Brew-Bottle-Aging Day!

Last Saturday was a big day for some homebrew.  I brewed a 100% Brett Trois IPA, bottled my quick barrel aged sour currant and pulled 2 gallons out of the barrel that contained 15 month old Flemish Red sour ale.

First up the brew day.
The recipe I used was from the Mad Fermentationist.  So much great information is on this site and he is always willing to help me out when I have questions. I pretty much use his blog as the guidelines for all of the beers that I make.  This is a case where his recipe got such great reviews, I wanted to make it as he had it outlined.

The only difference is that I did not have the time to build up a huge starter of Brett Trois.  I have made a few 100% Brett Beers and had no problem pitching one or two vials without a starter (I usually brew 3 gallon batches vs 5).  This time I was not so lucky.  After about 48 hours I did not see any activity and I did not want to waste all of the hops.  I pitched a second vial of Brett Trois and about 1/4 of a vial of California Ale yeast to get it starting.  It fired up not too long after.

I know the Brett is doing its thing because the fruity aroma coming out of the airlock is amazing.  I checked this morning and it was still chugging through the sugars.  It has a weird krausen which I assume is the Brett's doing.  This will sit for 3-4 days before I transfer over to a secondary and dry hop for 5 more days.

Next - Bottle Day
The great thing about all grain brewing is that you get two hours during the mash and the boil to work on some other things.  I had a gallon of my quick barrel aged sour currant that needed to get into a bottle.  The FG was sitting at 1.009 for over a month so I felt safe to bottle.  I tasted the sample and this one never really got sour.  It's very vinous with a bigger punch of oak.  It does have a bit of a sour bite at the end but who knows how it will turn out.  As mentioned earlier, the Kriek version came out with a very large oak presence when it had very little in the bottle bucket.  I just hope the deep wine and fruit flavor stays with the beer after it bottle conditions.

Since the Kriek did not carb up as much as I wanted I tried to add a bit of yeast to the bottle bucket to ensure I hit the desired CO2 volumes I am looking for.  For this batch I was looking for 2.5 volumes and used a pretty generic red wine yeast to bottle condition.  I poured some of the dry yeast into some 100 degree water to hydrate the yeast and then mixed the yeast and sugar with the beer in the bottle bucket.  I light stir to get everything mixed up and into the bottles.  I think I got 5 champagne size bottles and one 12oz bottle of the sour currant.  I am going to taste the 12oz bottle at the two week mark to see how the bottle condition is going with the yeast vs without.  Based on that tasting will determine how long I decide to let it sit before trying again.  If it's too oak-y I will let it sit at least another month or so.

Finally - Barrel Aged Transfer
Since I only have a 20l barrel, my beer is going to get more oak flavor faster.  This will happen until I extract all of those tannins and the barrel stops giving off the oak flavor.  I did not want my Flemish Red Sour Ale to get too much oak flavor after aging for 15 months.  To get around this I decided I am going to use the solera method for the first few batches until I feel the oak has calmed down.  What I did for this batch is pulled about 2 gallons from the barrel and added to a plastic carboy.  I then took about a half of a gallon of newly brewed red ale with Abbey ale yeast and mixed into the old batch. Really all I am doing is hoping that the small amount of new beer will cut the oak flavor just enough.  The aged beer has a great smell so I can only hope this turns out well.

I then added two gallons of fresh beer to the 3 gallons or so of aged beer in the barrel.  Again this is to just cut the oak flavor and give the old beer some new sugar to chew on.

Depending on how well the batch in the plastic carboy comes out (will bottle next weekend) will determine how long I will let the barrel age.  My guess is I will let it sit until mid to  late summer and pull another batch.

Next Up
I plan to do my Berliner Weiss next.  It will be sour mashed with White Labs Lacto then boiled slightly after a few day incubation period and then I plan to use a Brett Trois / Ale yeast mix for fermentation and then bottle condition with champagne yeast.

Brew Day - Flemish Sour Ale

So if you read my previous post that I just published, you will see that the first beer off of the barrel had way too much oak flavor at the begging.   Since the second beer (third batch of wort or wine in the barrel) was the sour that has been aging for 15 months I want to ensure that I don't over-oak this batch.  That would be a waste of 15 months I can not get back. 

To get ready for me to pull that batch off the oak, I have a new batch of my Flemish Ale recipe ready to go.  I brewed this yesterday and I am using some Abbey ale yeast to ferment it out.  Once primary fermentation is complete I will take some of the beer out of the barrel and then place the fresh new beer into the barrel. 

I plan to use my barrel in the solera method.  I will never fully drain the barrel and instead pull off some of the beer and add fresh beer and yeast to the barrel.  This should add complexity and also help "age" the barrel.  As I get more familiar with how it acts I will know how much fresh beer to put in vs old beer to take out. 

I can also use a bit of the new fresh beer to mix with the old beer that I will bottle.  This would help cut the oak flavor and also provide fresh yeast for bottling to help ensure it fully carbonates.   Next week I hope to get some of the old beer out while adding in this new fresh batch.  Stay tuned.

Tasting Day - Quick Sour - Barrel "Aged"

It's been way too long.  The weather in western PA has really brought my brew days to a halt.  I will brew with temperatures in the high 30's.  Too bad we just haven't had too many of those types of weekends.  So the only thing I have been doing lately is tasting the first beer pulled out of the oak barrel I have.

The 20L barrel was cleaned and then filled with a Cabernet Sauvignon.  This sat for around 5 months.  I then emptied the barrel and filled it with a quick sour.  The wort was soured and then it sat in the primary for 3 months with Roeselare blend of yeast and then into the barrel for an additional 3.5 months.  Next the beer was transferred into a tertiary vessel.  I split the batch between regular, currants and sour cherries to see how they would taste.  In the end I thought this batch may not be good because the oak flavor would be too strong.  This is why I decided to experiment.

Well after a few weeks/month on the fruit or in the tertiary I decided to bottle.  Everything tasted great.  The sour cherry version tasted like a super tart sweet tart with a sweet cherry background flavor with some wet-basement funk in the background. Perfect.

The currant version tasted very wine like. Not as sour and not as funky.  Probably the most well rounded version.

Finally a version that was straight.  Nothing but the sour red ale.  This was a bit more funky than tart but suprised me in how well it tasted prior to going into the bottle.

I carbonated on the lower side since my last quick sour batch seemed to be plagued with gushers.  Now it was time to wait.

After three weeks of being in the bottle I opened a sour cherry version.  If you re-read that description above and imagine the complete opposite - you would have my tasting notes!  I barely tasted the barrel in my samples before I bottled.  There was a nice cherry flavor and it was very tart and funky - like a Rodenbach.  It tasted like I was chewing on one of the staves from the barrel.  All oak.  No sour. No cherry. Flat boring beer.

Sours tend to work on their own schedule and this is an example of that.  It was not ready to release those delicious flavors and wanted more time in the bottle to work things out.  Two weeks later I tried another bottle.  The oak flavor is starting to mellow out and if you try really hard there is a bit of sourness and cherry in there.  Two weeks after that (yesterday) I tried again.  It was almost to the level of a beer that I would drink.  Since each beer has gotten exponentially gotten better it's time for the rest of the batch to age some more in the bottle.

I have not tried the straight version yet and I still need to bottle the currant version.  I intend to bottle the currant version this week and let that age until later this summer.  Hopefully I have learned my lesson and that first tasting will be amazing.

More to come as the weather is starting to break and I have 4-5 batches already planned.  A separate post on that will come later today.