Update: A Barrel, and A Brewer for A Day (Or Two)

It has been a busy past few weeks and in our world, it isn't going to slow down anytime soon.  Wanted to give a quick update for what is in the works since there is nothing completed at the moment to post about.

I was able to squeeze in a brewday just over a week ago for 16 gallons of Belgian Blonde which I had made 2.5# of Invert Sugar for.  This will be going into a 14 gallon wine barrel that I was given by a friend.  Trying to get a bone dry barrel to swell was not an easy task.  I started yesterday morning and it is still dripping today, but nothing like the waterfalls pouring out when I first added water.  I put a holding solution of Citric Acid (1g/L) and Potassium Metabisulfate (2g/L) in there to kill any acetobacter or mold that might have been inside, and to keep it swollen and ready for this weekend when I move the beer into it.

Some seepage from the top staves

Falling drip of water

Another Drip Shot

I also spent this past Saturday and Yesterday as a brewer for a day at Falling Sky Brewing.  It was my prize for winning Best of Show in February.  We weren't able to rebrew my beer since they don't do sours, but we did a mock of it which was fun.  We mashed and soured the wort on Saturday, then went back on Tuesday to finish it off with a boil and hopping.

Adding the grains to the mashtun

12oz Citra Mash Hops

Brunch at the brewery, Pork Benedict

Cleaning out the Lauter Tun

Simcoe, Galaxy, 291

Free wort for me to take home and play with

Surprise lunch visitor came to see me brew

The yeast is in

UPDATE: Failed Lacto Cultures

A few weeks ago I posted about stepping up my Brett cultures by reviving older pitches from previous ferments as well as culturing new ones and getting pitches of new stuff from my buddy, Stephen.  At the same time I was working on culturing up Lacto from 3 different sources as well.  Stephen and I had split a Cascade Apricot after dinner on April 7th; he took the bulk of the dregs and I kept a few ml of slurry from the bottle.  His was pitched directly into a small wort starter (1.020 @ 300ml) that he had brought with him, and was left at room temp.  I put mine into about 250ml of Lactose sugar starter the next night and kept it at around 95*F.  I ended up taking this starter and mixing in apple juice to bring it up to 750ml of liquid.  I also added some Zoi Greek Yogurt to a jar and hit it with 750ml of apple juice too.  The third source was some pale malt I had in the garage which I added to to the last 500ml of apple juice.  I placed all of these in the ferm fridge wrapped tight in my heating blanket and kept them at 105*F for a week.  I sampled once or twice to see if I was getting any activity.  On brewday I was going to pitch some of the starters into my Saison along with 2 Saison yeasts and the Bretts.  I went to taste them and nothing.  Not a trace of Lactic acid.  I am thinking that my pasteurized apple juice must have contained sulfites as opposed to heat pasteurization (I swore I checked that though), thus inhibiting the growth of the Lacto in all 3 starters.

Luckily my buddy still had his 2 week old Cascade starter which he said was quite tart, and offered 200ml to me for my pitch which I used 150ml of and kept the other 50ml to grow up for myself.  This new starter of mine spent a week in the ferm fridge with the fermenting Saisons on 250ml of last runnings from the brewday, and had gotten quite sour.  I pitched around 100ml of the starter into my Oud Bruin from this time last year to get it to sour up, and then added the remaining 50ml (after sampling and such) to a 500ml 1.020 DME based starter for further growth.  It is back in the ferm fridge with the Saisons in the mid 80*s souring up nicely.

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...

Brew Day Buddy

As I was brewing up my IPAs a few weeks ago and getting the brewery cleaned up, my son, Callen, who has helped me in the brew house in times past, especially when I used to bottle, decided he was going to come out and brew some beer.  I offered him the ability to throw my hops in with me but that just wouldn't cut it.  He wanted to make his own beer.  

We grabbed him a pot from the house, and put some water in it.  He grabbed a bunch of leaves and threw them in the water, but he needed grains.  We grabbed a couple scoops from my spent grains and put them into his pot, and then Becca, my wife, grabbed an old tub of oatmeal for him to add.

