Sour Blonde 1.1.1

There is no time like the present to start a long lead time project so I have decided to brew another sour beer that wont be ready to drink until some time in 2016.  I would like to build up a pipeline of these beers building off the previous beer's yeast cake.  I am thinking that I might brew a new one with slightly different techniques every 3 months or so.  This will hopefully make a bad batch a bit less demotivating and will also give me some blending options.

For this batch I decided to try my hands at something similar to a lambic.  The lambic brewing process is pretty involved and I didn't feel quite up to the challenge of duplicating it so I have tried to match the results using shortcuts.  For future batches I might try to be a bit truer to style.

Lambic wort is created using Pilsner malt and unmalted wheat.  To get a starchy wort and to deal with the unmalted wheat the Lambic brewers have developed a mashing technique called Turbid mashing which involves stepping the mash temperature up and pulling off starchy wort at the various steps and heating it to stop the enzymes from converting.  The Mad Fermentationist created a great walk through of the process which can be found here.  The theory with this process is that it creates a wort with a lot of fermentables that brewers yeast can't touch but that Brett and Lactic Bacteria will be able to break down and eat over the 2-3 year brewing process.  I did some research and decided to use flaked wheat, which is unmalted wheat that has been treated in a way that allows it's starch to be more readily accessible, and perform a high temperature single infusion mash (was planning on 160 F but missed my mash temps and had to improvise a bit).  This will hopefully create a similarly starchy wort.

Flaked Wheat

With my Flanders Red I tried to mash high and control the pH of the mash using chemical additions to optimize for Alpha Amylase enzymes which resulted in great frustration.  It turned out that I left starch in the wort due to my failure to optimize for the enzymes which is probably preferable to my original plan.  I have been thinking about that experience and have decided that with the unknown variable of yeast/bugs quality/health it makes it so that obsessing too much about the fermentability of the wort might be a bit futile at this point.  With that in mind I wont bother with attempting to optimize pH (just adding CaCl and my normal amount of acid malt) and wont check for starch conversion or gravity after sparging.  If this batch doesn't get sour enough due to not producing wort with enough food for the bacteria and brett then maybe I'll have better luck with the next batch pitched on to the yeast cake and will be able to blend them to get a more acceptable beer.  So, it's all on the bugs which is really what this style of beer is all about - hopefully I'll figure out how to make them happy over time rather than just having it be a crap-shoot but I'm not holding my breath for that.

Another shortcut I used was to hop this using ~16 IBU of normal (Fresh) German Hallertau hops.  Real lambic uses a huge amount of aged hops which have lost much of their bitterness but still have their normal preservative properties.  This high hopping rate keeps spoilage microbes and lactobacillus from taking over the beer when they capture microbes out of the air for their spontaneous fermentation.  I will need to look into this step a bit more in the future because I would really like to try a purely spontaneous fermentation at some point.

This spontaneous fermentation is probably the most critical aspect of Lambic as far as how the finished product turns out.  The Belgian Lambic brewers take the wort after the boil, put it into a large shallow troth called a coolship, open the windows, and then let nature take its course as organisms blow into the wort.  That's the theory anyway but in practice things are actually a bit more controlled.  It turns out that the old buildings these breweries are housed in are infested with the organisms that create the lambic beer so a lot of these organisms are likely falling into the beer from the rafters rather than from outside.  Additionally, lambic brewers reuse their oak barrels (ones that have produced good results for the previous batches) to ferment their beer so they're essentially pitching their spontaneously inoculated wort onto a known good culture of yeast/bugs living in the wood.

I don't have the benefit of either of these sources of lambic organisms so I'm using Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend.  I am brewing in the evening so I have decided to let the wort chill naturally overnight rather than completing the beer in one shot.  It is scheduled to be a cool (low 40s high 30s) night with quite a bit of wind.  I will leave the beer on the covered front porch partially covered by the lid and hope that something interesting blows in.  Pitching onto an established yeast will probably prevent the spontaneous organisms from doing anything too dramatic - we'll just have to wait and see.

