Summer Time, Saison Time

Posted on August 28, 2013 by funkmetal

Das Wunderkind – Saison from Jester King Brewery

During the hot summer months of Texas I really get into crisp, clean, dry beers. My craft beer pallet has been shifting, and I’m definitely enjoying beers that have a lower finishing gravity than higher. I’m a member of the Rare Beer Club which sends two exceptional beers once a month and even with such exceptionally good beers, there are quite a few that I must share since I cannot drink more than a sample; the sweetness of some of the Belgians overwhelm my tastes.

I suppose then it’s a good thing that I have a fantastic source of dry, sour beers so close to Austin, Texas. Out at the Jester King Brewery, of which I am a huge fan, they have a wide selection of amazing beers. With the recent changes in the arcane Texas Beer laws it’s now much easier to sample and obtain the great beers that are brewed and aged out at that farmhouse brewery.

Brett Drie sample from Jester King

When I volunteered for bottling day at Jester King a few months ago one of the bits of information I picked up was the use of Brettanomyces for bottling yeast. I had been reviewing a really exciting thread on Homebrewtalk about using Brett Drie, the strain isolated from Fantôme brewery in Belgium. I immediately recognized the name and the flavor profile that it had be contributing to the aged bottles of Jester King. Jeff Stuffings, the head brewer at Jester King, graciously agreed to share a sample of their Brett Drie so I could make use of it.

I couldn’t think of a better way to test it out other than to brew up my interpretation of their Das Wunderkind saison. Recently they’ve been blending their aged sour beer back into their young beers, effectively creating new beers with resounding success. For this recipe I wanted to attempt the same thing. Thus, here I am with 11 gallons of saison and plans to ferment half of it with just French Saison Yeast (Wyeast 3711) and then to blend it with the other half that will sit on oak cubes, brett and souring bacteria.

The original plan was to use my 5 gallon barrel that now has been patched with barrel wax. However, since it’s had lots of time to sit with water in it I’m not entirely confident that I’ve removed the mold that may have developed before I found out that I should be using “holding solution”, a combination of potassium metibasulphate and some citric acid.

Brett B. Trio, Pedio, and Lacto starters

In the barrel’s stead, I’ll pitch in 1.5 oz of french oak cubes along with an array of souring organisms while the saison ages. In a few months, I’ll start the blending process. If this process is successful, then I’ll brew another batch of this recipe and pitch the young beer into the carboy and let it ferment with the old, sour beer.

My interpretation of Das Wunderkind.

Recipe Details

Batch Size	Boil Time	IBU	SRM	Est. OG	Est. FG	ABV
11 gal	90 min	24.7 IBUs	5.3 SRM	1.041	1.004	4.7 %
			Actuals	1.047	1.006	5.4 %

Style Details

Name	Cat.	OG Range	FG Range	IBU	SRM	Carb	ABV
Saison	16 C	1.048 - 1.065	1.002 - 1.012	20 - 35	5 - 14	2.3 - 2.9	5 - 7 %

Fermentables

Name	Amount	%
Pilsner (2 Row) Bel	11.938 lbs	68.26
Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Western)	2.388 lbs	13.65
Wheat Malt, Ger	1.273 lbs	7.28
Oats, Flaked	1.1 lbs	6.29
Caramunich I (Weyermann)	12.65 oz	4.52

Hops

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Form	Alpha %
Goldings, East Kent (2011 Crop - Purchase FHBW 20130220)	1.66 oz	60 min	Boil	Pellet	5.6
Saaz	1.1 oz	15 min	Boil	Pellet	7.6
Cascade (2012 - Nikobrew 2012-11-23)	2.2 oz	7 days	Dry Hop	Pellet	5.9
Columbus (Tomahawk) - 2012 Crop - Purchased 20130220	1.1 oz	7 days	Dry Hop	Pellet	15.3

Miscs

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Type
Calcium Chloride	2.30 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)	2.30 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Epsom Salt (MgSO4)	0.30 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Yeast Nutrient	2.00 tsp	5 min	Boil	Other

Yeast

Name	Lab	Attenuation	Temperature
Belgian Saison (3724)	Wyeast Labs	87%	70°F - 95°F
Brettanomyces Bruxellensis Troi (WLP644)	White Labs	70%	65°F - 72°F
Lactobacillus Bacteria (WLP677)	White Labs	70%	65°F - 72°F
Pediococcus Cerevisiae (4733)	Wyeast Labs	67%	60°F - 95°F

Mash

Step	Temperature	Time
Mash In	152°F	60 min

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Needs more sour…

Posted on July 12, 2013 by funkmetal

Sour-mashing 12 gallons of work in a Blichmann 20G kettle. Heat-belts and temp controller to keep temp between 115 and 120F.

