I left 1-1.5 gal of headspace in all my sour blonde fermenters. This will give me an opportunity to add some fresh beer with some additional fermentables as well as a good amount of acidity. Hopefully this will make for a more interesting beer as it goes through a final bulk aging post blending. I'll make 5 gal of beer for this purpose.
I'll also use this top up batch to make some acid beer using the Omega Lacto blend I pitched with Sour Blonde 4.1.1 a couple weeks ago. I'll split this cake into two 1 gal carboy. I'll use this during blending to add a bit more acidity if needed. This will be 2 more gal of top up beer.
Finally, I've decided to attempt a spontaneous fermentation with 3 gal of this beer. It has been between freezing and 50 F for the last couple weeks so I believe this should be an optimal time to capture the right kinds of bugs. I'll be trying to capture microbes from my raspberry plants using a the air exposed cooling technique leveraged by the Belgian Lambic brewers. I am going to hop this portion of the batch to try to inhibit molds and other nasties in the air. I'll use some Apollo hops I've been keeping in the fridge for the last couple years for this. I'll plan to age this portion for 1-3 years in the original fermenter. This should be an interesting experiment - hopefully fermentation is vigorous enough to out compete the spoilage microbes I'll undoubtedly also be inviting into the beer. If it works out well I'll try it again next year
I'll be sticking with basically the same cereal mashed raw wheat and pilsner malt grain bill I've used for the last few of these beers. Should give me a nice starchy wort for the microbes to work with.
Recipe Details:
- Grain/Adjunct:
- 8 lb Pilsner
- 1.5 lb Munich
- 5 oz Acid Malt
- 10.75 oz Maltodextrine
- Cereal Mash:
- 6 lb Raw Wheat
- 1.5 lb Pilsner
- Hops:
- Top Up Batch:
- None
- Sour Blonde 5.1.1
- 0.25 oz Apollo (Pellet, 18.5% AA) at 15 min
- Yeast:
- Top Up Batch:
- Main Portion:
- Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey II
- WLP 672 Lactobacillus Brevis
- Laco Top Up:
- Omega Yeast OYL-605 Lactobacillus Blend (L. Plantarum and L. Brevis)
- Sour Blonde 5.1.1:
- Spontaneously Collected
- Water:
- 11.5 gal spring water
- ~4 gal Tap water
- 2 tsp CaCl
Process Details:
- Batch Size:
- 10 gal
- Mash:
- Main Mash:
- 161 F - 158 F over 60 min
- Cereal Mash:
- Step 1: 120 F for 15 min
- Step 2: 150 F for 15 min
- Step 3: Boil for 15 min
- Boil:
- 60 min (15 more min for 5.1.1)
- Fermentation Temperature:
- Primary: 75 F
- Secondary: Ambient Basement Temps
- Primary Duration:
- 2 Weeks
- Secondary Duration:
- Top Up: 1-3 months
- Sour Blonde 5.1.1: 1-3 years
Results:
- OG:
- 1.048
- Efficiency:
- 74%
- FG:
- TBD
- Apparent Attenuation:
- TBD
- ABV:
- TBD
Brewing Notes:
- 11/19/17 - Brewday - 7 AM to 5 PM included Cereal Mash, Setup, Cleanup, and Yeast Capture
- Cereal Mash:
- Milled cereal grain and added to 2 gal of tap water and 1.5 gal of spring water
- Heated this to 120 F and let sit for 15 min
- Heated the cereal mash to 150 F and let sit for 15 more min
- Brought to a boil for 15 min
- Let this cool for a few hours - formed an interesting jelly-like layer on the surface in this period - I assume this is gelatinized starches
- Heated 10 gal of strike water to 175 F
- Milled my grain - added the CaCl to the milled grain
- Added the cereal mash to the mash tun first - this was about 4 gal of liquid. The temperature settled to 168 F with this
- Added 3 gal of strike water. Stirred this a bit and then let the temperature settle. Was still at 168 F
- Added the main mash grain and stirred well to eliminate dough balls. The temperature settled to 161 F after 10 min
- After 60 min mash the temperature was 158 F
- Heated remaining 7 gal of sparge water to 185 F
- Vorlaufed until the wort ran clear
- Fly sparged with all 7 gal of the sparge water. Used a new toy for fly sparging: SS Brewtech Sparge Arm. It worked pretty nicely. I had some flow rate problems out of the HLT where the line was getting steam bubbles - need to find a solution to this.Drained into my grant and then pumped the wort into the boil kettle.
