Latest Batch (De Dolle Still Nacht "inspired" ale with bugs)

Hey all, Well I mentioned I was going to be getting back into doing some more beer with Brettanomyces and some other bugs. Well I just racked my De Dolle, Stille Nacht inspired ale out of the primary into 2 different carboys and pitched a vial of Brett claussenii (WLP 645) in one and a vial of Belgian Sour Mix I (WLP655) in the other. I'm not expecting a lot of sourness from the B. claussenii, just more of a pineapple-like aromatic quality hopefully. I'm going to see what I can do with both of these as far as blending them when they are all done. I'm very anxious to try these as it has been a couple years now since I have played with any wild yeast or bacteria. Here is the recipe I came up with for this beer. This is a 90 minute boil to try and volitize dms precursors.

Stille Nacht inspired

16-E Belgian Specialty Ale

Author: Brian Richards

Date: 4/13/2012

Size: 10.5 gal

Original Gravity: 1.082 (1.026 - 1.120)

Color: 7.58 (1.0 - 50.0)

Bitterness: 20.8 (0.0 - 100.0)

Ingredients:

23.0 lb Belgian Pils

8 oz Honey Malt

8 oz Special Aromatic Malt

8 oz German CaraFoam

8 oz Belgian Biscuit

8 oz Belgian Caravienne

2 lb White Table Sugar (Sucrose)

.75 oz Bravo (14.2%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m

0.5 oz Styrian Goldings (3.4%) - added during boil, boiled 15.0 m

0.5 oz Styrian Goldings (3.4%) - added during boil, boiled 3.0 m

1.0 ea Fermentis T-58 Safbrew T-58

1.0 ea Fermentis S-33 Safbrew S-33

I transfered from primary fermenter into 2 5 gallon carboys carrying over a decent amount of yeast from the primary and I pitched 1 vial of WLP645 (Brett. claussenii) and 1 vial of WLP655 (Belgian Sour Mix I). When I transfered the beer my gravity was at 1. 022, not sure how much character I'm going to get with this being the starting line for souring agents. I'm a little rusty.

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Well, my and my bro-in-law are thinking about brewing a batch of our O.T.A.S. (One Ton Axle Swap) Imperial Porter today for a festival in Portage, IN. (Porter's Perfect Pint sponsored by Leroy's Hot Stuff and Pat's Liquor) We want to age some of it in a recently dumped whiskey barrel that should be arriving this week. If you live in the area you should come check us out. I believe it is in late Sept to early Oct. sometime. I'll definitely be posting about it as it approaches.

Finally corked the Flanders Red! Whoo Hoo!

Well, I finally got around to corking up this beer (or beers I should say since it is actually a blend of two different Flanders Reds). In short, I brewed Jamil's Flanders Red recipe a couple years ago and I also brewed a La Folie clone that I came across in a BYO 150 Clone recipes magazine. While pulling samples of these beers I like to blend some of the samples together just for the hell of it and I found that a 50/50 blend of these two beers benefited the flavor of both beers. They were both o.k. in their own right but I liked the blend a little better so I just decided I'd blend them and have 10 gallons of a nice beer. All of the corked bottles are the Belgian bottles with the big fat heads on them like the Chimay or Unibroue 750mL bottles. Both Morebeer.com and Northernbrewer.com carry the right sized corks and wire cages for these bottles now. He are some pics from the day.

Slimey and Yucky....just the way I like my pellicle

Here's those pellicle pics I promised you. How could something that looks so gross aid in the production of something that tastes so good you ask...well that gross yucky stuff actually protects the beer from O2 during the aging process. I've become kind of fascinated with watching the production of these pellicles. They seem to start to form in a fractal-like manner before they grow into a chaotic, protective mess that looks very unappealing unless you know how it is helping the beer along. I love my pellicles like Cher loved Eric Stoltz in the 1985 movie Mask.

Competitions and Sour Beers so it seems

Well lately I've been busy sending beers out to Competitions and keeping a watchful eye on my sour creations I brewed over a year ago now. I've also brewed a few other wild brews since then. Some of the competitions that I have entered over the past few months are the Michigan Brew Festival (Richmond Worthogs), Great Northern Brew Ha Ha (Northern Alestars), Babble Leap Beer Brew-Off (Babble Homebrewers), Drunk Monk Challenge (Urban Knaves of Grain). I am entering as many competitions as possible that are on the Midwest Homebrewer of the Year circuit. I have set that as my annual brewing goal. Here have been my results so far:


Homebrew at the W.E.B. (World Expo of Beer)
*3rd Place -- Biere Bella (Belgian Golden Strong Ale)

Titletown Open:
*1st Place -- Biere Bella (Belgian Golden Strong Ale)

BOSS Chicago Beer Cup:
*Best of Show/1st place -- Biere Bella (Belgian Golden Strong Ale)


Michigan Brew Fest:
*Best of Show/1st place -- Chai Spiced Brown Ale

Great Northern Brew Ha Ha:
*3rd place -- Junk in the Trunkelweizen
*Best Beer Name -- Junk in the Trunkelweizen

Babble Leap Beer Brew-Off
*2nd Winter Survival Weizenbock
*3rd Biere Bella Belgian Strong Golden Ale

Drunk Monk Challenge -- Menace of the Monestary Category
*2nd place -- Biere Bella Belgian Strong Golden Ale
(Damnit, one place away from being able to brew this recipe
at Walter Payton's Restaurant near Chicago)

As for brewing I recently brewed and extract version of a Berliner Weisse.
This is coming along great. It needs to sour up for a few more months but
it should be ready for summer time.