I brewed my first sour-mashed Berliner Weisse back in January this year on my dreaded double-brew day which involved doing a quick 30 minute boil and chill while trying to mash a Flanders Red. Patience grasshopper. I aged the first Berline Weisse, MomoSuppai on 10 pounds of frozen peaches resulting in a very nice, light, peachy beer. The only real criticism was that it needed more sour to it. The original had about 48 hours of time with a pure Lactobacillus culture at 120F degrees. In my notes, I said next I’d let it sour longer.

That time as come. In addition to the desire for more tartness, I also wanted more volume. The first 5 gallons went way too fast, so the only thing to do was to bump up the volume. The challenge was how to sour mash the larger volume. The sour mash process I follow has the mashed wort held at close to 120F for as many days as you like after pitching a pure culture of Lactobacillus. The pure culture helps ensure that many of the off-flavors that can come from other bacteria don’t make it into the beer versus the traditional method of pitching in uncrushed grain which carries tons of bacteria.

I picked up some additional heat belts which I’ve used before to ensure proper temp control for the sour mash and they worked very well… almost too well as this time around I ended up pushing the temp up to 130F, not on purpose. I ended up toss in two handfuls of some uncrushed grain just in case the higher temp killed of the lab lacto. The result after 5 days was an intensely sour wort, hitting 3.2 pH.

On the offical brewday, the wort was boiled for about 30 minutes with a tiny addition of cascade, chilled to pitching temp and that’s it. The next challenge for this beer was getting fermentation going. I originally pitched one package of S-05 dry yeast. I had seen in many places that dry-yeast packets tend to have significantly more yeast cells than liquid yeast. The yeast pitching rate calculator indicated that I needed just over 250 billion yeast for 12 gallons of 1.031 S.G wort. Surely one packet would be enough. After two days though there was no sign of fermentation.

While I wasn’t panicking, I was worried. Looking around, I saw some more discussion about making sure you pitched heavily in an acidic environment so I promptly pitched another 3 packets of dry-yeast. A day later, I was rewarded with a nice krausen on the surface.

dai-momo-berliner-weisse-fermenting-1024x768

Thin krausen forming after pitching 5 packets of S05 dry-yeast.

After a week of fermentation, the beer is down to 1.010 S.G, so a little more to go. After terminal gravity, I’ll split the batch and age on BlackBerry and Apricot puree to try out some new fruit flavors in the beer.

The recipe is just a scaled-up version of the original.

Recipe Details

Batch Size	Boil Time	IBU	SRM	Est. OG	Est. FG	ABV
10 gal	30 min	4.0 IBUs	2.7 SRM	1.029	1.006	3.0 %
			Actuals	1.03	1.01	2.6 %

Style Details

Name	Cat.	OG Range	FG Range	IBU	SRM	Carb	ABV
Berliner Weiss	17 A	1.028 - 1.032	1.003 - 1.006	3 - 8	2 - 3	2.4 - 2.9	2.8 - 3.8 %

Fermentables

Name	Amount	%
Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Western)	6.667 lbs	57.14
White Wheat Malt	5 lbs	42.86

Hops

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Form	Alpha %
Cascade	0.57 oz	30 min	Boil	Pellet	5.9

Miscs

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Type
Calcium Chloride	8.10 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)	8.10 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Epsom Salt (MgSO4)	0.70 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent

Mash

Step	Temperature	Time
Saccharification	148°F	90 min
Mash Out	168°F	10 min

Notes

DO NOT BOIL

V2:
Pitched 2 vials of WLP Lacto into 12+ gallons of 1.031 wort. Low on C02 so blanket wasn't as good as I'd like. Initial temp was 105F, in 12 hours was at 124F. Heavily wrapped with bottom heater and two layers on the side.

Checked temp again after unwrapping blankets, and temp was up to 125. I opened up the top and stirred, temp rose to 130F as the heat got distributed.

Sanitized two ice bottles and left in for 2 hours to bring temp down to 113F. Plugged all 3 controllers back in and set temp for 117F.

Wednesday morning (48 hours) ph is 3.77 @ 28C. Taste is slightly acidic, very light, not enough punch. New batch of co2 used to blanket it and also added two handfuls of 2-row grain uncrushed hoping to kick up some more bacterial activity.

