Catching Up on Some Brewing Days

Sour Red bubbling out of the barrel after the bugs
and yeast are added

I have fallen behind on my posts. Biggest thing is that I brewed a new batch of Sour Red using the quick sour method.  Based on how the original batch tasted I knew I wanted to adjust two things. 

The first thing I wanted to do was to add complexity to the beer.  The flavor was like sucking on a sweet tart.  Good sour flavor but not much else. The biggest thing I did to add some complexity was to cut down on the sour flavor that was created from the sour mash.  I split the batch and brewed one batch with the sour mash method with regular American Ale yeast and then brewed a clean batch with the Belgian Golden yeast from White Labs.  It had some comments on their website that made it seem like a good fit for a soured red.  Overall, I hope that the reduction of the sour mash flavoring along with using a more flavorful and distinct yeast with the other half of the beer will produce a more complex and interesting beer.

The second thing I wanted to improve upon was giving the beer a bit more body.  I just switched my setting in Beersmith from Light Body to Medium Body.  Essentially I just mashed at a higher temperature.

Transfer of beer from the primary to
the secondary barrel.

These two batches fermented for 5 and 6 days in the primary and then they got moved into the newly emptied wine barrel.  The barrel was then inoculated with White Labs Sour Belgian yeast strain and bacteria.  I plan to let this sit for 3-4 months and then see how its doing at that time.

Of course after emptying the barrel I needed to bottle the wine.  I ended up getting 12.5 1.5L bottles of Cab Sauv from this little 5.2 gallon barrel.  Not too bad.

In the end I hope the changes I made along with the use of a wooden barrel will help take this beer to the next level.  Now all I need is 3-4 months of time to go by so we can try it and see if the work has paid off. 


During this past week I also bottled up the hard lemonade.  I used some Splenda to back sweeten the lemonade.  I tasted the lemonade a day prior to bottle day and it was like sucking on a lemon.  Super Tart and just not too great to drink.  I added just a bit of the Splenda to help cut the acidity just a bit.  I will crack open a taste bottle on Friday and see if I can help my friend out by giving him a sure fire recipe for a better
(and stronger) hard lemonade.

I will do a tasting on Friday and follow up with a post.  Also coming up will be my Autumn Beer which will either be a Quick Soured Brown Pumpkin or an Malted Apple Cider. 

I will also be adding Raspberries to the quick soured blonde to make a fake Frambroise.

More to come as it happens.