched along with both WY PC strians of 3726 Farmhouse (Blauges) and 3725 Biere de Garde (Fantome).  The hope is that getting the Lacto and Brett cell counts stepped up in starters and raring to go, and pitching at the onset with the smaller pitches of the Saison blend will give a quick turn around for a young and complex beer.

Allagash Culture

I am also going to pitch 1/2 gallon of the same Saison wort with a Tej yeast strain to see how it fairs in an all malt environment.  There are 2 other brewers testing the Tej yeast as well and we will compare the final beers to get a feel of how it works.  If these trials go well, it may make its way into the collaboration beer I am doing with Falling Sky in June for winning Best of Show.

I also have 3 bottles worth of dregs from the Carol (BOS Lambic) stepping up for a future brew from just that yeast, that may eventually become a full batch at another local brewery...

Lots of exciting yeasties and beasties to play with, just wish I had more time and more wort...

UPDATE: Carol 2012 (Lambic)

After 2 months of wild fermentation I pulled a taste of the Lambic I brewed in October.  It has a distinct bitterness to the sour, much like a 3F or Cantillon, just not as harsh.  The sourness is very present for such a young sour, and different from a straight lactic sourness and no acetic.  The sour profile contains an acid from (I suspect) some of the early bacterias that weren't in the first edition.  There are a few esters in the young beer that are slightly off, not bad, but not totally pleasant.  Looks like I have a real Lambic fermentation on my hands with early bacteria and acids from other wild sources before the Lacto or Sacc started doing their thing.  I am looking forward to where it goes from here as the Pedio blooms and the Brett takes some of the less desirable esters and acids, and transforms them into (hopefully) wonderful fruity and funky esters.  The long aging period should also help some of the bitterness drop out that comes from the hops (if any of the bitterness is from the aged hops at all), as well as some tannins from the French Oak.

Update: Carol 2.0

Last week I brewed my second Lambic.  After a 24 hour chill open to the air in my garage I racked the beer into a sanitized 6 gallon carboy.  Upon racking it, I added about a ½ cup of slurry from my previous Lambic (over a year old, and had been in the fridge over a month), as well as the dregs from a 3F Oude Gueuze.  There was no activity for 3 more days.  On Friday morning I sent a message to Mad Fermentationist asking how long is too long to wait before pitching something, and he advised pitching something right away if it didn’t take off that day.  When I got home from work that day there was a pure white soapy foam on top about a ¼” thick or so - it looked like StarSan foam.  This lasted for a few days and began to die back some.  On Sunday afternoon I pitched some of my Strawberry Starter that I had made earlier in the summer and had stepped up with some of the wort for the Lambic.  On Monday night I racked my ½ gallon of spontaneous fermented Brown Ale into a glass jug with an airlock and added the yeast slurry to the carboy (the beer tastes kind of watery and wild, but not off putting, nor does it taste like the Brown Ale).  Upon smelling the Lambic while adding the yeast the smell is not disgusting, but not appealing either.  I’m hoping that the fermentation will blow off any unwanted aromas, and the wild yeast will transform any unwanted acids and fats into lovely esters over the course of the year it ages. There could be some dangerous bacteria growing, DMS from the Pils and no chill, or a number of other possibilities, but most Lambics go through this stage for much longer than a week.  As of Tuesday morning there is a normal krausen starting to form on the beer and the airlock is starting to crank out like normal while it sits in the garage at a steady 67*F.  We’ll see where it goes over the course of a year…

Recipe: Carol "Lambic" 2.0 (Where the Wild Things Are)

As I sip on my “Lambic” from last year, which I am very pleased with, I am very anxious to brew another one.  This time I will use the same yeast culture from the last one as I saved the entire cake from the last brew in a gallon jar in the fridge.  This year I am going to go with a grist that is much more traditional, 65% Pils, 35% Raw Wheat, mashed @ 158*F.  Last year I had some character malts like Vienna and CaraVienne which are not traditional and I’m not sure they added any needed complexity other than color.  I also had a flavor hop addition which is pointless in a beer aged for a year, coriander was the same.  I added some cake flour last time for a little more dextrins to chew on since my mash temp was fairly low. 

I could always do a turbid mash, but why?  I could also do a cereal mash, but why?  These things are traditional, but do they add anything to the final product that won’t be there (or at least drastically noticed) in the final product?  My first Lambic is quite nice and it was mashed at 152*F, and hit 1.006 in 3 weeks.  The 158*F mash should leave a larger amount of dextrins in the wort for the bacteria and Brett to munch on, and the large pitch of yeast cake should ensure a healthy amount of bugs and Brett as well as autolized yeast for them to eat as well.  That combined with an overnight open cooling in the garage where all my wild stuff is going (which I already fermented a ½ gallon of left over Brown Ale spontaneously in there), and some more dregs from commercial and homebrewed sours should ensure a good, big, powerful, and characterful fermentation from the onset, avoiding some of the enteric bacteria that are not desired.  Add in a 3 hour boil, and aged hops, we are looking at a great start to a second Lambic for next year.

Stats:

5.5 gallons

1.050 OG

1.001 Est Fg

6.6% Est ABV

8 IBUs

3 SRM

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Fermentables:

7.5#  Weyermann Pils

4.0#  Flaked Wheat

0.50# Rice Hulls

10 Minutes @ 148*F

10 Minutes @ 152*F

45 Minutes @ 157*F

78% Extract Efficiency

72% Brewhouse Efficiency

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180 Minute Boil:

180 mins - 3.4 oz Aged Hops ~ 1.5AA%

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Fermentation:

Cooled overnight opened to air in garage

6 gallon glass carboy

Healthy pitch of cake from Carol 1 (cultured from blackberries plus dregs)

Dregs of 3 Fonteins Oude Gueuze

12 months at ambient in garage

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Additional:

Gypsum 1/2 t (mash), 5/8 t (boil)

Calcium Chloride 1/2 t (mash), 1/2 t (boil)

1 French Oak Cube in primary

Brew day started off difficult.  I overshot my strike temp and hit a mash temp of 165*F.  After adding cold water I ended up at 148*F.  Added boiling water to get up to 152*F, then added more boiling water to get it up to 157*F, and rested for 45 minutes.  Wasn’t planning on doing a step mash, but oh well.  After collecting 10 gallons of wort I drained the last of the runnings into a separate kettle and boiled it down to about 800ml of 1.080 wort.  I added this to the beer and drew off 1200ml of 1.040 wort from the boil and cooled it to make a starter to my dregs while the wort cooled over night.  I added the dregs from a Hannsens Oude Gueuze to the starter only for a fruit fly to get into it and render it useless.  After a 3 hour boil, I had to move the keggle into the garage for the overnight chilling, and of course, while carrying the 15.5 gallon beast of a brewpot with a scorching hot bottom, I hit my leg with it and burned it quite nicely, luckily I only did it once and got the wort to the garage without spilling any or hurting myself anymore.  I covered it in a large sheer curtain sack that I synched down on the sides, hoping that the Fruit Flies don’t get into there like the starter.  After about 28 hours at ambient temp I racked 5.25 gallons of the wort into the 6 gallon carboy with the yeast cake, oak, and dregs.

Where the Wild Things Are: The Carol

About a year ago, actually, 52 weeks ago, I brewed up a Lambic that I fermented with the yeast I cultured off of blackberries from my backyard and a small starter of yeast from organic peaches grown locally.  After making the wort and adding the entire starter from each yeast to the carboy, I had a "funny" fermentation which consisted of small bubbles flowing up to the top quickly to feed a very small fluffy white head that looked like a single centimeter of soda foam.  Eventually the fermentation looked a little more like normal, but the krausen never really roared up like a normal yeast would.  There were chunks of peach flesh and blackberry, as well as oak chunks on top.  I also added some wild grapes after a month for a little extra yeast.  After only three weeks it was down from 1.053 to 1.006.  Nice and fruity, with a light tartness, mostly tropical and berries.

Over the course of fermentation, I have added dregs from commercial and homebrewed sours to try to get more complexity built up from other sources of Brett and bacteria.  I added some Russian River dregs, Cantillon Grand Cru, Jolly Pumpkin, Oude Beersel, Girardin Black, some infected Logen Berry mead a buddy made, and some dregs from a sour I did with Russian River dregs.  This will ensure a more complex beer, but it also kills much of the work I did culturing the yeast since the final product isn't a showcase of what that yeast can actually do (part of the reason I am going to brew a new one this year with fruit cultured yeast again and leave it alone).

After a few months I noticed a lot of oak character showing, and seeing that I used 5 oz of French Oak that had come from a wine barrel in Lodi, it wasn't any wonder why.  I needed to do something to stop the oaking, but I didn't want to lose all of the goodness in the trub and yeast that is needed for a Lambic to ferment properly.  I racked the beer out of the carboy into my sour bottling bucket and then dumped the trub, yeast, fruit, oak, etc., into a vessel while I cleaned the carboy and removed all the oak.  After this I added a few pieces of oak to the carboy, opened the valve on the bucket and refilled the carboy.  While this was going on I also racked the yeast, trub, and fruit back into the carboy as well.