Friday Morning, ph is 3.28 @ 23C. Taste is decidedly sour. on it's way to being quite potent. Nose is lactic with some buteryc funk... probably from tossing the the 2-row. Hoping to push the tar over the top by 6PM tonight.

Saturday, ph is 3.29 @ 23C. No ferm activity. Pitched second packet of yeast.

Sunday, ph is 3.29 @ 23C. No ferm activity. Gravity shows some movement, 1.035 -> 1.031. Two packages is still under pitched according to new yeast calculators, so picked up 3 more packets (5 * 11.5 grams in total). Pitched the rest, stirred up fermentor to resuspend the yeast.

Monday, very thing, but bubbly krausen on surface of wort.

2013-07-11, Krausen thining out, gravity check: 1.008 @ 71.9F -> 1.010 S.G. Nose is lacto and some heavy funk, like stinky feet. Aroma fades to simple lacto, wheat, sour. Taste is very very nice. A bit think mouth feel, slightly carbed, excellently sour, peachy, wheat. appearence is nearly 2 or 3 SRM, quite cloudy, no yeast flavors. Carbonation and fruit will go very well. Hoping the funky feet aroma moves on or is over powered by fruit additions. No hop flavor or aroma.

V1:

- Mash normally
- Drain to Kettle
- Raise temp to 176 for 15 minutes
- Chill to 120F
- pitch a pure culture of lacto and let ferment for approx. 2 days, no more than 3, retain 120F.
- transfer the sour wort to the boil kettle
- do my boil as per usual
- chill to 70F
- pitch my yeast culture.
- After ferm complete, pitch peach puree

48 hour @ 120F after pitching lacto. Measured pH of 4.0.

Boiled for 30+ minutes, to hit target volume (6.5 post-boil/pre-chill). Got 6G in carboy.
Low on ice, so only chilled to about 80F, put in fridge to chill and pitched two packets of 1056 around 10PM.

Racked into 13G plastic fermentor and pitched 10# of peach pureee. After 2 weeks, a new lacto pelical formed. Racking the puree was difficult, lost about 1 gallon of volume. Next time need to use some sort of bag or figure out a better separator for the fruit.

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The Sour Pipeline

Posted on June 8, 2013 by funkmetal

This past Friday, I brewed the next beer in the sour pipeline. I’ve been alternating back to a Flanders Red this time, and one of my all-time favorite beers and sours. New Belgium‘s La Folie.

I fell in love with La Folie in 2008 and in early 2009 the Texas market was flush with the newly introduced Lips of Faith series along with hand-bottled batches of La Folie. I scavenged the Austin market and obtain nearly 2 cases of this amazing beer and I still have 4 or 5 of these sours aging.

Handbottled La Folie, number 491, bottled in January 2009.

This brewnight was also the 6 month date from the first sour beer I brewed with the Roeselares yeast with some help from some of my favorite local sour beers from Jester King and it was time to make room in the sour pipeline.

As I brewed the La Folie recipe found in an older BYO article, I transferred the original Flanders Red, in Rubicundiusque or Ruby as it’s now called, into a keg for serving. The beer had matured wonderfully. In the last month it had been resting on a couple ounces of Pinot Noir oak cubes providing some wine-barrel like flavors and aromas.

All of these great aromatics and tastes were present in the samples. The sour aspect wasn’t nearly as potent as La Folie, but Ruby is definitively sour and strikes a great balance on the pallete for an unblended sour.

After moving Ruby out of the carboy with oak cubes it was time to transfer in the second sour in the pipe line: 5 gallons of Fancy Lad. Early sampling of this beer showed great things happening but the lighter gravity left the mouthfeel a bit thin. I decided that I would bolster this with some malto-dextrin. I settled on 4 ounces in the 5 gallons. I mixed the malto-dextrin with 16 oz of water and boiled for 5 minutes before adding it to the bottom of the carboy to help mix it in when racking from the source carboy into the target.

Once the brew session was complete, the La Folie wort went into a carboy with the Roeselares/Jester King dregs yeast cake.

After primary fermentation is complete in a few weeks I plan to enjoy a very aged and tasty 2009 La Folie and pour the dregs of this great beer into my La Folie. I can only hope this will impart at least some of La Folie’s greatness into my beer.