He stirred it up with his mash paddle, and pulled off some of the mash (I think he was doing a decoction).  He even grabbed an empty Dale's Pale Ale can to try to get the dregs working for his yeast (more likely just to play with the water).

Then he helped dad finish cleaning up from previous brews.  I had 2 carboys soaking in Oxy after I had kegged the Callen for bulk aging on the previous day.  He helped me dump the Oxy water out and with the rinsing, and even brought the Better Bottles back into the brewery for me.

And then he says to me on the way to work this morning, when I grow up I wanna brew beer...

2014: What to Do, What to Do?

I recently posted a last year in review post, and thought it would be good for me to get an expectations and goals for the coming year article up as well. Last year was a good year with lots of expansion to the brewery, learning and using new techniques, some really good recipes, buying a house, etc. This year I have a few things that I really want to either get into or refine. Unfortunately I am posting this one a few weeks later than I had hoped to, and so some of these goals are already achieved or at least parts of them are.

To start, this is the year of competitions. My aim is to enter my beers in competitions and place as many as possible. It is all fine and dandy when I like my beers and think that I did a good job, it is another thing to have unbiased judges give real feed back and to have medals to validate my own beliefs about my recipes, process, etc. We have 6 Club Only Competitions this year, 5 of which I am able to enter (one is for first time COC entrants only). I am hoping to beat out the reigning 3 time COC winner this year, high hopes for sure, but I think I have a chance. I have also entered 7 beers into the KLCC homebrew competition which is BJCP sanctioned, and was judged this past weekend. There were 221 entries total, and from my 7 entries I had 4 beers place. My Dopplebock, Procrastinator, took 2nd place, The Caleb, a recent Bourbon/Oak aged Imperial Stout took 1st, CUDL Buddy, a Winter Warmer entered as an American Brown, took 1st, and my first Lambic from September 2011, The Carol, took 1st place in sours as well as Best of Show for the comp. I will also be entering the Sasquatch homebrew comp, which is another locally hosted but nationally opened BJCP comp in June.

We started refashioning an extra room in our house (built in the garage) into an entertainment room. We have painted, installed really nice shelves on which we arranged glassware and "show bottles" (Cantillon, Dissident, Abyss, etc.). We bought a couple comfortable but ugly chairs that we need to reupholster, and we want to use a dark leather to do so. I am hoping to border the room from the floor to about 3' up the wall with metal corrugated panels to add that garage feel, and also accent with some dark wood. I also want to buy a mini fridge for my yeast, and then put full taps in the beer fridge door with a drip tray. Eventually we want to get a new TV for the Family Room and move our smaller one into the entertainment room. We also need to take some good shots of my beers with nice backgrounds and frame them for the walls, and mount awards/ribbons as well.

I have plans to build an incubator in the coming months for culturing yeast. I want to couple this with actually culturing more yeasts. A buddy from church is a microbiologist and ranches yeast, and I have been getting into this with him. We are working on culturing Cascade's Lacto strain that I was stepping up. We are also trying to clean up some Conan I got second hand that was infected. I have petri dishes with medium on them and a few slants as well to start using.

Last year I got new kettles that have a larger boil off rate than my previous ones. I also recently bought a 70 quart cooler to convert over for mashing bigger batches and that will take some testing. I need to pin down this new system during the start of the year. I have also been getting much higher efficiency on my system with my water treatment and over night mashing, so I need to dial this into account when building recipes, especially when trying to replicate previous brews.

Last year I wanted to start a Solera project, but was not able to track down a barrel or legal keg to use. After doing some networking I found out that one of my buddies in the club has a used 14 gallon wine barrel he wants to do some sours in. He has agreed to splitting the barrel which will probably age in my garage, and we are going to start with a Flanders Red, a style I absolutely love but have yet to brew for some odd reason. After a year or so we plan to remove 5 gallons each of the beer from the barrel and replace with a new 10 gallons of beer to mix with the remaining 4 from the first batch. He is also trying to track down another 14 gallon barrel for me to get and brew on my own.

