Flanders Red

I finally found my scrawled out notes for the Flanders Red influenced beer I brewed recently. As mentioned in an earlier post, Al B of the Burgundian Babble Belt forums sent me an awesome vial of his Bugfarm III concoction which I put to work on this one.This bug mix includes the following:

Brettanomyces Drie Fontenein Oude Gueuze
Brettanomyces Fantome Black Ghost
Brettanomyces Russian River Beatification
Brettanomyces Vinnie's Oak Chips (RR)
Brettanomyces Anomulus (WYeast)
Brettanomyces Allagash Confluence
Brettanomyces (2) Cantillon St. Lamvinus
Pediococcus Cantillon St. Lamvinus
Pediococcus Rodenbach Foederbier
Saccharomyces fermentati Flor Sherry Yeast
Saccaromyces cerevisae Saison Dupont
LF1 / LF2 New Belgium La Folie
Lactobacilli Sourdough / WL / WY
and. . .
Kombucha Yeast!

Needless to say, I'm very excited about fermenting a few batches with this Bugfarm mix! I hope to get a few generations out of it before it gets too acidic. The initial batch I pitched this into was inspired by the Flanders Red recipe in Wild Brews, but I added some raw Demerera sugar to it as well. Here's the recipe:

Flanders Red(ish)
brewed on: 12/27/09
8.1 lbs Vienna malt
1.5 lbs Carahell malt
1.5 lbs CaraVienna malt
1.5 Aromatic malt
8 oz Special "B"
3.24 lbs Maize
2 lbs raw sugar

12 IBUs Styrian Goldings (I think I went a little higher than this due to homebrew store error. That's ok though. Some of my favorite sour/funky beers have been hopped significantly heavier than the accepted style norms.)

mash at 154F w/ 170F mashout
OG 1.060 (Need to fix the mash tun. My efficiency is terrible for now.)
fermentation temp - ambient (66-68F)
yeast: AlB's Bugfarm III vial!

I've got some medium & medium-dark toast French and Hungarian Oak which I may add to this down the road. For now though, I'm just going to let it age away in the secondary and see if it needs anything towards Spring/Summer.

3/11/10 - Added Cuvee René dregs.
3/23 - SG @ 1.003. Sample was mildly sour. Not much funk yet, but this will be a good, if restrained sour beer. I took samples of my Dark Night, Sour Brown, and this back to back and made the mistake of going in reverse order of how they were brewed, from the third generation bugs to first, so my perception of mild sourness was certainly distorted by the stronger acidity of the beers I tried first. The bitterness is still very high, but not ridiculous. Nonetheless, this will be a good beer.
4/20 - Moved to basement. (62F)
5/18 SG @ 1.004(seems odd that it'd go up. . . Temp change?) - Mild acidity, background complexity comes through, but delicate; good aroma.
8/22/10 - SG 1.001 Light pit fruit & alcohol. slight butterscoth in nose? Astringent.