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
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Tag Archives: sour ale
GABF impressions
Here are my notes – jetlagged and sleep-deprived though they be – filtered through three straight days (four, if you count setup and the Brewers’ Gathering on Wednesday) of the Great American Beer Festival. Continue reading
TMBR: sschemy’s Berliner Weisses
After posting about his process in the Berliner Weisse thread, reader Scott (sschemy) was kind enough to send me some samples to try – here they be, on camera.
And here are his comments excerpted from the above thread:
A buddy and I just “brewed” a Berliner-esque beer for a wort transformation challenge from a local brewery. The brewery provided 5 gallons of wort. The base wort was a wheat beer (don’t have the recipe in front of me) around an og of 1.050. We took that wort and split into two batches, we then mashed a 50/50 pilsner/wheat to dilute the original wort down to a gravity of 1.032. No boil, and pitched the Wyeast 3191 in one carboy, and a blend of NE wild yeast with sour dregs from various commercial brews (really have no idea, except there was some dregs from Trinity). We tasted and kegged these this weekend. The brew with the straight berliner yeast is a cleaner tartness, mildly sour now, but very refreshing. The NE wild/dregs beer is slightly funkier, a little less clean, but slightly more sour. This one had a really nice pellicle on it. Currently sitting under 30 psi, and will sample tomorrow. The contest calls for 6 bottles to be submitted. We have very high hopes with this one. Will let you know how it all turns out.
[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
TMBR: Be Kind Northland
It’s back to the Tasting Porch for a follow-up on Be Kind Northland. Join us, won’t you?
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
sours in the night
Giving it both barrels: five gallons of 2011 sour (really, really sour … plus dark and oaky) red comes off the wood and onto 5 pounds of rhubarb, five gallons of Basecamp Sour (alcoholic fermentation complete, sir) begins its oak nap.
Like ships in the night, these two separate but similar beers pass each other so closely but never quite manage to hook up. They would be so good together, but it’s like they just can’t see it because they’re at such different stages in their lives. Will they ever meet again and, you know … consummate? I hope so – I like brewing stories to have a happy ending.
guess that fruit
Image
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 