Here’s the recipe

Recipe Details

Batch Size	Boil Time	IBU	SRM	Est. OG	Est. FG	ABV
5 gal	60 min	20.3 IBUs	11.8 SRM	1.062	1.014	6.3 %
			Actuals	1.046	1.01	4.7 %

Style Details

Name	Cat.	OG Range	FG Range	IBU	SRM	Carb	ABV
Flanders Red Ale	17 B	1.048 - 1.057	1.002 - 1.012	10 - 25	10 - 16	2.2 - 2.7	4.6 - 6.5 %

Fermentables

Name	Amount	%
Brewer's Malt, 2-Row, Premium (Great Western)	9.75 lbs	75.03
Crystal, Medium (Simpsons)	1.31 lbs	10.08
Munich Malt	1.31 lbs	10.08
Wheat, Flaked	10 oz	4.81

Hops

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Form	Alpha %
Liberty	1.06 oz	60 min	Boil	Pellet	3.9

Miscs

Name	Amount	Time	Use	Type
Calcium Chloride	5.00 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Gypsum (Calcium Sulfate)	2.70 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Epsom Salt (MgSO4)	0.50 g	60 min	Mash	Water Agent
Whirlfloc Tablet	1.00 Items	15 min	Boil	Fining
Yeast Nutrient	1.00 tsp	5 min	Boil	Other

Yeast

Name	Lab	Attenuation	Temperature
American Ale (1056)	Wyeast Labs	75%	60°F - 72°F
Belgian Lambic Blend (3278)	Wyeast Labs	70%	63°F - 75°F

Mash

Step	Temperature	Time
Saccharification	152°F	75 min
Mash Out	168°F	10 min

Notes

Mash at 154 °F (68 °C). Boil for 60 minutes. Ferment with neutral ale yeast at 75 °F (24 °C), then rack to barrel and add sour blend. Aging time is totally up to the barrel. This is where years of tasting and blending come in handy. If you want to blend, try ~ 20% of a sweeter (younger) barrel, ~30% of a nice mild sour barrel and ~50% of a well established “tour gripper” with nice oak notes (cherries, horse blanket, etc). (Young usually means ~ 1 year, mid range ~2 years and grippers are 3+ years.) But there are no rules here. Do whatever works for you.

Don’t have the budget (or room) for a barrel? Try this “poor man’s” method of emulating some of the aspects of barrel aging. Conduct your primary fermentation in a bucket or ferment the beer with ale yeast, then rack it to a bucket — adding any “bugs” that may be called for. Buckets are more permeable to oxygen than barrels are, so let the beer condition in the bucket for only about 3 months, then rack it to a carboy for the remaining conditioning time. Two weeks before racking, take 3.0 oz. (85 g) of oak cubes (French oak, medium toast) and soak them in wine. Use Chardonnay for the Temptation clone, Pinot Noir for La Roja, Cabernet Sauvignon for Darth Porter and Burgundy or Meritage for Grand Cru and La Folie. Change wine every 3 days to lessen the intensity of the new oak. Add cubes when beer is racked to carboy.

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Saving a bad beer

Posted on May 30, 2013 by funkmetal

A while back I brewed 10 gallons of an English Mild. The initial plan was to split the batch into two 5 gallons portions. For the first half, pitch the wort onto the yeast from my first Flanders Red sour and for the second, use regular brewer’s yeast for a non-sour English Mild. Along the way the non-sour portion ended up in my 5 gallon oak barrel to start the process of working the oak flavor out of the new barrel to eventually be used to hold more sour beers.

It was going to be a rough two weeks. Hours after racking Fancy Lad into the new oak barrel, I realized that I hadn’t really worked hard enough to seal the barrel. It was leaking beer pretty steadily. After a few old cloth diapers and the use of a heavy fan, I had slowed the leak. In a few days though I noticed that the outside of the keg was growing some mold or something. I immediately wiped this off and wondered what was going to happen.

The second mistake with Fancy Lad in the barrel was leaving it in way too long. Though with tasting, it was hard to tell since I used a beer that I’ve never tasted before. I couldn’t quite tell where the beer ended and the oak began. I also picked up a soap-like flavor. Is that young beer, an infection, or too much oak?

After reading around, the best advice I found was the 3-3-3 rule for new oak barrels. The first beer gets 3 days in the barrel, that’s it. Then 3 weeks for the second beer and then 3 months for the third. After that, most or all of the oak flavors are gone and the barrel either needs to be re-charred, or used for long term aging.

Fancy lad spent two weeks in the barrel, not 3 days. When I racked and carbed, the flavor didn’t improve at all. Inspecting the barrel revealed a bunch of white floating spots. I posted the photos to a few boards, but no one knew for sure what it was. After a few weeks in the keg carbing, it was clearly turning more and more sour.

