Flanders Red 2.2.1

This will be my tenth batch of Flanders Red in a little bit more than a year.  Somehow I'm not bored brewing these even though none of them are even ready to bottle.  I think this is because the samples of the beers I have had so far are very encouraging and my process of making these beers is becoming increasingly intricate.

I still have quite a few other things to try with these beers (different aging vessel, time on the yeast cake, and souring with cultures built up on oak cubes to name a few) but this round is mostly to determine how the Yeast Bay Mélange Sour Blend, used for Flanders Red 2.1.1, performs on the second pitch.

I have liked my primary first approach used for a number of previous Flanders Reds so I will use that again.  I will be using a small pitch of Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey II that I'd pulled from Flanders Red 1.5.1.  I'm not going to build a starter for this as I want to see if stressing the yeast with a small pitch will cause them to produce more esters.  To this end, I will also be fermenting at 70 F in my Fermentation chamber with a reptile pad heater setup.  As with the other recent beers I will be pulling off a gallon to sour with lacto.

I will be doing another cereal mash with 1.5 lbs of corn grits for this batch to increase the starches in the wort.  On my last Flanders I ended up scorching the corn to the bottom of the pot during an hr long boil.  To avoid that happening this time I have decided to heat the cereal mash up to boiling and then kill the heat and let it sit at a high temp for the remainder of the mash.  This should save fuel and will require less attention for stirring.  Hopefully it will still produce a very starchy wort.  As I've done with my last few brews, I will be ramping up the mash temp to 175 F prior to adding the corn grits to prevent conversion.

The batches since I've switched to this new Pale/Maris otter based base malt have been a bit on the brown side.  To try to get back to red I'm going to swap out the Dark Munich used in my last few batches for normal Munich.

I had some sparging issues during my last batch.  To combat that I will be adjusting my mill (which I will use for the base malt) for a bit courser crush.  I will be using rice hulls again as they seemed to help quite a bit.  I am going to go with a bit less water (3 gal above the false bottom rather than 4) to see if that helps with my recycling.  I am going to also sparge a bit warmer than I had in the past - with 200 F water to see if that has any effect on the ease of sparging or the efficiency.

Finally, as with my last several batches I will be using 12 oz of Maltodextrine which should give me 5 extra SG points for the bacteria and brett to chew on during aging.  Flanders 1.5.1 was down to 1.020 after primary.  It will be interesting if this round gets the same result.

Pouring in the Corn Grits

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct:
• 4 lbs Maris Otter
• 3 lbs Munich
• 12 oz Caramunich III
• 12 oz Aromatic
• 12 oz Special B
• 2 oz Acid Malt
• 12 oz Maltodextrine
• Cereal Mash (Not factored into efficiency calculations)
• 1 lb 8 oz Corn Grits
• 6 oz Maris Otter
• Hops:
• None
• Yeast:
• Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey II (Second Pitch)
• WLP 672 Lactobacillus Brevis (Fourth Pitch)
• Yeast Bay Mélange Sour Blend (Second Pitch)
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 5.5 gal tap water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride
• 1 tsp Gypsum
• Extras:
• 5 handfulls of rice hull
• 1 oz Medium Toast Hungarian Oak Cubes (in primary - from previous batch)
• 1 oz Medium Toast Hungarian Oak Cubes during aging

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• Step 1:  161 F for 45 min (Target 160 F for 45 min)
• Step 2:  Ramped up to 175 F over 20 min (Target ramp up to 175 in 25 min)
• Boil:
• 80 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temp:
• Primary:  70 F
• Secondary:  60 F to 70 F (Ambient basement temps)
• Primary Duration:
• With Yeast:  4 weeks
• Lacto portion:  2 weeks
• With Mélange:  3 months
• Secondary Duration:
• TBD (15 to 33 months)

Results:

• OG:
• 1.046 (Target 1.045 - with 5 points from the Maltodextrine)
• Efficiency:
• 75% (Target 73% - does not include cereal mash)
• FG:
• TBD (Target 1.004)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• TBD (Target 91%)
• ABV:
• TBD (Target 5.51%)

Brewing Notes:

• 11/6/15 - Brewday - 12:00 PM to 4:15 PM - including setup and cleanup
• Widened the grain mill spacing a bit and crushed basemalt
• Heated 10.5 gal of spring water in the HLT and cycled through mash tun and RIMS until the system was at 170 F - took 45 min
• Ended up with 3 gal above the false bottom
• Added CaCl and Gypsum to the mash tun
• Added the rice hulls and stirred in

