Baby, if you ever wondered – wondered whatever became of me, I’m living on the air in Cincinnati.
Just kidding, I’m carbonating.
into the keg with you
17
Tag Archives: Brettanomyces
TMBR: John & Mark’s B to tha Fizz-our Rye Saison
My profuse thanks to John Rawlinson and Mark Orndorff for sharing this very tasty beer with me! They relate that it’s their variation on a recipe from The Mad Fermentationist. Continue reading
Reader question: Brett beers to try
Reader Carl wrote:
I was recently at Surly’s taproom and tried both You’re in (Urine) Trouble and Misanthrope and was surprised by how much I liked them. I have not had any Brett beers before and now want to expand my tastes; do you have any suggestions for what I should try that are available in our (MN) market?
Help me out, citizens: what should Carl drink? I’ll go first:
MN-specific, two other beers I’ve had in the past year from local brewers that stand out in my mind were Surly Brett Liquor IPA and Pour Decisions St. Whatshername Tripel. They’re both limited-release, so keep your eyes peeled.
And you can’t go wrong with the classics: Cantillon, Boon, Hanssens, Rodenbach, Bockor Cuvee des Jacobins, Orval, Liefmans …
[clever play on words “Berliner” and/or “Weisse” goes here]
Partly by reader request but mostly because it’s time: Berliner Weisse.
Tiny grain bill, no boil … this is easier than extract brewing! I should brew Berliner Weisse all the time. Continue reading
the imp of the perverse
Picture it, citizens: there I was, minding my business, bench-trialing and blending some more- and less-aged sour beer into a semblance of a whole, when the imp of the perverse called an audible. Continue reading
basecamp sour 2012: the Brettcurrant edition
Truth in advertising – deep down, I really only truly love a fruit beer if it’s also sour or wild or Brett-influenced, something more than just a fruit beer. That’s just the way Crom made me.
Which isn’t to say I can’t appreciate a well-made straight-ahead fruit beer, but, sour or not, I do feel that the fruit should reflect the beer’s provenance – the fruit adds another layer of reality to beer as an agrarian product and an extension of its time, people, and place.
Every great meadmaker I’ve ever met, from Ken Schramm to Curt Stock, has espoused the use of high quality, local fruit when making melomel, and that philosophy translates very well when brewing sour and wild ales.
With all that out of the way, this, then, is the story of what happened to the B portion of Basecamp Sour 2012. Continue reading
sour times
Sitting over coffee and prepping notes for a talk on sour beers for Better Beer Society University, I have mixed-culture fermentations on the brain and some raw materials to work with.
Raw material #1: Last summer I racked a nice, clean red ale base beer into an oak barrel and inoculated it with Wyeast’s Roeselare blend; 13 months on, it’s ready for … something. Cherries? Blending? Straight-up bottling? Whatever its fate, I need some fresh wort to fill that buggy barrel no matter what.
Raw material #2: Earlier this year a Brewing TV viewer provided some friends and I with a washed Brett culture from a bottle of Russian River Sanctification. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
Raw material #3: a couple pounds of frozen-ass Chernaya Lisovenko blackcurrants from Mary Dirtyface Farm. So I got that going for me, which is nice.
All this can only mean one thing: it’s about to get acidic up in this piece.
The plan: 10 gallons of base beer, split half and half between the to-be-emptied barrel and the Sanctification Brett and the blackcurrants (Russian River, Russian fruit – I love symmetry). Do something cool with the 2011 ale from the oak … I’d tell you now, but then I’d have to get you blackout drunk so you wouldn’t remember.
Recipe deets below, brew day to follow. Stay tuned.
Basecamp Sour 2012
Targets: OG 1.052, 7 SRM, 18 IBU
Grist
- 16 lbs pilsen
Simple is good …
Mash: Flemish Sour regimen
- 122F for 20″, 145F for 30″, 162F for 20″, 170F for 10″
… but complex is sometimes necessary. A high-temp alpha sacch’ rest will create plenty dextrin for the Brett to chomp on. Truth in advertising: I’m using up a stock of shamefully old undermodified Pils malt with this mash, elsewise the lack of unmalted adjunct grain would arguably make the 122F rest unnecessary for what these beers are going to be.
Boil
- 1 lb D-45 Belgian candi syrup @ 60″
- 1.5 oz German Brewer’s Gold (6.5%aa pellets) @ 60″
Fermentation
- BRY97 primary for barrel portion – a nice, clean base beer for the acid bacteria now living in the wood to work with.
- Russian River culture for the second portion – all Brett, all the time.
the beer engine 