In previous years I have brewed 2 Wee Heavy beers, and both were failures. The first batch was infected with a gusher yeast and tasted too much like cherries. The second batch was a good base beer but I pitched a large jar of old yeast and ended up with autolysis which made the beer taste like pot roast. It is great for cooking beef and pork dishes with, but not much more. My desire for this year is to brew a really good Wee Heavy, and I brewed the beer a few weeks ago. So far it seems to be a good beer, but needs to get some age on it for melding the flavors. At 4 weeks it is sweet, chewy, malty, caramelly, and good, just needs to come together more, and I might need to add some acid to the keg just to drop the final pH a few points and brighten it up as the finish is a little flabby. It is bulk aging in a purged and sealed keg in the garage, and might get some oak at some point. 

For some odd reason, much like the Flander's Red, I have yet to brew a Barleywine. This year that is going to change. I was planning to max out my current mash tun, but with the new one on the way, I won't have to. This beer will be big; I am planning on a 13%+ ABV beer on this one, tons of hops, and over 120 IBUs. I also want to brew a Vienna Lager this year. 

As of yet, I have not actually grown hops. I have hops planted, but I have not grown enough to count. The first year I planted Chinook in a container and got maybe 12 cones. The second year I planted another 8 varieties, and got maybe a pound total from them, the transplanted Chinook giving the largest harvest. Last year we bought a house and moved the hops late in the season so I didn't have any plants to harvest. I was able to install a sprinkler system for them which will help a lot. i am hoping that this year I will have my first good crop, at least from the established plants. I am going to be removing the Brewer's Gold and planting Cascades, Centennials, and Columbus. Maybe even some Magnum to get a clean bittering hop. My eventual desire is to become self sustaining for hops (unless I need to buy some patented hops like Mosaic or something).

I want to rebrew a few beers this year, mostly with slight tweeks to the recipe. I have already rebrewed my IPA and Black IPA split ferment from this time last year. I change some of the hops up and one of the yeasts, but I also got super high efficiency leading to an OG of 1.074 instead of 1.065, and got full 5.25 gallons instead of the 5 and 3.75 from last year (another reason to pin down my system). I also want to rebrew my 1st place Dopplebock, stepped up to a 10 gallon batch as I have a family member that wants to have some cases of it and is paying for his batch. 

My buddy from church loves to work with metal, and has an itch to weld. He has offered to build me 2 burner brew stand, which would be awesome for brewday. I am hoping for one that I can set on its side out of the way when not in use, then drop down and roll around during the course of a brew. I hope to assist (watch) him on this project. 

Each year I ask for brewing gear for my birthday and Christmas that I can't really justify buying throughout the year. This year I really want to move from aeration to oxegenation, so I am asking for the oxygen regulator and stainless steel wand from William's Brewing. I wouldn't mind getting new quick connects for my equipment to replace the Aluminum cam locks with Stainless Steel ones as I use Bar Keeper's Friend and Oxiclean on my equipment and these are not good for Aluminum.

That is a lot of stuff to cram into one year, but I am well on the way to getting it done. We'll see at years end how I did. Until then, I'll keep brewing, and Let the Beer Speak.

New Logo

I finally finished my logo for the Home Brewery.  The Center of the logo has been a concept in my head for awhile that I finally got out on paper and fused it into the existing EOS logo.  It originally had a golden gate style keg, then a keggle, then a hop as the center of the O... none of them actually screamed to me.  Finally I turned it back to a normal O and put my Screaming Pint in the middle of it and now it screams...literally.  The focal point of the logo is a pint glass face.  The mouth is sown shut to keep it silent symbolizing the culture of beer for so many years in American Culture.  The pint is screaming, ripping out the stitching, removing the barriers that keep him from screaming at the top of his lungs.  It is all that End of Silence stands for.  No more silenced beer, muted from all that is can be, unable to speak.  Beer is flavorful, it speaks volumes.  That has been my goal in brewing, making beer that speaks: malts, hops, water, yeast, all of them working together, a harmony of voices that give us something beautiful to listen to.  No more quiet beer.  End of Silence.  Let the beer speak!

