Flanders Red 5.1.1

I will be brewing up another batch of Flanders Red - this time using ECY Flemish Ale Blend (ECY02).  I have been wanting to try this one for quite some time but it never seemed to stay on the shelves long enough.  It seems like the production volumes for East Coast Yeast must have gone up here of late as I've now had the opportunity to try three of their blends in the last couple months.

I am really interested to see how this blend performs over multiple batches compared with Wyeast Roeselare.  I believe both of these blends are intended to mimic the Rodenbach culture.  Sounds like Rodenbach Foederbier was a source for some of the microbes in the ECY blend.  The Roeselare culture produces some wonderful flavors - I don't expect that the ECY blend is necessarily be better but I am hoping that it provides something new and interesting that would be useful for blending purposes.  I'd expect that it may be a bit more aggressively sour on the first pitch than the Roeselare ended up being.

I am going to use roughly the same grain bill from the last several batches (Maris Otter, Munich, Corn Grits).  For specialty malt I'll be swaping out the Special B for Double Roasted Crystal 120L as I had some left over from previous batches.  The stuff isn't easy to get at this point so I don't think I'd consider switching to it going forward even if I really like what it brings to the table.  I don't imagine it will provide much in the way of noticeable difference.

I'll be hopping this batch with ~1/3 an ounce of Fuggle Hops.  Hopefully this prevent any lactobacillus in the blend from playing too much of a role (just a guess at this point that that would be undesirable).

From a process perspective, this batch will be executed very similarly to the previous batches:

• Executing full cereal mash with the corn
• High temperature mash
• 60 min boil with Maltodextrine to give the microbes a bit more food

I will be pitching the ECY Flemish Ale Blend directly into the batch for this first round of the 5.x.x series of beers.  I'll give this beer 3 months on the primary yeast cake and then will transfer it to a glass carboy for long term aging.  I'll look to do some primary first experiments with the beer in future batches.  Will also make some batches to see how it performs using a plastic bucket fermenter.

Lovely Red Wort

Recipe Details:

• Grain/Adjunct:
• 5 lb Maris Otter
• 3 lb Munich
• 12 oz CaraMunich III
• 12 oz Aromatic Malt
• 12 oz Double Roasted Crystal 120L
• 12 oz Maltodextrine
• Cereal Mash:
• 1 lb 8 oz Corn Grits
• 8 oz Maris Otter
• Hops:
• 1/3 oz Fuggle (Pellet, 4.1% AA) at 60 min
• Yeast:
• ECY 03 Flemish Ale Blend
• Water:
• 10 gal spring water
• 7.5 gal tap water
• 1 tsp Calcium Chloride

Process Details:

• Batch Size:
• 6 gal (Target 6 gal)
• Mash:
• Cereal Mash:
• Step 1:  115 F for 15 min
• Step 2:  155 F for 15 min
• Step 3:  Boil for 15 min
• Main Mash:
• 160 F for 60 min (Target 160 F for 60 min) - Including Cereal Mash
• Ramped up to 175 F in 25 min
• Boil:
• 60 min (Target 60 min)
• Fermentation Temperature:
• Ambient Basement Temps (60 F to 75F)
• Primary Duration:
• 3 months
• Secondary Duration:
• 18 to 36 months

Results:

• OG:
• 1.056 (Target 1.055)
• Efficiency:
• 69% (Target 68%) - Not including 5 points from Maltodextrine
• FG:
• TBD (Target 1.004)
• Apparent Attenuation:
• TBD (Target 92%)
• ABV:
• TBD (Target 6.69%)

Brewing Notes:

• 6/19/16 - Brewday - 7:30 AM to 12:30 PM including setup and cleanup:
• Cereal Mash:
• Added ~2.5 gal of hot (~120 F) tap water to a 5 gal pot
• Poured Corn Grits in and milled in the cereal mash portion of MO malt.  Let this sit for 15 min for the protein rest
• Heated up to 150 F on a turkey fryer.  Stirred frequently during this heat up phase
• Let sit at 150 F for 15 min.  Ended up settling out in the mid to high 150s
• Heated up to a boil and then sustained the boil for 15 min.  Got a really good rolling boil going that kept all the grain in suspension - there wasn't any scorching of this batch

• While performing the cereal mash I heated up 10 gal of spring water and cycled through the system until everything was at 150 F
• Ended up with 3.5 gal above the false bottom and 8 gal in the system total
• Added the grain and CaCl to the mash tun and stirred in well to eliminate dough balls
• The cereal mash was complete a few min after adding the main mash.  Added the cereal mash to the main mash.  I stupidly tried to pick up the cereal mash using my bare hands and got some lovely burns.  Even more stupidly I dropped the cereal mash pot without a thought for where it would land.  Ended up precariously purched on the edge of the turkey fryer.  Another inch and the contents (which were napalm like in consistency) would have spilled all over my sandle clad feet.  Stupid, stupid, stupid and lucky.
• Let settle for 5 min and then started the RIMS at 2 qt per min set for 165 F
• Mashed for 60 min
• At the end of the mash I upped the RIMS temp to 185 F to ramp the mash up to 175 F
• Heated 7 gal of sparge water to 200 F
• Fly sparged
• Started heating the kettle after collecting 4 gal of wort
• Collected 8.25 gal - gravity at the grant was 4 brix (1.016) by the end of sparge
• Had it at a boil a few min after the end of the sparge
• Added the hops and Maltodextrine as soon as the hot break cleared

• Added the wort chiller with about 5 min left in the boil to sanitize
• Chilled to 75 F
• Pitched the yeast and then moved to the basement at ambient temps to ferment for the next three months
• Collected 6 gal and measured the gravity as 1.056.  The wort is a really lovely/deep red color
• 6/24/16 - No bubbling in the airlock the day after pitching.  Didn't check on it again until 4 or 5 days in - found that it was bubbling slowly by that time.
• 7/23/17 - Status Report:
• Cider like aroma with a bit of funk.  A bit of alcohol mixed in
• Redish orange and a bit cloudy
• No sourness at this point.  Has a bit of a Belgian yeast profile.  No Brett character I can detect
• Needs more time to mature.  Maybe a second beer on this cake would be more interesting

Lessons Learned:

1. I need to be more mindful of safety when brewing.  I lightly burned my hands and could have burned my feet badly when I picked up a hot pot with my bare hands and then quickly dropped it.  Got lucky that it landed back on the burner enough not to spill on me.  Wearing sandals while brewing is comfortable but it's just asking for trouble.  Need to wear my work boots when brewing.
2. I believe that the auto sparge recycle mechanism is potentially contributing to my 70% efficiency by disturbing the grain bed and causing it to be distributed unevenly.  This could cause the sparge water to not flow through the grain bed evenly which would probably harm my efficiency.  This picture shows how uneven the grain bed was after the sparge: