Milk Stout Plus Roeselare and Belgian Sour Mix 1

Last week in Western N.Y. was a cold one. I had planned to brew on Saturday but when I woke up it was -10 degrees Fahrenheit according to my trusty kitchen window thermometer.

Being a completely obsessed brewer with a heat source in the Horse Barn Brewer I gave it the good ole college try but it just wasn't meant to be. I ruined a potable hose that provides water to the Horse Barn Brewery from the house. Then the hose spigot was frozen up and I nearly gave myself frost bite trying to thaw it with a propane torch. I went to change the tank and started cross threading the nozzle, when I backed it off gases leak onto and through my gloved hands. I followed the recommend procedures and saved my pinky finger! :)

So I decided to make up for an entire weekends loss of brewing by brewing triple the amount this weekend. I needed something to top off the Bourbon County Stout sitting in my basement. There's far too much head-space in that barrel and the barrel's not mine. I also wanted to start fermenting two new sours to fill a new barrel I was getting third hand for free.

I received a new 15 gallon kettle for my Christmas 2015 and a new 70qt converted cooler mash tun for my birthday 2016 so I had enough equipment to brew the beers side by side. As it turns out this didn't save me any time over pipe-lining the brews, mostly because I forgot to put the bazooka screen in the new mash tun, Doh!

I also found out that I was low on roasted barley and a few other ingredients for my milk stout so had to make some last minute substitutions. I'm far to over confident in my memory which I know isn't great.

All things considered the brew day was a success. I have 12 gallons of sour wort fermenting away and 7 gallons of Milk Stout all of which hit their numbers.

Here are a few photos of this "epic" brew day.

Sour Fruit Experiment - Blueberries

In the past year I've been trying my hand at making sour beers. I have three separate five gallon batches going now and I'm brewing another 10 gallons very soon. The first batch I brewed from the dregs of a Hill Farmstead Nordic Saison I picked up while visiting Vermont.

That first batch soured very quickly. I checked it after only 6 weeks in the fermenter and it was already quite tart. It had a pH of 3.4 and to tasted very good to my new-to-sours pallet. I had watched a video with Vinnie of Russian River stating 3.4 was their target pH and since I liked the beer I wanted to keg it. I posted in the Milk the Funk group on Facebook to get some feedback which pretty much said "If you like it keg it" and "Split the batch and let some continue to age", so that's what I did.

I kegged four gallons of the five because I was very concerned the beer would continue to sour and drop the pH since the F.G. was only 1.010. As it turns out that was just some newbie nervousness. After 7 months I checked that remaining 1 gallon of that first batch. It was a bit lighter in color and significantly more clear but other than that it was what I remembered with maybe a slight cherry like fruitiness to it. The pH was still at 3.4.

After a few more sour beers under my tasting belt I've come to realize that first batch wasn't very good and was pretty 1 dimensional with mostly a lacto sourness and not much else for flavor. The batches I have going now will age a very long term to help build those characteristics along with higher mash temps and the addition of some oats and maltodextrin. I've also used ECY 20 Bug County for one and the next two batches will be split between Wyeast Roselare and White Labs Belgian Sour Mix 1. Both of those cultures have a mix of Brett, Pedio, Lacto and Sach which should be everything you need in a mixed culture to make good things happen to a good base beer.

With that being said I'm not going to waste this remaining 1 gallon of my first batch.

Instead of drinking it the way it is or dumping it, I decided to use it to experiment with some fruit. I had three quarters of a pound of frozen blueberries in my freezer so I removed 1 quart of the batch (into a couple of glasses!) and replaced it with the blueberries which filled the space back up to the same original level, guess I did something right. I've read that 1lb per gallon of sour beer is the recommended amount for adding fruit but I simply used what I had on hand.

I doubt this will "fix" this small batch of beer but it should give me an idea of what blueberries will taste like in a sour. I'll give this beer another two months to finish off the sugars in those blueberries and report back then.

Cheers!

Sour Inoculation

I recently had a bit of a panic attack because I transferred these beers into secondary PET containers for long term aging. They spent 3 months in the primary and I didn't brew more wort to pour on the yeast cake. So I dumped the cake and cleaned the primaries thinking I could just use samples from the secondaries to inoculate a new batch. I'm sure I have a good reason for thinking I could do this but I don't remember reading about it anywhere specific.

I was trying to do some reading on the subject to find out how much sour beer I would need to add to inoculate the new batches but everything I was finding on TheMadFermentationist.com, in American Sour Beers and on MilkTheFunk.com was about using the sediment in bottle dregs.

I was freaking out because I only had the one pitch of ECY 20 Bug County and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get my hands on another until maybe next winter.

I decided to email Michael Tonsmeire on the off chance he would answer a desperate reader and he did. He responded quickly and I found out that I'm an idiot.

The answer is on page 90 of American Sour Beers which states that New Belgium leaves 10-20% of sour beer behind in their foeders to inoculate the next batch.

If you want to inoculate from bottle dregs you can find a nice write up on MilkTheFunk.

Bourbon County Stout Clone - Barrel Time!

Around the second week of December 2015 a couple of the brew club members and myself got together and brewed a Bourbon County Stout Clone. You can view the recipe here.

This was a mammoth brew day. We ran into all sorts of problems from not enough room in two 10 gallon mash tuns, not enough room in a 15 gallon kettle to not being able to get the barrel to seal. All in all I was in the brew room for about 9 hours.

The O.G. ended up being 1.129 after adding 3lbs of dry malt extract to the boil kettle. It was obvious we weren't going to hit our numbers when we took the preboil gravity so we added the extract. F.G. was 1.039, a little higher than expected (1.035) but after tasting the hydrometer sample I'm not a all worried. This beer is going to be fantastic with some age on it.

We eventually got the used apple brandy barrel to seal (we used apple brandy) and transferred the fermented brew into it. Here are some pics.

Fun with Sours

It's been awhile since I've posted anything. I was doing brewing videos for a short time but I guess they lost their allure after a short time so back to the written word.

I've brewed quite a bit since my last post but what I've done most recently is move a couple sours into long term aging vessels. I brewed 10 gallons of a Golden Sour back in October. I fermented half with ECY Bug County and the other half I poured onto about a half gallon of my last Oud Bruin type batch.

The Bug county was already quite sour and nearly crystal clear while the other was very milky/yeasty looking.

The Solara batch had a distinctive grapefruit flavor/sourness to it that was unlike the last batch from that bucket. The Bug county was a very clean sour, I didn't detect any funk.

Both batches had nice Pericles formed because I left them in the primary far too long (3 months+).

                                     ECY Bug County                                                        Oud Bruin Mix

The Bug County was already at a F.G. of 1.000 where the other was 1.006. The bug county is quite good already and I feel as though I should bottle it as is before the oxygen from the transfer turns it too acetic. That's was I did with the last Oud Bruin batch and wished I hadn't because who know what it could have become so I think this time I'll risk wasting the batch.

I added medium toast oak spirals to both batches. I found my last sour to be a little thin and 1 dimensional so I'm going to try the oak spirals, split the batches and put fruit on half of each. I'm thinking dried cherries for one and Pineapple on the other. First I'm going to brew a new batch for primaries with White Labs WLP 655 and a mix of these two for the other half plus enough to top these off.

I think after the WLP655 I'll give the Yeast Bay a try, I think I'll pick something with Brett Lambicus for some added funk/dimension.