Update: I Got Some Hops

I was unable to grow any hops this year due to our move into our first house in mid/late May (YAY!).  My crowns were out of the ground in the sun for a couple hours and once I got them in the soil 5 of the 8 didn't grow at all, and the other 3 grew a small amount.  I was able to get hops from Oakshire Brewing's garden last year, but with their expansion and dropping the farmhouse next door they hadn't strung them up or cared for them in the last month.  I got an email from the brewmaster yesterday saying that they had continued to grow and climb the fence and were mine for the taking if I wanted them.  He even went next door to the farmhouse and asked the new tenants if they would mind me coming around and getting the hops on their side.  They were amicable and I was able to cut off all the bines on the Centennial and Chinook plants (left the Fuggles as I am not a big fan of them nor do I make many English beers).  Unfortunately their Cascade didn't make it this year.  

I was able to score 5 oz of Centennial (which is fine since it throws an annoying floral character that I don't care for) and 36 oz of Chinook.  Those are wet weights so I will have less once they are dried.  We had a hop picking party on our front porch once I got the bines home, even my 3 year old got in on it.  We separated the Chinooks into 4 large paper bags and the Centennial is all inside a standard paper grocery bag.  They are in the garage to dry out over the next few days.  Once they are dried I will re-weigh them and package them in vacuum seal bags in 1-2 oz quantities for freezer storage.  I might have a chance to help a local farm-brewery pick their hops this weekend and score some of those as well.  Hoping to get my hands on some Cascades for the future brew year too.

UPDATE: Hops, Lagers, Experiments

It has been awhile since I last posted, and wanted to get something up here, including a few things that don't need there own individual posts.  After transplanting the hops after the move and installing irrigation for them, only 3 have any growth: Santiam, Chinook, and Blisk.  The growth is very little, maybe a foot or two max, and very thin.  The rest of the hops aren't producing anything at all.  My understanding is that the late move and time out of the ground shocked the plants and they are going to be fine next year.  Keeping them watered to ensure good roots for the next season.

I haven't posted a recipe in awhile now.  The reason for this is because I have brewed 3 batches that take longer to ferment.  I did an extract Berlinerwiesse fermented with only yogurt.  This beer was intended to be a quick sour.  It was quick, only 4 weeks and it was down to 1.003, but it never really soured.  The Lacto strains in the yogurt created CO2 and alcohol instead of acid, and lots of DMS.  I am still debating what to do with this batch.  I have a few strains of Brett right now that I am thinking of adding to it for a few months, then adding fruit to it as well for next summer.

I also brewed 2 American Pilsners, 1 classic with Saaz, Liberty, and Sterling, the other is New School with Simcoe, Mosaic, and Calypso.  They are just starting to lager now and should be kegged by the weekend.  I have found that brewing lagers isn't really my cup of tea.  I can enjoy them when I finally get to drink them, but they just take so long.  My fermentation fridge is locked up for 5 weeks, then I have to clear kegs for them, and then I have to wait another couple weeks for them to lager before I have 2 kegs to drink through before I can put anything else on.  I also find that by the time they are done fermenting and ready to drink I have had a shift in tastes and don't really want to drink 5 gallons of American Pils.

I am also trying to culture up some Lacto off of grains.  I will have a full write up of the process in a few weeks when it is done, but for now, I am using grains and apple juice in a heating blanket set on high to get a culture going and have had success so far.  I will be stepping it up tonight to get more and hopefully with multiple steps should be able to kill off any enterobacter as the pH drops and some alcohol is produced.

Update: Moving, Winning, Transplanting

Just as a quick update, it might be a little while before I post again, and if I do, it will probably be reviews for awhile.  We just got word back from our lender that our loan is ready and docs are on the way to close on our new house (first time homeowners).  So for the next few weeks we will be finishing our packing, moving, unpacking, resetting the brewhouse in a new location (much nicer), transplanting the 9 hops I have in the backyard to the new house, figuring our a new trellis for the hops, painting, decorating, changing out light fixtures, redecorating, etc.  Probably going to be awhile before I start brewing again.  I do have a Session IPA / NW Bitter (Brewers Gold, Chinook, Cascade, Zeus, and Brett Drei) that I plan to brew as soon as I can to get a non 8.6% hoppy beer on tap, and also a few Brett only Saisons for the heat coming, but that probably wont be til late June.