Recipe Details:

• Grain:
• 8 lbs Pilsner Malt
• 4 lbs Flaked Wheat
• 4 oz Acid Malt
• Hops:
• 1 oz Hallertau (Pellet, 4.1% AA) at 120 min
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend
• Water:
• 13 gal of Spring water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp Irish Moss at 20 min

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 5.5 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• Step Mash (Target Single Infusion at 160 F for 60 min)
• Step 1 - 155 F for 30 min
• Step 2 - 162 F for 30 min
• Boil:
• 120 min
• Fermentation Temp:
• Ambient Basement Temps (62 F to 75 F)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 months
• Secondary Duration:
• TBD (Target 15 to 33 months)

Results:

• OG:
• 1.050 (Target 1.050)
• Efficiency:
• 64% (Target 69%)
• FG:
• TBD (Target 1.006)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• TBD (Target 88%)
• ABV:
• TBD (Target 5.78%)

Brewing Notes:

• 11/1/14 Brew Day Part I - 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM including setup and boil
• Brought 5 gal of spring water up to 190 F - took 20 min - turned off the burner when I was done
• Added Calcium Chloride to the kettle
• Added 12 qt of strike water to the mash tun and let it settle for 5 min (this is 1 qt per pound of grain which I thought would give me room to course correct if the mash temp was low) - ended up as 175 F
• Poured in all of the flaked wheat at once and stirred in - brought the temp down to 165 F

• Doughed in with the pilsner malt - ended up at 155 F after stirring in
• Added 4 more qt from the kettle to heat the mash up to the target of 160 F and get to the 1.25 water to grain ratio.  Unfortunately the kettle water had cooled to 175 F by this point and this didn't raise the overall mash temp
• Added water to the kettle (up to 6 gal) and brought it to a boil - took 25 min
• At about 30 min into the mash I added 8 qt of boiling water to the mash which brought it up to ~162 F
• Mashed for another 30 min - at the end the mash was still ~162 F
• Added 4 gal of mashout water at 190 F - this brought the mash up to 168 F to stop conversion
• Stirred the mash, let it settle for 5 min, and then drained without vorlaufing.  Drained slowly - took about 35 min - got very cloudy wort
• Once I had collected 5 gal (which took about 20 min) I started to heat - took 20 min to get to a boil.  Had an unusually high hot break on this batch
• Added 3 gal of cool spring water to the mash, stirred, and then drained slowly - took 15 min
• Ended up collecting 11 gal of wort
• Almost ran out of propane.  The propane tank started to accumulate ice around the bottom which seemed to slow down the flow rate and reduce the flame.  Switched back and fourth between two tanks which allowed me to thaw out the other.  As a result the boil took a bit more than 2 hrs.

• At 10 gal I added the hops
• At 6.5 gal I added the Irish Moss
• Once I got down to  6.25 gal on the sight glass I turned off the heat and moved the kettle to the front porch with the lid partially covering it to chill over night and hopefully pick up some wild yeast.  Ended up with 6 gal
• Captured a sample of the wort and let it chill over night in the house
• 11/2/14 Brew Day Part II - 6:00 AM to 6:45 AM not including cleanup
• Started the slap pack of yeast
• Transferred from the kettle to the fermentor.  Ended up with only 5.5 gal.  The wind and cold air may have increased the amount of evaporation loss post flameout.  Interesting
• Measured gravity as 1.050 at 64 F.  This was the target gravity but I was planning for 6 gal so I was a little under my target efficiency
• It was just too cold this morning to clean up
• 11/3/14 - No airlock activity this morning but it was bubbling fairly vigorously this afternoon.  Not really much in the way of aroma from the fermentor.
• 12/6/14 - It has been just over a month since brewday.  Pulled a sample and measured gravity as 1.014 which gives the bacteria quite a bit of room to sour the beer up.  The aroma from the fermentor is quite funky/sour.  A bit of film has started to form.  It's a pretty nice gold color.  The sample tastes basically like a full bodied blonde ale at this point - very feint acidity on the finish and no brett character yet.  Next check will be in 2 months when I transfer it to secondary.
  

