Brewery Update

Beatrice my trusty cat helper on the floor next to the bottle capper.

Half way through the year already.  I feel like I am not getting nearly enough done.  Good news is that work has finally slowed down (enough that I'm not working weekends - currently) and I have some brew days lined up in the very near future.  In the meantime I needed to take a full day and just have a maintenance day in my "brewery",

Because I am not 100% up to speed on my sour production I am still brewing a lot of beers for blending mixing with the barrel - or after the barrel - to get the right taste on these first batches.  I have three five-gallon barrels.  They push out a lot of oak.  It's going to take time and more importantly, more batches, to ease out that oak flavor.  After more than two years I am just now drinking my sour stout.  This one didnt have to go through the barrel because I did not have it ready yet.  But the next batch will go on oak.  This weekend I finished cleaning and preparing my new barrel.  To celebrate that accomplishment I put 5 gallons of a Blackberry Pinot Noir into the barrel.  Its going to sit for about 3 months and then the next wave of sour stout will go in.  This first batch in the barrel will most likely be filled with too much oak flavor so I will then have to blend and mix that batch.  So on, and so on.  Until of course the barrel stop giving off the heavy oak flavors.

Another accomplishment of the weekend was bottling my sour red that came out of the barrel.  This is the second generation out of the barrel.  The first batch was way too much oak flavor.  I took that batch and blended it back into clean beer and back into the barrel it went.  After it came out I blended yet again with clean beer.  This batch is much more tolerable, but it currently still has a heavy oak and full of tannin-like flavors.  I recently had a pint of Bells Brewery "The Wild One".  My beer has similar flavors.  Its a complex beer.  It has a bit of harshness mixed with some funky fruit flavors from the Brett.  You can kind of get the tart cherry pie aroma when you smell it - reminiscent of a Rodenbach.  But it has a punch that Rodenbach does not.  I would love to have my beers skew more towards the sharp acidic bite with fruity notes that Rodenbach has vs my beer which I would describe as a beer that smells like a Rodenbach but then punches you in the face with an almost abrasive funk/acid bite.  Here's to hoping that the carbonation will add some brightness to the beer and liven it up some.  I will check the first bottle in two months.

Sour cherries sit on the bottom of the carboy as I siphon
sour red beer on top. A Kriek is a brewing!

While bottling the sour red I also blended two batches from that base beer.  I took two gallons and put them on 4lbs and canned sour cherry fruit with all of the juices.  This should play well with the aroma I described above.  The fruit may even soften some of that flavor.  We wont know on this one for another 4 months.  It will sit on the fruit for two months.  If it's ready to bottle at that time it will then sit for another 2 months before I taste one of the bottles.

The final batch I mixed up was with black currants and dark raisins.  The dried fruit was added to a small one-gallon test batch.  Ill be curious to see how this one turns out.  I expect this version to push more towards the wine flavor present in the red sour from the barrel.  The strong Cabernet Sauvignon flavors may come out more with grapes and currants in the mix.  Don't really know what to expect on this one.

On top of mixing and bottling the three beers outlined above I cleaned a lot of carboys and bottles.  Since I felt like the Brett was getting out of control I have been cleaning a lot more.  For instance I didn't even need to clean some carboys but did anyways.  Just cleaning the gear if it has been sitting too long without beer in it.

All and all it was a very productive day.  Coming up this weekend though is two brew days.  Me and Mike make our second collaborative oat beer.  This one wont be as tricky since we are not using any witch weed to brew with.  We are making an oat beer with with lemon, ginger and honey.  Should be a real summer quencher if it turns out.  I will also be brewing my 100% Brett IPA again.  Although it probably should be call IPA since they recently found out Brett Trois is really a "Wild Saccharomyces".  I will be making one small tweak to the recipe this year by adding just a touch of mango juice to the secondary to really push the tropical flavors.

I should have a tasting note for my La Fin Du Maz shortly as well.  It's the first beer I put into a keg and it should be ready to sample tomorrow.

Finally, I will be putting my saision on tap soon.  This is my New Zealand Apricot Saison.