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.
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