Saison - split batch yeast test

Saison - split batch yeast test
brewed on:  4/29/13
OG: 1.051
IBUs: 32
SRM:  4
mash temp: 150F
 
6 gallon batch
90 minute boil
60% efficiency assumed

malt:
10 lbs Belgian pils
3 lbs German wheat
8 oz acidulated malt

hops:
2 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - 60 minutes
1.5 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - 15 minutes
0.5 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - 5 minutes
1 oz Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% - flameout
1 oz Sterling @ 7.9% - flameout

yeast:
split batch:
WY 3711 French Saison - 3 gallons
Belle Saison dry yeast - 3 gallons

fermented at 60F

Dubbel

I recently taught a beer tasting continuing education course at the University of Wisconsin - Parkside. It was a lot of fun! I brought in ten different commercial beers and we tried them all, discussing characteristics and history of the styles as we went. One of the beers I brought was St. Bernardus Pater 6, a dubbel. I've had their Abt 12 (quad) many times, but hadn't had Pater 6 before. It was one of the better commercial dubbels I can remember trying. Most of them are too sweet, too phenolic, to harsh in general, for my taste. Pater 6 was nice and cleanly malty while still exhibiting classic abbey character. I resolved, that night, to brew one soon and that's just what I did a couple days ago!

In trying to get as close to the Pater 6 character as I could I went with the Wyeast Trappist High Gravity strain, WY3787. It supposedly originated from Westmalle abbey brewery, which is where St. Bernardus (and Westvletern) got their yeast from as well. I opted for a simple grain bill with some aromstic malt for nice malty complexity. I'm fermenting it at 65F, on the low side for an abbey ale, to keep some of the harsher characteristics in check.

Dubbel

brewed on: 11/28/12
OG: 1.063
IBUs: 19
SRM:  16
mash temp: 150F
 
6 gallon batch
90 minute boil
75% efficiency assumed

malt:
11 lbs Pils
8 oz Aromatic
8 oz Special B
4 oz Caramunich I


hops:
26g Styrian Goldings @ 5.2% (60 minutes)
15g Styrian Goldings @ 3.8% (60 minutes)
 
yeast:
WY3787 Trappist High Gravity - 1800mL starter

fermented at 65F
secondary cold conditioning at 30F
kegged 1/23/13

sample while kegging - Banana and fresh figs. Caramel-like maltiness behind it. Not too sweet though. Looking forward to trying this once carbed!

Lambic barrels!

I've posted before about the group barrel projects I've been taking part in since last fall. It is finally time to drain our initial barrel of its contents, a sour Belgian Imperial Stout. We'll also be emptying our Rye Porter from the Zinfandel barrel it has been aging in.

In place of these beers the plan is to ferment a lambic-like beer in the barrels. Barrel #1 already has more than enough yeast and bugs from the 5 gallons of starter I inoculated it with last year. It was fermented half on Roselare and half on Bugfarm from East Coast Yeast. Barrel #2, which we've dubbed 'Rosie' probably doesn't have enough living in it to do the job of primary fermentation though. It has a mild brett strain living in it, but doesn't exhibit enough brett character (or any sourness) to make me think that there is enough population or variety of bugs for lambic fermentation. That being the case, I brewed a 10 gallon starter batch into which I pitched Wyeast Lambic Blend. I also mixed together dregs from bottles of Hansen's, Cantillon, and Boon Gueuze which some friends and I polished off while I was brewing.

For the starter batch I used the following recipe:

Lambic Solera Bug Starter

batch size: 10 gallons

brewed on: 7/3/11
OG: 1.047
IBUs: 0 IBUs (?)
mash temp: 158F
expected color: 3.6 SRM
90 minute mash
90 minute boil

mash:
10 lbs German pils malt
5 lbs German wheat malt
2 lbs flaked oats

Hops:
4 oz debittered Crystal & Willamette whole leaf

Yeast:
WY Lambic blend, dregs from Cantillon Gueuze, Boon Gueuze, Hansen's Gueuze, and Lindeman's Cuvee Rene


We'll be filling the barrels each half-way with wort brewed on 7-17-11. Six of us will provide wort that day. One week later, the rest of the group will be brewing the rest and topping the barrels up. We'll then rack off 5 gallons from each barrel to allow for headspace during primary fermentation. Once that has calmed down, the beer will be racked back to the barrels to top them up.


