Brew Day - Lambic-ish

They say Lambic can only be crafted in Belgium. Proper wild yeast, temperature or even the spider webs in the attic of the brewery etc. etc. etc.

OK then. So I just brewed a "Labic-ish"beer.  You may have seen this called pLambic on home brew blogs before. Mine was a simple 60-40 mix of pilsner and wheat malts with a tiny dose of East Kent Goldings.  I did not do a authentic turbid mash.  This was my first brew day in my new house and, to be honest, I was out of sorts.  I did not want to try this new type of mash.  Besides, we already cleared up that we can not create a true Lambic here in the states so a single infusion mash was what I did.

Since my brew day did not go as well as I hoped this will be on the lower end of what a Lambic should be.  They are typically 1.044-1.056 in OG.  This is mostly due to the fact that I forgot to collect more wort because it seems when you brew in the cold you lose a lot more from the boil off.  So I only ended up with about 4.5 gallons of wort that was coming in at 1.052.  I then had to make a gallon of wort from malt extract.  I only had a small portion so this was pretty weak.  I didn't even bother to measure the final OG after I mixed everything together. Ugh...

I also didn't strain my wort as it was coming of the grain enough.  I thought it was pretty clear but when I started to strain from the boil kettle I noticed a lot of grain particles.  I then put it back into the boil kettle and then strained the wort through a cheese-cloth-like material to get out as much as I could.

My thought process was this - a Lambic ages for at least a year.  During the time this is aging it will get nice and funky and sour and should clear up in appearance.  Who knows how I will batch this group but my initial thought is to have some straight, some with raspberries and some on white grapes or golden raisins.

This post will get revisited in about year.  In the meantime I plan to take another attempt at a sour-mashed Lambic inspired beer while this one ages. More on that as it happens.


1-19-14 - Brew Day.  Yeast pitched around 12am.
1-20-14 - No signs of fermentation yet at 24 hrs. moved to a warmer location
1-21-14 - 7hrs after last check, airlock activity.
1-25-14 - Airlock activity has come to a crawl - very little activity
11-30-14 Moved to wooden barrel