• 12/14/14 - Added the bottle dregs from a Boon Mariage Parfait Geuze.  It's pretty heavy on the funk flavor - not super sour
• 2/8/15 - Transferred the beer to a glass carboy for long term aging.  It had an interesting layer of foam on it.  I pulled up quite a bit of yeast in the transfer to try to help develop a bit more funk from the dead yeast.  Left most for the next batch which I will transfer into the same fermentor.  Measured the SG as 1.014 so no real change to gravity since last time which is a bit surprising.  The beer has a wonderful sour/funky smell and it has also started to develop a definite sourness (similar to the sourness level of an orange juice).  I think this one is going to be pretty good.  I will check on it again in 3 months.

• 3/14/15 The beer has started to develop a bit of a film over the last month:

• 5/9/15 - This beer has been in secondary for 3 months now.  The gravity is down to about 1.012.  Is still has the funky nose.  The flavor is still slightly sour (not quite as sour as orange juice - correction from last time) and it has a bready flavor to the finish.  It hasn't really gained any complexity in the last 3 months which is sort of surprising - lots of time left for that to happen though.  It's starting to get closer to the mid 60s in the basement now so that may spur the bacteria on a bit.  The beer looks basically the same as it did in the last picture.  I'll give it 3 more months before taking another sample.
• 8/9/15 - Decided to give this one until November to take another sample.
• 11/21/15 - It has been over a year since brewing this batch.  Checked the gravity again today and it was 1.012 still - very surprised at this as my Flanders 1.1.1, which is a bit older, had fermented down quite a bit over the warm summer months.  The beer is covered in a spotty pellicle.  The sample is very clear and is a light gold color.  It has a fruity and bready aroma.  The flavor is pretty clean with maybe a slight sourness - there's also a slight fruitiness you'd expect from a Belgian beer.  I plan on aging this batch for a full 3 years so it has a lot of time left to develop.  This is a relatively small batch so I'm going to wait a full 12 months before sampling this again.

• 10/20/17 - Status Report:
• Fruity yeast character.  Cider-like.  Slight mustiness
• Light gold and clear.  Some pellicle chunks floating
• Mild fruity flavor along with a subtle spicy yeast character.  Maybe a little malt.  No sourness or funk have developed
• Flavors are rather muted and it lacks the complexity you'd expect in a beer this age
• 12/2/17 - Added 1.25 gal of 1.020 lacto soured beer to the fermenter to give it a bit more complexity and maybe give whatever microbes are left a bit to work on.
• 5/25/18 - Status Report:
• Light earthy aroma along with a subtle fruity ester.
• Light gold in color.  Fairly clear.
• A bit of fruit with some earthy flavor.  Finishes with a slight tartness.  Get a hint of bready malt on the finish.
• Medium light bodied with a slight sweetness.  Drinks very smoothly
• Pretty mild in terms of flavor and aroma but has some complexity of flavor that is pleasant.
• 6/3/18 - Used 5 of the 6 gal beer in a couple blends today (Cherry Sour Blonde and Raspberry Sour Blonde).  I added Sour Blonde 1.5.1 to the glass carboy this had been aging in (I'm calling this Fermenter #1 now).

Lessons Learned:

1. I screwed up my mash target by stopping the heat on the boil kettle after mashing in.  It was just so cold out that the heat was lost from the extra strike water too quickly.  I should have kept the kettle going up to a boil.  It's relatively easy to stir the mash to eliminate some heat if I overshoot so I should do things that way.
2. The propane tanks built up a layer of ice once they ran low and at that point the flame was reduced and the boil slowed down a lot.  I was able to unfreeze by sitting the one not in use by the burner but it's pretty risky thing to do.  I need to make sure that I always have a full tank waiting in the wings on brew day.
3. I keep all my equipment down in the basement which adds a good hour to each brewday in setup and cleanup.  I need to build myself a brewstand and setup a place in the garage (where I do my brewing) to keep my stuff.
4. When I do this next time I should start the cool down of the wort with a bit more volume than normal to compensate for the large amount of evaporation that took place.  I lost about 0.75 gal from natural evaporation.