I've ordered debittered, aged hops for use in this project. Since they aren't here yet though, I experimented with quickly oven-aging them. I started at 170F, the lowest my oven will go, and slowly raised the temp up to around 190F over the course of 4 hours. The house smelled really cheesy and stale by the time I was done. It took a couple days to air out.


For the rest of the batches, we'll be using the following grist:


12 lbs pils
3 lbs wheat malt
2 lbs unmalted wheat
2 lbs flaked oats


Rather than doing a ridiculously long, but traditional turbid mash, we're mashing at 158F to provide some more complex sugars for the secondary fermentation, along with everything the unmalted wheat and oats will be adding. I amended the recipe after brewing my batch with 10 lbs of pils to help raise the gravity a bit. I realized it was a bit on the low side!


The plan is to use these 2 barrels 'solera' style, and draw off half every 8 or 12 months, replacing that with 5 gallons per brewer of fresh wort. This will keep the batch going and simulate the blending of older beer with younger in traditional gueuze. While not as refined as the traditional blending process, it seems like a fun starting place for our further exploration of sour barrel aged beers by the Barrel Of Monkeys Brewers!

Flanders Red - ECY Flemish Blend

There are few beers I've brewed repeatedly on a regular basis. One of the joys of homebrewing is the freedom of not being locked into producing the same few styles, as consistently as possible, over and over like a commercial brewery often does. That said, there are a few styles I've taken to re-brewing because I like them, and in some cases I find them very open to variations. Saison is a prime example. It is a very open ended style to begin with, and it's got examples all over the map with variants based on season, locally available ingredients, and pure creative brewing artistry.

On the other end of the spectrum, I find Flanders Reds to be something where I really appreciate a small percentage of the limited commercial examples out there. Rodenbach Grand Cru, Rodenbach's Vintage releases, and La Folie are my definite favorites and there are certain distinct similarities I find in them. They are 3 of the most sour, acidic beers I've tried, the fruity flavors of each fall into similar realms, and the oak aging brings out similar flavors and tannic mouthfeel.

In an attempt to get an eventual good Flanders sour ale brewed at home, I've done 3 batches in the past, all using various slurries of East Coast Yeast's Bugfarm releases. While meant for lambic fermentation, as well as general intense souring, they were my best option available since I find Roselare to be very lacking in the sour department until it is several generations old.

Recently, Al of ECY also released a Flemish blend. It contains a similar blend of yeast and bacteria, although not nearly as many and the balance of them is a bit different to hopefully get closer to a Flanders sour. I'm excited to try it! Since the vial of yeast/bugs sat around waiting patiently in the fridge for longer than I would have liked, I put half of the slurry through a stir-plated starter and saved half to pitch directly into the secondary. The logic behind this is that pediococcus, one of the players in this blend, is not a happy camper when introduced to large amounts of oxygen. I grew half on the stirplate to encourage the Saccharomyces strains in the blend to get healthy for a good initial fermentation. The pedio- is hardy enough to survive well enough in the vial, so I'll pitch the second half of the slurry later to encourage it to go to work once the fermented beer is transferred to a carboy to age and sour for a year or two.

Now that I've got 4 different batches of Flanders Red brewed, all with different yeast/bacteria blends, I'm looking forward to blending some into what I hope will be a passable, and quite acidic, batch of Flanders sour ale later this year! Here is the recipe I used, based on the information in Jeff Sparrows' Wild Brews. It is the same recipe, bug blend aside, that I've used in the past batches.

Flanders Red - #4

brewed on: 5/1/11
OG: 1.053
IBUs: 12 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
expected color: 13.1 SRM

mash:
5.5 lbs. Vienna malt
2.25 lbs. Flaked Corn
1 lb. German Carahell
1 lb. Belgian Caravienna
1 lb. Belgian Aromatic malt
6oz. Belgian Special B

Hops (all loose pellets):
0.6 oz Styrian Goldings @ 5.2% - 60 minutes

Yeast:
ECY Flemish Blend - 1/2 grown on stirplate & pitched into primary. 1/2 pitched directly from vial into secondary.

Saison for Beer Fests

I recently volunteered to brew up a keg of saison for the upcoming Kenosha Beer & Cheese Fest going on next month, as well as a keg for the Milwaukee Firkin a few months later. I figured I might as well get it all out of the way now and just brewed up a 10 gallon batch. I stuck with my base recipe for this one. With Spring in the near future, I'll be back to brewing more saison variations this year soon enough though! This was a good kick off. I've gotta say it's really nice having a few hundred lbs of grain on hand, and 9 lbs of hops! The only thing I had to pick up for this batch was yeast! I don't have a lot to say about this one. It went smoothly and I cooked some good Thai papaya salad while mashing & boiling. The only changes I made from past batches was that I ran out of Franco-Belgian pils malt after the first 4.5 lbs, so I made up the difference in MFB Pale malt. Also, I had a spare ounce of Crystal hop pellets in the freezer, so I added those at flameout. I was shooting for 11 gallons, but boiled down a tad too far and ended up with 10. Not a big deal. My normal OG for this recipe is below the minimum BJCP guideline, not that I follow those for everything. There was definitely room for higher gravity though. The IBUs were toward the low-middle range. They are still within the suggested range.

In other news, my pomegranate mead got the thumbs up from Annie today and will be bottled soon! 


Saaz Saison

brewed on: 3/6/2011
expected OG: 1.044

Expected IBUs: 32 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
10 gallon batch
90 minute boil

mash:
12 lbs Belgian Pils (subbed Belgian Pale malt for 7.5#)
3.5 lbs German wheat malt
8 oz acidulated malt


Hops:
2oz Saaz @ 5.5% - 60 minutes

2 oz Saaz @ 5.5% - 15 minutes
3 oz Saaz @ 5.5% - flameout
1 oz Crystal - flameout

Yeast:
3711 French Saison - 1 pack per 5 gallon bucket

3/28/11 - OG 1.002. Dry hopped each 5 gallon batch with 1 oz Crystal (3.2%) whole leaf.

Dark Strong Funky Belgian Ale with Spices

I've been intrigued by the Dark Funky Saison recipes that Mike over at The Mad Fermentationist has posted annually over the past few years. With a couple sour beer buckets free, I decided spur of the moment to try making one of them on Sunday. My friend Jim just happened to be brewing a decocted German pils, so I headed over to his place with my brewing gear and set up shop to brew together.

Mike's post was for a 15 gallon batch done as a group brew, so I scaled everything down a bit. I also made a few other changes. I got rid of the light extract, but I added 1# of D2 dark candi syrup. I also didn't have a spare bottle of red wine handy, so after chopping up my dates and caramelizing them in a tiny bit of wort, I deglazed them with more wort, then added the entire mixture into the boil. Since the recipe used under an ounce of hops, I just transferred everything, dates and all, into the primary. I figure it'll just be a bit of extra food for the bugs. I did up the hops a bit, but not terribly much. Since Mike mentioned the black cardamom he used was a bit strong, I didn't lower the spice amount, but I did increase the hops to balance it a bit more. We'll see how that works out. It's only a few IBUs difference anyway.


I also used different yeast. Mike used WY 3711 French Saison (one of my favorite strains.) Our LHBS has a tendency to have some pretty old yeast sometimes, and the newest saison strain of any type that they had in was almost a year old, with several from '09 even. . . I don't like using old yeast like that even in a starter in most cases, but especially since I was brewing on short notice, I wasn't about to pitch an old pack. Nor did I have time to drive up to Northern Brewer for fresh yeast. Luckily, they had a pack of T-58 dry yeast left, so I picked that up in place of the 3711. While it isn't a saison yeast per se, I've been curious to try T-58 for awhile and this seemed like a good opportunity. With sour dregs and spices getting added, the base yeast should be less exposed anyway.

I also subbed a couple specialty malts for things I had on hand.