My initial thought was to drain-pour this terrible result. But, the more I thought about it, the more interested I was in seeing if the beer can be rescued. I decided that it should get *more* sour, not less.

I added sour beer bottle dregs, from Jester King’s Funk Metal and Logsdon Farmhouse Ales’ Seizoen Bretta. I’ve pulled the keg from the chest freezer and I’ll condition this beer in the keg for months, adding additional sour dregs as I drink the bottles. I’ll also mix in some malto-dextrins to beef up the mouthfeel.

Here’s hoping for a post in 6 months about how great Funky Lad has become.

Sour Mashing Equipment

Posted on May 12, 2013 by funkmetal

My first brew kettle wrapped in a heatbelt.

I’ve brewed two recipes now that have used a sour mashing technique. The first was a Berliner Weiss from a recipe provided by Black Star Coop. I ran into their Waterloo at the Austin Homebrew Supply store anniversary party a few years back and was hooked on the easy-drinking, sour beer. The second was a Belgian Double Wit, Licensed Fool

The general technique for souring a mash is well known: keep your mash temp warm for 12 to 24 hours after you’ve completed the normal mash schedule for the beer. This extended time and heat allow the biological bugs that reside on the surface of the grain to consume the sugars and multiply which in turn generate various souring compounds, like lactic acid from Lactobacillus.

I’ve heard many stories about how “sick” homebrewer’s beer became during this time as well as the terrible smell. I can attest to this roadkill aroma as I’ve bagged up still-hot grains from a mash and left it in the trashcan. The stench overwhelmed the garage and a new cleanup technique was born. I now remove the liquid and let the grains cool before tossing them in the can.

As I studied number threads on sour mashing on homebrewtalk.com and other articles I wondered if there was a cleaner way to get the sour flavors without risking the whole beer, or even a sour starter which can still be hit or miss. It turns out that, of course, there is a safer way.

Instead of letting the bugs on the grains infect either a starter or your mash we infect the wort with a specific bug, Lactobacillus, but we need to ensure that this is the dominate bug and nothing else can spoil the wort. A simple post-mash pasteurization is performed by heating the drained wort up to 176F and then chilling back down to 120F before pitching a vial of Lactobacillus from White Labs.

There are a few more details needed to ensure good lactic production. First, Lactobacillus are anaerobic, so removing as much oxygen from the environment promotes their grown and keeps other bad bugs (say Acetobacter) from taking hold. The best method I’ve seen for this is to flush the surface of the wort in your pot with CO2, and then covering with foil, plastic wrap, or a sealed kettle lid.

Sour mashed wort after 3 days

The other critical step is keeping the temperature at 120F without going too high or low. Many homebrewers use ice chest or water chests as mash tuns which have lots of insulation. These vessels tend to hold their heat well over time, but not so well over the multiple days needed for lactic production. This can be addressed with hot water infusions but this dilutes your wort.

Instead I chose to use my heatbelt setup typically reserved for fermentation temp control. My first sour mash occurred during the winter months so I wasn’t sure if two heat belts and some blankets would be enough in the cold garage, however that was fully sufficient. I’ve since upgraded the heatbelts (longer) and added an infrared layer so I can keep heat on my 20 Gallon Blichmann pots which will be needed when I do a 10 Gallon batch of Berliner Weiss.

If the sour mash goes well, then you’ll be presented with a nice, tart-smelling and funky wort. A top layer may form on the surface of the beer. The pelicle forms to protect the bacteria. You can remove it or ignore it. I ended up racking around it.

I also like to check the pH of the wort. As the souring level increases the pH will drop. My first Berliner Weiss I let sour for 3 days and ended up at around 4.0. My second sour brew went for the same time and got close, around 4.2.

Equipment List
42 Quart Aluminum Pot with Lid
6′ Heat tape Belt
11″x17″ Infrared Head Pad
Johnson A419 Digital Temp Controller
pH Meter
Auto-siphon for use only with Sour Beers

Woxford Brewing Co.

It's time to brew!

Category Archives: Sours

Summer Time, Saison Time

Recipe Details

Style Details

Fermentables

Hops

Miscs

Yeast

Mash

Download

Needs more sour…

Recipe Details

Style Details

Fermentables

Hops

Miscs

Mash

Notes

Download

The Sour Pipeline

Recipe Details

Style Details

Fermentables

Hops

Miscs

Yeast

Mash

Notes

Download

Saving a bad beer

Sour Mashing Equipment