On another note, my Dopplebock brewed in late December took 1st place in category 2 at the Sasquatch brewfest a week ago.  My IPA took second out of 33 entries, and my Pilsner took 3rd in category 1.  Not too shabby.

Final Update: Sour Blondes

Almost a year ago I brewed a double batch of Blonde Ale to test my fermenters to insure that I had rid myself of the infection that had hit my brewhouse.  After finding that one fermenter was clean and the other was actually the original source of my infections, I decided to sour all but 18 12oz bottles of the whole 9 gallons.  As time passed I wanted to take the 2 batches of soured Blonde in 2 different directions.  One received Mangoes, the other got fresh Blackberries from the backyard.  It is nearly time to bottle them as they have developed quite nicely.  The Mango version has a subtle tropical fruit note that I wanted to play up so I decided to dry hop this version.  It received 2oz of Falconer's Flight blend (lots of pineapple), 0.5oz Calypso (apple and pear) and 1oz of Galaxy (citrus and big passion fruit).  My hope is to play up much of the tropical and fruity aspects of this beer and make it a hop lover's dream.  For the Blackberry version there is a light jammy taste which is what I wanted, and I added more French Oak for the last week to give it a little more punch and separate it from the Mango a bit more since that version has no noticable oak at all, and I think it would play nicely with the Blackberry.

Red Poppy

While on a little new family vaca on the coast I got to enjoy my Lost Abbey Red Poppy w/ lunch.  Very nice, tart, light vinegar, fruity, funky, and carbonated.  Made up a little batch of 1.030 starter wort w/ apple juice, water, DME, and yeast nutrient to keep the dregs in.  All the new sterile plastic containers we have gotten free for the baby work great for the small starters and dregs too.

Newest Addition

Sorry for the delays in posting as I have recently welcomed our second son, born 2 weeks early.  Trying to adjust to the new and wonderful life right now so postings will be some what sparse.  Should have an update on new equipment soon as well as a recipe for a double batch of IPA I am planning to brew soon.

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: 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.

Update: Hops, Promotion and New Schedule, Vacations

It has been awhile since I last posted, there was a nice vacation to Portland with family which included a couple visits to Full Sail's Pilsner Room which was a short walk from the hotel, dinner at Burnside Brewing, as well as lunch at Bridgeport, and a trip to Cascade Barrel House and Belmont Station.  We also had a church campout where, surprisingly, my pastor who always complains about the amount of hops in Pacific NW beers tried my DIPA with 1# of hops in 5 gallons and enjoyed it.  I also got a nice promotion at work which brought new hours and much more work.  The new hours are nice, they give me much more time with the family in the afternoons, and open up the potential for going home after work and getting in a full brewday which will keep weekends opened.  I can even bottle in the evening and not have to worry about finding time on a Saturday morning.

Speaking of brewing and bottling.  I have a second edition Hefeweisse in the works soon, as well as an English Bitter.  I will be bottling the Lambic I brewed last September from the yeast on Blackberry skins in the next week or so.  Gave it a taste this morning and it is very nice, fruity, clean lactic tartness, no acetic, maybe a little high on the oak, but I like oak character, so I am okay with that, no oxidation, slight funkiness.  

The new hops are coming along quite nicely with much better growth on some of my new first years compared to last years Chinook, which has already surpassed the height of the trellis and I am having to get creative with how to keep it out of the other varietals next to it.  I had quite a bit of Aphid issues this year, and the mild soap spray I used killed them all off, but scorched some of my leaves as well.  I had a buddy who grows lots of hops (I got most of my rhyzomes from his hop yard) come by to take a look at the plants and he recommended fertilizing and longer deeper waterings.  Since giving longer waterings and adding some Miracle Gro the plants are looking much healthier.  I've even got some healthy side arm growth going on my big plants.  All in all it is looking to be a good year of growth; hoping for a decent yield on my Brewer's Gold, AlphAroma, Cascade, Shinsuwase, and maybe even Blisk and Cerara.  Chinook should be good this year.

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.

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.