The recipe I used was as follows:

Dark Strong Funky Belgian with Spices
brewed on: 1/16/11
OG: 1.098
IBUs: 20 IBUs
mash temp: 154F
expected color: 31.5 SRM

mash:
13 lb Belgian Pils Malt
11 oz CaraMunich II
6.5 oz Carastan
6.5 oz Special B
5.5 oz Pale Chocolate
4.5 Coffee Malt
4.5 US Crystal 90L
2.25 oz Carapils
2.25 oz Carafa II
2.25 oz Flaked Wheat

Adjuncts:
1 lb D2 Dark Belgian Candi Syrup - 60 minutes
7oz chopped Dates, caramelized in a pan, deglazed with wort - 60 minutes
1g Black Cardamom seeds, ground - 2 minutes


Hops (loose pellets):
0.7 oz Amarillo @ 9.1% - 60 minutes 

Yeast:
T-58

Dregs (in primary):
Drei Fonteinen Oude Gueuze
De Dolle Oerbier
Jolly Pumpkin Bam

I was expecting about 1.088 OG, but that was without taking the dates into account. They upped the gravity significantly! This is apparently a winter of strong beer brewing for me with a strong old ale, English barleywine, and this Dark Strong Belgian. I may even do one more barleywine yet this winter since the one I brewed is destined for our group red wine barrel.

2/21/11 - SG @ 1.022 Dark brown and very opaque. Not much sourness yet. Cardamom is present but not too overpowering. A bit boozy, but more warming than distracting. Very mild raisiny background. Should be interesting with age.

Flanders Red - New Years 2011

My friend Bob decided to start a yearly tradition of brewing a barleywine every New Years Day. I like it! Not only is it sort of a cool way to ring in the New Year, but it's also starting the year off enjoying the day with friends. Our group brew sessions are always a lot of fun.

However, having brewed a Strong Old Ale *and* an English Barleywine for our barrel project already, I didn't brew a barleywine. I had some Bugfarm4 from East Coast Yeast in the fridge and it was getting past time to put it to use. I grew it up a bit in a 1 liter starter for a week to get it healthy again, and then brewed a Flanders Red. I brewed my first Flanders almost exactly a year ago, at another group brew with other friends, at the end of December 2009. So, in lieu of a third huge abv beer in the fermentor, I figured I can either stick with brewing a Flanders once a year, or just start doing the yearly barleywine next year. Either way, we had a great time.

We were also joined by other friends, Tony C and Tony B. Tony C was brewing his barrel barleywine and Tony B brewed an ESB (yeast starter beer for his barrel brew.) Our friend Jim and his son, a Marine in town for the holidays, stopped by as well. Jim's son recently brewed his first extract-kit IPA and was getting in some quality all-grain observation time while on leave at home.

Both Tonys also grilled venison from their recent deer hunting trip. I've gotta say the venison was some of the best meat I've had in a long, long time. Thanks guys!!!

After a string of 2 unseasonably warm days/nights, Mother Nature decided to lower the thermostat on us for New Years Day and we got to brew outside in 19F weather! We at least took shelter in a detached garage and there were 4 burners running much of the time which provided some "heat" although heat may be an overstatement! Still, it was much better than brewing in 90F+ humid summer weather! (Next time, I vote we at least do this in my attached garage where we can run out to check things from time to time. . .)

Aside from the grilling & brewing, we also had many delicious beers. I broke out a bottle of de Struise's Black Albert, one of my last 3 bottles of award winning all-brett C beer, as well as all-brett L w/ wine & cherries, a bottle of one of The Bruery's Christmas beers (we all agreed this one was way too sweet,) and one of my Archaic beers using cultured up Pannepot 2007 dregs. Others brought many of their homebrews and some interesting commercial beers as well.

To end the day, another friend, Jesse, stopped by my place just after we finished brewing and the two of us tried several Baltic Porters we'd been waiting to sample side-by-side. And then I went to bed at 6pm for several hours. . .

This year's Flanders Red recipe is almost the same as last year's, the recipe from Wild Brews, but last year I decided to add some raw sugar for whatever (dumb) reason. In retrospect, I think I just didn't have much sour brewing experience a year ago. Maybe I did it to combat the terrible efficiency I was getting still, prior to fixing my mash tun. Regardless, I got rid of the sugar addition and brewed it this year. Last year's batch used Bugfarm3 and is getting really good as of the last sample I took. This year's is the newer Bugfarm4. I'm anxious to try Al's Flemish Ale blend whenever he releases that via East Coast Yeast as well. Here's the Flanders recipe:

Flanders Red - #2

brewed on: 1/1/11
OG: 1.053
IBUs: 12 IBUs
mash temp: 150F
expected color:13.1 SRM

mash:
5.5 lbs. Vienna malt
2.25 lbs. Flaked Corn
1 lb. German Carahell
1 lb. Belgian Caravienna
1 lb. Belgian Aromatic malt
6oz. Belgian Special B

Hops (all loose pellets):
0.6 oz Styrian Goldings @ 5.2% - 60 minutes

Yeast:
slurry from 1 liter starter of ECY Bugfarm4


2/21/11 - SG @ 1.006. Nice tartness. Acidity reminiscent of green apple, but more intense. (Not green apple flavor though.) Moved to basement.

Barrel of Monkeys Brewers (B.O.M.B!)

Sometime last year, the availability of used bourbon barrels from Sprecher Brewery's beers was brought up at one of our local homebrew club meetings. It was suggested that we put together a recipe and do a group brew to age in the barrel. Then we went on to the next order of business.

A month later, it was mentioned that there were barrels available if anyone was interested in doing a barrel brew still. A few people thought it was a good idea. Then we went on to the next order of business.

A month later. . . you get the idea. Eventually the idea just died.

However, it was in the back of my head and I decided to eventually do something about it. So, I went to people individually who I thought might be interested in brewing a sour beer to put into a barrel. We got a nice group of good brewers together.

We were hoping for a wine barrel, but couldn't find one available in our area. We settled on an easier to obtain bourbon barrel since that's what we could get. That being the case, I suggested we do a strong, dark beer to stand up to the still relatively fresh oak character and any residual bourbon alcohol. Last winter I brewed an Imperial Stout recipe using the Bugfarm3 blend I had gotten via AlB from the babblebelt.com web forum. It is still aging, but is shaping up to be among my best beers. We eventually decided on that recipe, although we scaled the OG down a bit from my 1.105. We've all been shooting for 1.085, although a few people overshot that. No big deal in this case.

Over the last few months of planning we've added a few people, including one or 2 guys I hadn't met before that some of the other guys knew. We also found out that one of the main suppliers of used barrels to micros all over the US is within 2 hours of us here in Wisconsin! He has wine barrels, brandy barrels, and all sorts of good stuff available! Since we'd settled on a recipe already, we stuck with that and went with a brandy barrel. Apparently it is a 23 year old barrel. It shouldn't have much oak character left at this point, but we're really using it more as a vessel to inoculate with bugs for future brews.

My hope is that we'll put a couple long term batches through it, and then start using it solera style, where we draw off a portion of the beer every 6-12 months and replace it with new beer. After awhile it settles into an average age of a couple years or so, depending on the frequency and amount of beer pulled out & replaced.

One of the guys supposedly picked up the barrel yesterday and our fill date is coming up soon! Things are shaping up with this fun project and I'm happy I could get some people together to share ideas, homebrew, and have a good time playing mad scientists!

It is my hope that we can get a wine barrel this spring to house in my basement (or elsewhere if someone really wants to.) That way we could have a couple projects going at once. One with darker beers, and one with farmhouse type stuff and maybe eventually a lambic-inspired beer or sour ale like a Flanders.

Our recipe was based off of the Jolly Pumpkin Dark Dawn clone done on the BN awhile back. We raised our gravity to around 1.085, as mentioned above.


B.O.M.B. Sour Imperial Stout

brewed on: 10/11/10
OG: 1.086
IBUs: 34 IBUs
mash temp: 152F

mash:
7 lb 4 oz Belgian Pils malt
1 lb 10 oz Roasted Barley
1 lb 10 oz US 2-row
1 lb 3 oz German Munich
1 lb Wheat malt
8 oz Crystal 80L
4 oz Black malt

boil:
10 oz Turbinado sugar
8 oz Table Sugar
6 oz Honey

Hops:
.5 oz US Nugget @ 13.7% - 60 minutes
1 oz Fuggle @ 5% - 30 minutes

Yeast/bugs:
Split batch -
1) 3rd generation Roselare cake
2) Dirty Dozen bug blend


The rest of the guys brewing for this fermented their batches with the Wyeast Ardennes strain. I'll be adding my 5 gallons shortly thereafter to provide the bugs to inoculate this batch and the barrel.