I noticed an oxidative character beginning to creep in around January, so I brewed a little extra wort on my Saison and added a half gallon to the carboy to displace the head space.  The FG was still at 1.005.  Only took a few days for the fermentation to kick back up and take on the fresh wort.  After about a month or so, it was back down to 1.005.

Given another month, the FG had gotten down to 1.002, and there was a sheen atop the wort slightly resembling an oil slick, not like the pellicles I have seen before on my other sour beers.  By mid summer the taste was nice, funky, tart, clean, fruity, spicy, but lots of oak, so I racked it from the 6 gallon carboy into a 5 gallon, taking some of the yeast sediment at the bottom with it.  Given another month, the oakiness is starting to fade some.  I racked 1/2 gallon out of the carboy and added 1/2 gallon of my sour Blonde ale to try to cut down on the oak a little.  A few weeks later I am happy with the results, and am ready to bottle, and seeing that it is sitting at 1.001, not much more for it to do in the short term.

A beer that I have been watching, shaping, tasting, aging, and waiting on for a year is no simple brown bottle beer.  For this batch I needed to do something special, at least for a few bottles.  I started with 375ml Champagne bottles.  At this point I could go with cork and cage, or cork and cap (Cantillon style), but I opted for a cap and wax seeing as they look very nice, and it's super cheap as well as not requiring extra equipment.  Add to this full labels with art work and it is a very nice show piece, even if it is only 6 bottles worth.

I hope that the beer will carbonate quicker than my other sour which has been bottled for nearly 7 months and is still fairly flat.  Our club has a competition coming up and in late October that I would like to enter this batch into.  I will of course set the bulk of this beer aside to cellar for years to come and continue to develop.

This beer will be the first installment in my new series of beers, dubbed Where the Wild Things Are, named after characters from the children's book made movie.  The first is going to be called The Carol.  One of the main Wilds, he was impulsive, much like brewing a beer with blackberry yeast, adding dregs at random, and over oaking, only to move the beer twice.

NOTE: This beer took 1st place in Sour Beers and BEST OF SHOW in February 2014 at the KLCC BJCP comp.

Update: Laminated Envelope - Blackberry Version

Awhile back I brewed up an American Blonde Ale to test my fermenters that had housed infected batches.  The resulting beers were mixed and soured with different dregs and such.  After some time had passed I split the batches into 2 5 gallon carboys and added mangoes and mango juice to one, leaving the other one plain for a later addition of fruit.  Just a few weeks ago we returned from a long trip to California to find an abundance of blackberries on the large bush that has overtaken an entire fence in our back yard.  We were able to pick nearly 6# in one evening, and still had tons left that we were unable to get to that day.  Seeing that we didn't need that many berries, I decided to split off 4.33# of blackberries into the plain sour batch.  After dropping some in, one-by-one, I tried pulverizing them in my hand, and this too caused too much splashing, so I blended them up in the blender and poured it through my funnel with a tube on the end that was under the surface, cutting down on aeration.  The beer is a deep purple with chunks of blackberry floating around and a very broken pellicle on top.  Honestly, it looks like a giant version of the starter I did about this time last year from the same blackberry bush to make the Lambic I am going to bottle soon.  Between the two carboys I should have about 4+ gallons of Sour Blackberry Blonde and nearly 5 gallons of Sour Mango Blonde come next summer.

Sour Blonde Update: Tropicana!

The Blonde Ale has made some advances since I last updated on it.  What started as a test batch to ensure my fermenters were free of the infections that hit my other brews, morphed into a sour project when the experiment revealed that my conical was indeed still infected (and much new information leads to the conclusion that it is actually the source of it all).  The batch was being housed in 4 glass jugs, and the conical, the former containing Lacto, Pedio, Brett, and oak, the latter containing Brett only.  I recently added some 5 gallon glass carboys to the brewhouse, scored at a garage sale for $12 each, couldn't pass it up.  I decided to take the just under 3 gallons of oaked and soured version, the 1 gallon of Lacto from yogurt and honey, and the 6 gallons of Brett Blonde and mix them together split into 2 carboys.  One remains blended and aging for now (will receive some fruit later), the second received fruit now.

