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.
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