For sugar, we decided that, rather than getting super picky, we would go with 3 different additions. One would be corn sugar or table sugar, one would be an unrefined sugar, whether it be turbinado, jaggery, piloncillo, etc. The third would be honey. While most of the guys went with table sugar, I think there was a bit of variation in the unrefined sugar used. I know several batches were done with jaggery, but I also saw bags of turbinado and piloncillo around at various brew sessions as well.

Sour Grisette

I recently got a group of guys together to start a barrel project. I'm pretty excited about it and they are all good brewers! What we decided on for our first batch is the Dark Dawn recipe I brewed over the winter, and since there isn't a Bugfarm blend available from AlB on BBB right now, we're using Roselare blend from Wyeast. I've heard from many sources that Roselare doesn't really get sour until the 2nd or 3rd generation, so I am building up one or two starter batches first.

The plan is that everyone is brewing the same Imperial Stout recipe and fermenting it clean with Ardennes yeast in their primaries. We'll then add it to our barrel. We'll fill the entire barrel with the clean version of the beer, then after a couple weeks, draw 5 gallons back out to see what the barrel added in a short amount of time, and I'll replace it with my buggy batch. We'll see how it's doing after about 6 months. At that point, the plan is to take it out and put another batch in, but we'll see how it is aging and decide from there.

We found a guy (Tom Griffin) who lives a couple hours away here in Wisconsin and supplies used spirit and wine barrels to many of the breweries around the country including Lost Abbey and Jolly Pumpkin! One of our guys gave him a call and he's apparently a really nice guy. He was happy to sell us a single barrel at the same price he sells in bulk to the breweries. Here's an article about him:

http://draftmag.com/magazine/articles/169

We decided on a brandy barrel for now. When we originally got together we wanted a wine barrel, but couldn't locate one at the time, so we were going to use a Jack Daniels bourbon barrel since they were easy to get a a hold of. By the time we got in touch with Tom we had already formulated a recipe that we thought could stand up to the bourbon character left in the barrel and bought yeast and bulk base grain. We decided, rather than scrapping the plan and starting over, to use the same recipe in a brandy barrel, then in a few months get a wine barrel as well. I'm hoping to do some farmhouse style ales in the wine barrel using just brett, rather than a huge bug slurry to start with.

As a starter for the bugs for this barrel though, I decided to brew a simple Grisette, but ferment it solely with Roselare blend to get it started. I'll probably do one more batch on this yeast cake soon, before the Dark Dawn batch. Here is the recipe:

Grisette d'Roselare

brewed on: 9/20/2010
expected OG: 1.046
Expected IBUs: 23 IBUs
mash temp: 152F

mash:
7 lbs Belgian Pils malt
2 lbs 4 oz German Wheat malt


Hops:
1.5 oz Hallertauer @ 3.5% (60 minutes)
0.7 oz Styrian Golding @ 3.4% (15 minutes)
0.5 oz Kent Golding @ 5% (1 minute)

Yeast
Wyeast 3763 - Roselare Blend

10/4/10 - SG @ 1.006. Racked to secondary. Flavor is malty with maybe a hint of diacetyl in the nose. Hopefully it's just the beginnings of some lactic fermentation that I interpreted as a hint of butter. No noticeable sourness or funk at this point.

Dark Belgian "Archaic Beer"

On May 1st, some of the members of our local homebrew club, the Belle City Brewers and Vintners, got together at our local homebrewing store to brew together. It was a fun day with a few people doing their first all-grain batches (one of which was a RIS. What a way to start into all-grain!) Actually, last year when I went to my first big brew day, I was inspired to start doing all-grain as well after seeing how much easier it was than I'd imagined.

I recently got a chance to try the 2007 vintage of De Struise's Pannepot. This is officially one of my new favorite beers! It has tons of dark fruit flavors, a bit of coffee, and more. Between drinking Pannepot, De Dolle's Oerbier, and De Dolle's export stout recently, a beer in this vein has been something on mind mind to brew for quite awhile. (I had a bottle of Thomas Hardy recently as well, which I hadn't had in a year or two, and although it is coming from a different sort of place, I've gotta say those dark, complex Old Ales are very much along similar lines, at least to my taste.)