I did some chatting with fellow homebrewers and sour lovers Mike Tonsmeire (and his friend Seth) and Ryan about possibilities for adding tropical fruits.  Both recommended staying away from pineapple unless I was going to back sweeten as they are highly acidic.  After looking at the options of guava, papaya, mango, passionfruit, and dragon fruit, I decided on mango (passion and dragon are too expensive).  I added one papaya and remembered that I don't much care for it, and one won't impact the flavor enough to worry about it.  I also added 3 mangoes skinned and de-seeded.  According to a few sources, I would need between 8-10# of mango, and i only added about 3.  The cost factor does weigh in, so when I found some Mango Nectar (high fructose corns syrup free) on sale for $3.50 1/2 gallon, I jumped on it.  Bought 2 jugs.  The juice weighs in at 1.057 OG.  I added one jug to the carboy and almost overflowed the vessel.  The other I put into one of my glass gallon jugs and then siphoned some of the sour beer in with it to ferment it like a sour/wild Mango cider.  Once they are done souring, I will blend them back together before bottling.  Who knows what else will happen between now and then though.

Bring On The Bugs

I've been thinking about building up my reserves for sour dregs to add a little more depth and complexity to my sour beers.  The two that have finished were good, but I only used one type of dregs to achieve them and my hope is to add a lot more to the following batches.  Previously I have used Russian River's Supplication and Consecration.  Recently I built up the dregs from there Sanctification which is brewed with only Brett, with Lacto and Pedio in secondary, and bottled with Brett alone (thus removing the champagne yeast that they use in all the other sours at bottling), as well as dregs from a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere which has a great pellicle.  I added the dregs from a bottle of Oude Beersel Oude Geuze Vielle to my Lambic as well as dregs from some of my homebrew, Cantillon, and a dose of Logenberry Mead from my buddy that had gotten infected.  

I've got quite a few bottles of different sours that I was considering culturing from, such as, RR Beatification (among other RR offerings), Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus, Oakshire Scookumchuck, Girardin 1882 Black Label, Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait 2007, and Hannsens Scarenbecca Kriek.  What I was thinking was to make a 1.030 starter wort from DME and Apple Juice, transfer into water bottles and put it in the freezer until I drink one of these bottles, at which point I will pop the cork, pour the beer, flame the lip, and add dethawed starter wort to the dregs in the bottle then place foil on top and leave at ambient to grow.  After some time I will be able to swirl up the starter of which ever one/ones I want to use, pour some off into the beer I am brewing, and add some more starter wort to it to feed it and keep the culture going.  This will give me variety, and since I have lots of 1 gallon jugs, I can add JP to one, Cantillon to another, Hannsens to another and RR to another, and compare how they turn out, then blend to the desired effect I want.


One problem that I hit was with the bottle of Fantome Saiosn D'Erezee Prentemps that I did this with.  I ended up with Icebergs on top (Large clumps of mold) and a Sea Cucumber floating around in the liquid (large carpet of mold).  According to another homebrewer and sour  maker he has had this same issue when the starters are grown in too hot an environment.  Another issue that Mike Tonsmeire threw my way, and I was reminded of again while reading Wild Brews again, is that mixed cultures like this will be very difficult to keep in balance.  Inevitably the Sacc strain will die off and autolize, the Lacto (especially in un-hopped stater wort) and Pedio will multiply rapidly, and the Brett will not keep up with the acid bacteria.  If this were to happen, successive batches would become very sour and not have much other flavor components to keep the beer in balance with the proper flavors and aromas, just sour.  What he recommended, and the way I will probably go, is to just pitch the dregs into a batch, let it age, bottle, and then pitch the dregs from my bottled beers into new sours along with other dregs, age, bottle, repeat, and so on.  This will give me a large diversity of bugs and wild yeasts from different breweries, as well as a house character as my current bugs and yeasts are repitched and morph from batch to batch.  With all the different sours I have going right now, it sounds like a good option.


Add to this my culture of Lacto from yogurt, and my Brett starters - 1 Orval, 1 Reinhardt's Flemish Wild Ale, and I will be getting some Brett C from an all Brett beer that some buddies have going, I should be looking at quite a bit of funk to funk around with.

Shortened Brewday Update

As I stated in my last post, I severely tweeked two brews to shorten my brew day and make it much easier and less stressful... thus funner, and it was.  My efficiency was slightly lower than I thought it would be but I still hit my numbers where I wanted to.  1.049 for my Wit, and 1.055 for the Gumballhead... then the curve ball.  I was racking the Gumballhead into the Better Bottle with my airstone going just fine while I emptied my mash tun.  After it finished I looked over to see a plume of foam exiting the top... wait a second... why is Starsan foam coming from the... top... of my... oh... !  Yes, after pouring a half gallon of Starsan into my fermenter, shaking to sanitize, putting the shirt over the top to keep the sun from skunking my beer, and putting the stopper in to keep debris and such out, I forgot to empty the Better Bottle before racking into it.  Luckily Starsan is drinkable, unlike Iodophor, and so it just diluted the beer from 5 gals @ 1.055 to 5.5 gals @ 1.050.  To adjust for this I added a pound of sugar to the fermenter to get the gravity back up to about 1.055 so that I will still hit the right ABV (maybe a little higher with how fermentable the sugar is).

