Gettin' Back To Gettin' Funky

I love sour beer. Write that on my tombstone. I also like to brew it. As a homebrewer with a busy schedule this can pose a problem. You see I got so busy with family, school, work and such that I got stuck in that rut of only brewing once in a great while so I was cranking out more sessionable and easy-to-turn-around beers. Now, those bretty horse blanket and face contorting flavors I am without. Sad indeed. So I decided to do something about it and brew a nice base beer that is inspired by De Dolle Stille Nacht and I'm planning on splitting it 3 ways with different bugs in each carboy. I'm going to use a White Labs lambic blend, Brett claussenii, Starter from a Hansens Oud Kriek and maybe some Jolly Pumpkin dregs. I can then decide if I want to do any blending down the road. I also have plans to do an old ale or maybe more along the lines of a stock ale with some Brett clausenii to try and mimic the old traditional aging process where these beers would pick up Brett anomulus (clausenii) - like characteristics from the barrels. I'm also getting set to do some Flanders red and possibly an Oud brown aged in stainless steel to compare against the reds. (Wich are still brown's by the way) Confusing facts for a different post. So that's my brew plans for the next couple weeks. I'll post recipes and pics as I go. Cheers, BR

Cool Looking Pellicle

A few weeks ago I made a yeast starter from some oak cubes that I received from a fellow homebrewer. They were innoculated with a buffet of bugs from different lambics and such. I poured all of the liquid from the starter into my lambic and then poured the chips into a fresh erlinmyer with some fresh wort to make another starter and I am getting this really cool pellicle growth going on. It is like powdery little snowbanks scattered about on the surface of the wort. Pretty cool, at least if you are geeky like I am.