My friend, Jesse, and I polished off all 3 bottles of Pannepot I picked up and I pitched the dregs into a starter. Since it was a roughly 3 year old vintage, I built up the starter repeatedly, until it was just under 2 liters, to get the yeast going again. I plan to culture up more yeast from dregs in the future, as it is pretty easy. (I'm currently growing a starter from dregs of a Fantome Printemps. I haven't decided what to do with it yet.)

After taking a look at the Wild Brews recipe for Donkere Geneeskunde, and browsing various recipes on the web, I settled on a slight adaption of a collaboration recipe between De Struise and Sean Paxton.

Belgian Dark Archaic

brewed on: 5/1/10
expected OG: 1.080 (Since I got a late start and this ended up being a long boil I only boiled it down to a bit under 6 gallons, but the gravity was not too far shy of what I was shooting for. The OG was between 1.075 and 1.080.)


Expected IBUs: 26
mash temp: 153F

mash:
6 lb US 2-row
5 lb Belgian Pale malt
1 lb Maris Otter
1.5 lb flaked oats (the store was out, but I sent my brother to the grocery store and used Quaker oats instead.)
1 lb CaraMunich II
.75 lb flaked barley
.75 lb flaked wheat
.5 lb Crystal 20
6 oz debittered black malt
1.25 oz Crystal 120

1 lb Piloncillo sugar - start of boil

Hops:
2.5 oz E. Kent Golding @ 4.8

Yeasts:
Wyeast 3538 Leuven Pale Ale cake &
1.5 liter starter from dregs of 3 bottles of 2007 Pannepot


Fermented at 66-68F.


5/25/10 - Racked to secondary (62F). SG: 1.014
8/22/10 - SG: 1.011 aroma: alcohol & raisins. Flavor:raisins, sweet.
10/4/10 - SG: ~1.012 (temp change?) aroma: fruity & sour. flavor: chocolate, dried fruit, a hint of subtle sourness.
11/30/10 - Kegged and force carbed

Brett Pale

It's been several weeks since I posted last. I've been brewing, but haven't posted the last two batches yet since I've been busy with the onset of Spring. Having moved to a new house, we just put in a garden. I also planted some hop rhizomes! 3 Cascade, and 1 Willamette. I put in a Chinook from a friend as well, but it was more of a sprout than a rhizome and died pretty quick.

A fellow brewer that lives nearby recently did an all-brett beer and saved some of the slurry for me. I wasn't sure what I was going to brew until the last minute, but settled on a pale wort with brett in the secondary. I decided to use the grain bill from the Flanders Pale in Jeff Sparrow's Wild Brews. However, since I wasn't going for a sour ale on this one, instead of pitching Roselare or a lambic mix as suggested in the recipe, I used the Wyeast special release Leuven Ale yeast. Once it was done fermenting and transferred to the secondary, I pitched the brett slurry, which was a mixture of Wyeast Bretts - Bruxellensis and Lambicus. It quickly formed a small dusty pellicle after a couple days in the seconday.

Belgian Pale w/ Brett

brewed on: 4/23/10
expected OG: 1.059
Expected IBUs: 27
mash temp: 151F

mash:
10 lb Belgian Pils
1lb 14oz German Carahell

Hops:
2 oz Czech Saaz @ 2.8% - 60 minutes
1 oz German Hallertauer @ 2.8% - 60 minutes


Primary Yeast:
Wyeast 3538 - Leuven Pale Ale

Secondary Yeast:
slurry of WY Brett Brux & WY Brett Lamb.

Fermented at 68F.

5/4/10 - moved to secondary @ 62F. Added Brett slurry (WY Brett B & WY Brett L)
7/19/10 - added dregs of JP Oro de Calabaza
8/22/10 - SG 1.002 leathery nose w/ hints of pear. Thin body, astringent. Consider adding a bit of oak for vanillins.
10/5/10 - SG @ 1.002 - Sour fruit, brett. Dry, astringent mouthfeel.
1/21/11 - Tasted this while giving some friends a tour of the sour beer carboys the other night. Astringency has backed off some and it is turning out like a nice, somewhat aged Orval. Nice cherry and leather brett character has developed.
2/21/11 - Kegged and force carbing!