As an added bonus I drew off 6 gallons of 1.011 gravity last runnings and soured them for 50 hours @ 95*F.  Smelled like yogurt, not too tart though.  Went to boil it with 2.5# DME and my burner caught on fire at the hose, so no boil.  I pulled 1 quart of wort and brought it to just under a boil and added 1oz Challenger and 1oz Cascade for a frutiy, spicy, floral, citrus hop nose to it and steeped for about 5 mins, then strained it into the other 6+ gallons of unboiled wort in the bucket.  I added some slurry from the 3/4 gallons of Soured Saison I just bottled, and after 2 days it smells of fruit, lactic, and CO2, and I can see the wort churning when I look inside.  Tossed in a couple of my French Oak cubes as well.  In a few months it should be nice and tart and funky.  My thoughts are to add fruit or maybe flowers to it, possibly dry hop.  We'll see how this one turns out for a last minute, last runnings, sour mash that didn't fully sour and never boiled, hopped nose but not boiled, oaked experiment, that I didn't take a gravity reading on.

Be on the look out for the recipes soon.

UPDATE: Brett Blonde

Thought I would post a quick update on the Blonde Ale that I turned some Brett lose on, mainly I just want to post some pix of the pellicle from inside the conical cuz it looks cool...

Infecting My Infection Experiment

A few weeks ago I brewed up a basic American Blonde recipe to test my fermenters to see if I had effectively killed off the infection that may have been housed in them from previous batches.  The conical version of the beer seemed to be infected from the start so I decided to sour up the whole lot of it.  After checking the final gravity on the Better Bottle version and tasting it, I decided that I didn't have to have 5 gallons of this one bottled and could go for a half batch or so.  It seems a little thin with a FG of 1.005.  The flavors are nice, but the body is a little off.  I shouldn't have expected much different since I pulled 10.5 gals (post boil) from 12.5# of grain, and with such a low OG (1.037) even taking up the mash temp to 153*F wasn't going to stop it from finishing low.  Thus the decision to purposely infect the infection experiment batch.

On the conical, I diverted 1 gallon to a jug that housed a Brett starter to funk up, and I hit the remainder with 1/4 cup starter from Russian River Consecration and 1/4 cup of my Lambic along with 8 pieces of French Oak.  After a few days it was tasting quite oxidized, so I moved it out of the conical into smaller containers.  I put all the oak into one jug so it will be over oaked and used to blend into the final mix.  The rest was put into 2L bottles with a small addition of sugar.

I bottled 18 bottles worth from the Better Bottle using carb tabs just so I can know exactly how the final batch actually turned out.  The rest I transferred into the conical where I added the entire 2.5 gallons of this wort fermented on all Brett, the gallon of Bretted conical beer, and added 1.25# Clover Honey for added sugars.  I put a piece of saran wrap over the top so that I can easily look inside at what is going on with out allowing oxygen in every time I take a peek.  The saran wrap is kind of fogging up from the honey fermenting, which started out as a ring of foam as is began to dissolve from the bottom of the conical and start to ferment and slowly developed into a full krausen by 2 days later.

The plan is to let the Better Bottle version now in the conical funk up with Brett for a few months while the original conical version sours in the 2L bottles.  After 3 months or so, I will drain off a couple gallons of the Bretted conical into 2L bottles and add a 1 gallon starter of Lacto and honey, as well as a couple of the 2L soured bottles to get the souring bugs going in the Brett only version.  After some time passes I will pull some more form the conical and add the remaining 2L bottles of soured Blonde as well as the oaked sour Blonde to the mix.  Come the end of summer, I will have 2 gallons of Blonde Ale on Brett, and about 8 gallons of soured, oaked, wild Blonde which I will split 3 gallons onto cherries, 3 gallons onto apricots, and keep 2 gallons straight giving me a total of about 10+ gallons.  We will see how time plays this one out. 

Wet Cardboard Stinks!

After all the effort to brew a clean beer after all the infections, after brewing up a new recipe, after finding that the conical was still infected, after deciding to sour the whole batch and fermenter for good, after working up a great plan, wet cardboard! The conical is opaque so I can't see what is going on inside. Last night I popped the top to see if any progress had been made in 5 days (no, it hadn't), to find an odd smell. I flipped a couple of the oak cubes over since they had some yeast slurry on top of them, and when I pulled my hand back it hit me... oxidized! The conical also holds about 8.5 gallons, so 3 gallons of beer and 5.5 gallons of head space in a plastic conical is not a good thing. I pulled a sample and the taste is the same, wet cardboard. I grabbed as many 2L soda bottles (PET just like Better Bottles) as I could and Oxicleaned them quick, then ran off the beer into them and sealed them up in an attempt to save it from a total bust, we'll see if that worked in about 5 months when I reopen them for gravity and sampling. If not, then I can use them to inoculate other sours. If so, we proceed as planned. I am hoping for the latter.