I just brewed Jamil Zanisheff's Belgian Strong Dark Ale and also did a partigyle
brew off of that that I pitched a big slurry of Brett Claussennii into. (100% Brett)
I'm really looking forward to these two beers. I can tell you right now that I am
going to be on a Belgian kick for a while. This happens to me every year. And why not? The temperature will soon be rising so brewing belgians in the summer time is
perfect. The yeast can handle it so there is no sense in trying brew something that needs to be cooler and have the results suffer when I can do something that likes the higher temps and benefit from it......right?

Oh yeah, the biggest update of all. We finally have a frickin' homebrew club. Yeah thats right, and not a little group of people either. The last meeting we had like 30 people show up. We'll have our website up and running soon thanks to Josh Meringer who is handy with that type of thing. We are planning on growing a bunch of hops on an acre of land that was generously handed over for club use by Mike Sattem who is the head brewer at Hereford & Hops in Escanaba. I am really excited to get going on that. So much so that I just ordered a bunch of rhizomes for my own yard. I also have been looking into getting a compost bin so I can dump all my spent grains in there and use them to feed my hops. What came from the earth must return, mine as well be into my hops. That's all for now. Later.

My First Wild Brew!

Well, I am finally going to do my first wild brew. I am doing a Flanders Red, a style I fell in love with right away. I don't think I have ever found a beer that I really get cravings for like a sour red. It mine as well be a drug from the 80's the way it gets you hooked. I think the first sour beer I have had and fell in love with was La Roja from Jolly Pumpkin. I remember buying a few cases of Jolly Pumpkin because I wanted to hang on to a few and age them out and all of a sudden I had drank most of my supply and realized that these beers soured to perfection. Then it sank in that I just drank a whole bunch of these before they were prime time. Doh! Then I tried a Duchesse De Bourgogne and I was baffled by the smell. Who in the hell put vinegar in this bottle and tried passing it off as beer. Well.....whoever it was, I love you. The first sip kind of struck me as odd but the second, third, and everyone there after just made me want to get my hands on every beer similar to this. I had got a bottle of Rodenbach Grand Cru in the mail one day and that one was Mega-sour compared to the Duchesse. Now I am hooked on this style and decided I would brew up 10 gallons for myself. I am going to do a recipe that Jamil Zanisheff has done very well with in competitions and see what kind of beer I can translate it into. The only difference in my recipe is that I couldn't get Weyerman Munich malt through my supplier so I am going with American Munich. We'll see what it produces. I've been spending tonight prepping for the morning so I can brew bright and early. I like to brew around 8-9 AM so I still have most of the day to relax with my wife afterwards.I will post more tomorrow when I am brewing this bad boy up. To be continued.

Cheers!

Alright, I got up at 7:00 PM this morning, ground my grains and I was doughed in by 8:20 AM. Half asleep I almost forgot to add a little bit of acid malt to my mash to get my pH to were I want it. I added a little bit to my last beer and my efficiency jumped up quite a bit. The recipe I am doing is very odd for a Flanders Red. Jamil Zanishef says that this, if done right, tastes very very close to a classic Rodenbach. Here is the grain bill:

This is a 10 Gallon Batch

10 lb. Pilsnen malt
10 lb. Vienna malt
7 lb. Munich
1 lb. Special B
1 lb. Caramunich
1 lb. Aromatic
1 lb. White Wheat Malt
.5 lb Acid Malt

Hops:

1.4 oz. E.K. Goldings (60 min)

I also used 2 oz. of med+ toast French Oak Cubes (1 oz. per carboy)

Yeast:

Wyeast Roselare Blend from the VSS (Very Special Strain) Series

Come on, Give me a break, like you look any better at 8:00 AM after about 3 hrs of sleep. I've just gotten doughed in here and I'm making sure my temp is right at 154 F, as it was. Mash at 90 minutes at that temp and then bring it up to 168 F for 10 minutes. Sparge at 170. I am going to batch sparge again because I had good luck with it when I did my smoked porter. And it cuts a ton of time of my brew day.

--Newsflash-- SMOOTHEST BREWING SESSION OF THE YEAR TAKES A DRASTIC TURN FOR THE WORSE!
Just as I was starting to sparge my phone rang, I ignored it, it rang again and I pick it up and it's my boss saying I need to go into work because (sidenote: I work at a TV station) our system that we play our commercials off of went down and we were losing thousands of dollars by not playing these commercials. I had to obviously finish sparging and then siran wrap both of my brew pots so they wouldn't get infected and head out to work. Luckily I was home within an hour and a half and my wort was still hot. I got back into the swing of things and kept brewing like nothing happened except a major delay. I should have been done by 2:00 PM, now we'll see.

Everything worked out O.K. It took me a lot longer than expected. Now I only have to wait 1 year. Great!

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING...
I think this is the fastest starting fermentation I've seen out of all the batches I've made. It basically took about 12 hours and the yeast was rockin' out.