- Ended up a couple gal short so I sparged with a bit more tap water
- Started heating the boil kettle after collecting 3-4 gal of wort. Had the wort to a boil shortly after completing the sparge.
- Boiled for 60 min
- Added Maltodextrine during the boil
- Moved my Yeast and Lacto culture out of the fridge to warm up during the brew day
- Split the Omega lacto culture from Sour Blonde 4.1.1 into two 1 gal glass jugs
- Added the wort chiller to sanitize with 5 min left in the boil
- Chilled down to 90 F and drained off wort into the two 1 gal lacto jugs
- Chilled the remaining wort to 80 F and drained 5 gal off to a bucket fermenter - let this fall a couple feet for aeration. Added the yeast/lacto culture during the transfer. Moved these to the fermentation chamber with a reptile heating pad to maintain a 75 F fermentation temperature
- Measured the gravity as 1.048. I dropped the sample and broke my measuring container. Somehow the hydrometer survived.
- Brought the remaining 3.5 gal of wort back to a boil
- Added my hops and boiled for 15 min
- Moved the Boil Kettle outside to collect some wild yeast. I set it up between my raspberry plants. I covered the kettle with some cheese cloth to keep out bugs and leaves
- Left this to cool for a few hours
- Once it was down to 80 F I transferred the beer to a 3 gal better bottle. Moved this into the fermentation chamber
- 11/20/17:
 |
| Spontaneous Fermentation Day 1: No activity |
- 11/21/17:
 |
| Spontaneous Fermentation Day 2: Light Krausen Forms |
- 11/22/17:
 |
| Spontaneous Fermentation Day 3: Vigorous Fermentation |
- 11/23/17:
 |
| Spontaneous Fermentation Day 4: Fermentation Slows |
- 11/26/17:
 |
| Spontaneous Fermentation Day 7: Fermentation About Done |
- 12/2/17 - Transferred the main portion of the top up batch onto Sour Blonde 1.1.1 (1.25 gal), 1.2.1 (1 gal), 1.3.1 (0.5 gal), 1.4.1 (1.25 gal), and 1.5.1 (1 gal). Measured the gravity of the top up beer as 1.020 - it has a nice level of sourness along with a pretty rich wheat flavor. The beer had formed a bubbly pellicle over the last two weeks.
- 12/3/17 - Added a dozen or so Chardonnay soaked oak cubes to Sour Blonde 5.1.1. Moved the fermenter out of the chest freezer. Also moved the acid beer out of the chest freezer
- 12/10/17 - There is a bit of foam in the beers I topped up indicating fermentation is kicking up again.
- 2/17/18 - Found that the spontaneously fermented beer (Sour Blonde 5.1.1) has started to form a pellicle. The beer had just had a bit of krausen left on the surface previously. Had some mold growing in the airlock from when fermentation pushed krausen up into it. I cleaned that out really well. Still haven't tried this beer.
- 8/24/19 - Status Report:
- Aroma: Lightly fruity aroma with a bit of musty and earthy smell
- Appearance: Light gold and pretty murky
- Flavor: No sourness has developed. Has a pretty firm bitterness in the finish and a bit of fruity Belgian like yeast character
- Mouthfeel: Light and very dry. Pretty smooth drinking
- Overall: Not very interesting or very tasty unfortunately. Interesting that it's so bitter after almost 2 years of aging.
Lessons Learned:
- Doing the cereal mash a few hours before the beer worked out nicely as it gave it time to cool to a more manageable temperature. This made it easier to handle and prevented it from having such a significant impact on the overall mash temperature. I think I'll do this again
- The fly sparge arm was nice. I need to figure out a better way to get the water to gravity feed down to the pump from the HLT. I get steam bubbles which interrupt the flow pretty frequently I have a couple elbow (one for the water pickup and one at the disconnect) which I suspect could be contributing to this. I will eliminate both of them.
- I was really happy that my spontaneous fermentation took off as quickly as it did and led to some fairly vigorous activity. I'm going to try this again next fall with a larger batch.
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