• Poured in the grain and stirred will to eliminate doughballs - it is a thick mash
• Setup the RIMS to cycle at about 2 qts per minute with the temp set at 163 F.  Found a good cycle rate this time so I was able to set it up and then not adjust it for the remainder of the mash.
• Added 2 gal of 200 F water to a separate pot for the cereal mash.  Added corn grits and 6 oz of crushed grain.  Temp was 172 F after adding the grain.  This probably denatured the enzymes (oops).  Let sit for 10 min
• Checked the mash temp after 10 min - ranged from high 150s to the low 160s.  Gave it a stir.
• Brought the cereal mash to a light boil and then killed the flame.  Covered the pot to keep the temps up.  Heated it to a light boil again right before transfer into the main mash.
• Added 5 gal of tap water to the HLT and heated to 200 F
• Mash temp was 161 after 40 min
• Raised the RIMS to 175 F after 45 min - took 20 min
• Once the mash was up to 175 F I added the cereal mash.  Let cycle with the cereal mash for 5 more min.  No issues with sticking this time.
• Drained the grant volume back to the mash tun
• Set the fly sparge for ~1 qt per min

• After collecting about 3 gal the gravity at the grant was 10.5 brix (1.042)
• Started heating the kettle after collecting 3 gal
• Ended up collecting a bit more than 8 gal - gravity at the grant was 2.5 brix at this point (1.010)
• Wort was at a boil about 5 min after the end of the sparge
• Added the maltodextrine after the hot break cleared
• Got very low on gas in the tank halfway through the boil which slowed it.  I swapped out to the other tank and got back to a good rolling boil - this probably cost me 20 min

• Boiled down to 6 gal
• Added chiller at flameout to sanitize
• Chilled down to 85 F and transferred a gallon of wort to the lacto cake
• Chilled down to 70 F and transferred the remainder of the wort to the fermenter
• I had forgotten to take the yeast starter out of the fridge to warm up at the start of the brewday so I moved both the fermenter and the jar of yeast down to the fermentation chamber at 70 F
• Pitched the yeast a couple hours later when it had warmed close to 70 F
• Measured the gravity as 1.046 and collected the planned 6 gal
• 11/7/15 - The fermenter was bubbling vigorously the next mourning.  The lacto half was over filled and ended up sending foam up into the airlock over night.  I cleaned it out and set it back up.
• 11/21/15 - Moved out of the fermentation chamber and pulled some yeast from the bottom with my siphon to two mason jars with DME wort to use for a future batch.  Took a sample and measured the gravity as 1.026.  It is a pretty red color (so the change to the grain bill did help) and it's got a subtle fruity yeast character.
• 11/22/15 - Poured the 1 gal of soured beer into the main fermenter.  I didn't measure the gravity or taste it this time.
• 12/5/15 - Moved the beer onto the yeast cake used for Flanders 2.1.1.  The beer was down to 1.022.  It has a pretty nice sourness from the lacto (it must have been able to do some work on the other beer in the fermenter after adding the lacto in).
• 8/7/16 - Transferred this beer into the glass carboy previously used for aging Flanders Red 1.2.1.  There were a couple cups of beer left at the bottom along with some yeast slurry.  Added 1 oz of oak cubes to the beer during the transfer.  The beer has a funky and slightly fruity aroma.  It is red and cloudy.  The flavor is slightly fruity and very tart - not sure if that's the Mélange or the Lacto primarily.  It also has a really nice malt profile that balances out the tartness in the finish.  I think it is really nice.  Gravity of the sample measured 1.003.  The blend no longer has the band aid aroma that I'd picked up initially.  Transferred Flanders Red 2.3.1 onto the cake for the next batch.

• 7/23/17 - Status Report:
• Bright fruity aroma mixed with earthy leather from the Brett.  Very rich
• Orangish red and a bit cloudy
• Light sourness.  Has a nice fruity character.  Also a smooth bit of bready malt in the finish.
• Pretty good set of flavors that pop nicely
• 9/4/17 - Used 3 gal of this beer in Flanders Red Blend #2.  Transferred the remaining portion of it's blending partner, Flanders Red 1.5.2, into the fermenter for further aging.  I am left with a bit less volume than I started with and quite a bit of head space.  It might be worth brewing a top up batch for this and some of my other beers in the relative near future.

Lessons Learned:

1. The new mill setting seemed to work better than the old one.  I had a good smooth flow.
2. The corn still provided a lot of starch with the short period of heating.  I think I'll use this approach again.  I also saw no ill effect associated with potentially not getting any conversion.  I may not use basemalt in the cereal mash next time.
3. I noticed that the wort has a slickness to it that I think must have been due to the corn starches.  I think the high temperature sparge really helped preventing this from being an issue.