BTW, the smell of oxidized beer does not wash off easily, nor does it make for a good night's rest when you put your hand near your face.

Yogurt... In My Beer?

So much cleaning, so much sanitizing, so much stressing about whether I would ever be able to brew a clean beer again, and then the inevitable happens... another infected batch. I had stripped apart my conical, soaked it in PBW and hot water for over a day, and then left it in bleach for nearly a week. After brewing up 8 gallons of Blonde Ale to split between the conical and my Better Bottle (that had housed the infection as well) as a test to see if I had rid myself of it, I let them both ferment for a week. I pulled samples of both of them to taste, smell, and check the gravity. What I found from that conical was so much different than the Better Bottle. Dull, lifeless, dirty fruit, watery, and 3 points lower, diagnosis: INFECTED! With that, I resigned my efforts to salvage the fermenter, after all I had done, it was to no avail, and thus, a new fermenter for brewing up sours was born. And with all my renewed passions towards sours, it happened at just the right time. I was already planning on souring half the batch anyways, this just made it easier.

I pulled a gallon of the beer from the ball valve that went straight into a glass jug that had housed my Brett starter before it went into the leftover wort from this brew session, and had yet to be cleaned. Given a few months, the Brett should build up a nice pellicle and funk it up quite a bit. In the conical, I added a 1/4 cup of a starter I had built up from the dregs of Russian River's Consecration last summer, as well as a 1/4 cup of the Lambic I brewed last September using yeast I cultured from blackberries growing wild in my neighbor's backyard. I tossed in about 8 cubes of French Oak that were previously used by a winery in Lodi, CA to revive an old barrel as well. I also have a starter from RR Supplication that I won't be adding, at least not right now, because there is a lot of head space in that vessel right now and that culture has some definite acetobacter from when I used it in a bucket on another brew.

Just for the fun of it, I also made a 1L starter with 750ml water and 250ml Apple Juice, and 100g DME, that I cooled to 115*F, and pitched in 1/3 a serving Zoe Non-Fat Plain Greek Yogurt, which I inserted my temp control probe into and set it to 115*F wrapped in the heating blanket I received from a friend. 3 days later, the temp is constant at about 39*C (~100*F). When I poured a sample it fizzed like Alkaseltzer, which is good, that means carbonation, which means that something is going on. A sniff gives hints of yogurt, clean, nothing off in the aroma. A taste gives off sour apples, and a light yogurt twang. I effectively cultured Lacto from Greek Yogurt! After a few more days, I added 3/4 gallons of water mixed with 1.25# Clover Honey to bring it up to 4L, and give it a week or so at 100*F. Once this gallon of Lacto fermented Mead is ready to go, I will add it to the main Blonde Ale in the conical, along with another 1.25# of Clover Honey in a gallon of water, and let her ride for a good 6-8 months. Then I will add back in the gallon of Brett only portion, and hit it with 2-3# of fresh Apricots this Summer. This will bring the total volume of beer up to 6 gallons, with a new OG of 1.041 (1.037 prior to honey), and a FG of near 1.002 (or less) for a 5% ABV oak aged, wild Honey Blonde Ale.

Here's to innovation and infections!

If It's Infected, Why Not Infect It?

I've been thinking a lot about sours and wild brews lately, much of this is from the infections in 8 batches and the despair that I may not be able to brew clean beers again. Then a shipment of Cantillon came in and I was able to get a bottle of 1900 and Rose de Gambrinus and a renewed desire to brew sours on purpose arose. I have the American Blonde going in my fermenters right now, and was able to get an extra 2.5 gallons of wort out of it which got straight Brett B from a starter I had made from Orval (huge pelicle right now). I am planning on diverting 3-4 gallons of the Blonde to another fermenter for souring upon bottling, some with oak, some with Apricots, all with a blend of bugs. This new joy for sours got me thinking... I have a case of infected stout that I am not going to drink... why not sour it all? So I did. Last night I popped the top on the whole case of gushers and poured them into 2 - 1 gallon glass jugs. The foaming was outrageous; it took 3 shots of foam control in each jug to get them full. Once I got them filled I hit them each with a bug blend I have of Lacto, Pedio, and Bretts. One of the jugs overflowed when I hit it with the solution. Both jugs were still throwing off tons of CO2 10 hours later (not too worried about oxidizing these since the airlocks are more active then the fermenting Blondes). I'll give them a few months to go wild and see what comes of it. If they turn out to be drain pours then I've lost nothing but part of an evening and a few drops of foam control. If they turn out to be awesome wilds, then great, glad I did it and saved a batch of beer that was just going to get poured out.

Beyond Just Bottles

As previously posted, I had a bad score from my Brown Ale at a BJCP home brew competetion that showed signs of infection, and after some research and questions about cleaning and cleaning products, and sanitization, I seemed to be getting some headway... or I thought. I was under the impression that this was a bottle here, and bottle there, and had established what I was going to do to fix it...that was until last night. I opened another Brown Ale to see if it would have issues, and was met with Old Faithful. I grabbed that last 5 bottles and one, after the other, nothing but gushers. Alarmed doesn't begin to describe it; neither does rage, but that wassn't the end of it. I grabbed one of the Ambers that I had made 2 weeks after the Brown, that consequently I had repitched the yeast on. No gushing, but the flavor is lacking all the crystal malt character and it is watery. Open the 90- (repitched the yeast into this as well) from the partigyle I had done: GUSHER! Run to the cellar and grab the Wee Heavy from that same partigyle (which got the same repitch as the 90-): GUSHER! Grabbed the Session Stout with Orange Zest and Cinammon (repitched from 90-): GUSHER! This beer had been entered into the same competion and received remarks about over carbonation and lack of flavor. This beer was also a partigyle with my 10.6% Imperial Stout that also received the same yeast; it is carbing up right now, and have no clue about how far the infection has gotten on it, but over the course of the month it aged on cherries the FG dropped from 1.028 to 10.24. I will be crash cooling this one and drinking quicker than expected.

I thought it was all about the bottles, but with the rapid advance of the infection in all the batches it appears to be the repitching of the yeast. The Brown took 5 months to show signs of infection. The Amber 4.5, and is not fully there yet (only a 6 pack left). The 90- and Wee Heavy 3 months, the Stout, less than 2. I am still going to have to get all new bottling equipment as well since all 5 batches went through it all and I'd rather not risk the infection having taken hold of in my nozzle, tubing, wand, bucket, etc., and end up in my other beers as well. This is causing some paranioa as well; my 8 gallons of ESB had all new yeast, and I under primed due to a mishap with the app I use, and thought it would never carbonate. But now it has a decent amount of carbonation. Could just be the time and temp finally giving it what it needed. Could be the same infection (they have the same "oil slick" on the top of the beer as all these others had, could be residual cleaner, could be infected). I am going to get all the ESB in the fridge and drink quick. I will leave out a few bottles for a couple months and see if they turn into gushers as well just so I can know for sure. If the Saison gets infected, I am not too concerned, but still would like it to stay clean. I also am now concerned about the West Yorkshire and 3726 Farmhouse Ale yeasts I used, since I washed them and kept them, but I used the same mason jar lids w/ rubber seals that I used for storing the 1056 that infected all the others, and I didn't boil my jars or lids, just StarSan.

Time to go back to the basics again. Gonna drain-pour multiple batches this weekend, have to buy new Bottling Bucket, spigot, tubing, wand, and I have an email out to the Mad Fermentationist about the best way to kill any bacteria in my Better Bottles since he moves from wild to clean to wild to clean in his with no ill effects.

Beating the Bottle Bugs

One thing that came of my debacle was a reevaluation of my cleaning and sanitizing procedures. I got a fairly large forum discussion going back and forth over on Tasty Brew. What has seemed to come of it is that my cleaning and sanitizing is fairly tight, but every-so-often I miss a few bottles. This problem could be stemming from micro scratches inside the bottles that are harboring the bacteria that ravage my beer post packaging. I could always throw these bottles away when I end up with a gusher or two. Another option allows me to tighten up my process to have the best beer packaging available.

Cleaning: I told the guys at the LHBS that I wash with Sun Oxygen Cleaner and they stated that this was bad. They told me that it had detergents in it that would coat the walls of my equipment and bottles, that it was difficult to wash off, and that it would de-activate StarSan. I started the forum thread and did some reading and snooping. According to John Palmer, a very good cleaner for your brewery is a Sodium Percarbonate cleaner like PBW and One-Step. Turns out that the Sun Oxygen Cleaner that I use is simply Sodium Percarbonate, just like the expensive stuff they were trying to sell me. According to the forum thread, I wasn't rinsing them well enough, and the Sun MSDS sheet does state that the Sun Oxygen Cleaner doesn't work correctly with acids. To properly rinse the cleaner from the bottles (or any equipment) it should get a good 3-5 rinses with hot water. I would fill the sink with warm-hot water and submerge the bottle once, drain, then sanitize. I wasn't rinsing the first bottles thoroughly, and then I was diluting the rinse water each time as well. To rectify this issue I am going to purchase a jet type bottle washer that attaches to the sink. You turn on the hot water, turn the bottle over, press it down over the nozzle, and it sprays the hot water all over the inside. Repeat a few times and then sanitize. Another cool thing about a hot water Oxy soak is that it removes labels easily, and typically breaks up any gunk inside the bottles (still give it a good scrub with a bottle brush to be sure).

Sanitizing: This is where you take the previously cleaned (all debris, gunk, etc, removed) bottles and kill off most (if not all) of the bacteria and wild yeast that might be in/on them. Options for effectively sanitizing the bottles include baking, boiling, and steaming them. Baking will effectively sterilize the bottles killing any and everything in them. It will also degrade the stability of the glass which may lead to bottle bombs, or broken necks in the future. Boiling is very effective, yet how do you fit ~ 60 bottles into a pot of water? And even if you can get them in, how do you avoid the current of the boil crashing the bottles into the wall or each other? The third option is using the dishwasher. In this method, you remove all dishes from the dishwasher and give it a good cleaning inside (wipe down the walls, make sure there are no food particles on the bottom). Some may want to open up the insides and give it a through cleaning (be prepared, I hear this is putridly disgusting). Once it is clean, fill it with bottles, and run it with out any detergents and have it set to high heat and heated dry/sanitize cycle. Once this is done, your bottles are clean, sanitary, and on a sanitized shelf for bottling. If you bottle from the dishwasher (as I do) then any beer that spills on the opened door is just dumped into the dishwasher once you are done, and goes down the drain. Of course with as anal as I am now with everything that has happened, I will most likely take these bottles and hit them with StarSan, then place them back into the dishwasher to double sanitize.

Spontaneous Fermentation Update

Awhile back I did a time line blog of the yeast starters I was making from the wild yeast and bacteria living on the skins of wild blackberries living in my neighbor's yard and from locally grown organic peaches. The brew day has come and gone, and I thought I would fill in the specifics and update on how the beer has progressed thus far.

The recipe:
6.25# Pilsner Malt (54%)
2.25# Vienna Malt (20%)
2.00# Flaked Wheat (17%)
1.00# Caravienne (9%)

90 minute boil
FW Hops 0.4oz Styrian Bobek 3.8AA pellets
15 min 0.6oz Styrian Bobek 3.8AA pellets

10 min 1.50z Cake Flour
5 min 1tsp Coriander, Crushed

Mashed 60 mins @ 152*F
Sparged w/ Boiling water

5.25 gals
OG 1.057
FG 1.002
IBU 10
ABV 7.2%

I mashed at 152*F, I was shooting for 154, but added too much cold water when I was too hot, and it cooled it down too much. I sparged with boiling water to try to extract as much sugar as possible and even some tannins as well. At the end of the 90 minute boil I added some cake flour for extra dextrins and starches for the Brett to chew on over the long fermentation. I cooled it as usual and ran it into the fermenter. I added the 2 starters to it whole, all the wort, fruit, bacteria, yeast, a couple ants, everything. I didn't aerate it since oxygen feeds bad bacteria, and inhibits Lacto growth. It looked kind of stratified until the next day as the different parts were layered, wort, trub, break material, fruit, starter, etc.

After a few days I noticed some odd activity. There was no krausen, but I had used S-Foam, and foam inhibitor, so it is quite possible that it was fermenting and not putting up a krausen. I did notice lots of little tiny bubbles shooting up and feeding a fluffy foam at the top though, and I assume this was from the Lacto working since it releases CO2. Another day later and I saw the wort churning away like any other beer fermentation, so things were going good.

I let it go for a few weeks with out tasting it, and finally on week 3 I gave it a taste. Nice, light, clean tartness, clean fermentation, no off flavors, mild funkiness, slightly fruity, not much oak character, gravity was 1.005. Quite happy with it. I tasted it again 1 week later and the oak is starting to show some; I will be watching this since I don't want it to be too oaky. If it gets where I want it I am going to rack the beer off, remove the oak, and add the beer back to the trub, yeast, and fruit for longer conditioning and funkdifying. So far I am very pleased. I even used the yeast to ferment a cider.

NOTE: This beer took 1st place in Sour Beers and won BEST OF SHOW in February 2014 at the KLCC BJCP comp.