Raspberry Flanders Red

My first year raspberry plants unexpectedly ended up producing enough fruit for two batches of beer (22 lb).  This will give me the opportunity to make up a third blend of Flanders Red this year (in addition to plain and cherry blends).  I've never had a straight raspberry Flanders Red but I strongly suspect that beer and fruit flavors will get along well.

For this batch I am choosing to blend two beers I haven't used yet:

Flanders Red 1.6.1.B:

• Brewed:
• 1/15/16
• Overview:
• Sixth pitch onto Roeselare yeast cake
• Cereal Mashed with Corn Grits
• Used Maltodextrine to give yeast a bit more to work on
• Primary fermented with Belgian yeast
• Soured a portion of the batch with lacto during primary
• Aged on the yeast cake for the entire period
• Aged in a bucket fermenter
• Tasting Notes:
• Earthy funk and a bit of fruit in the aroma.  Rich.
• Orange/red and a bit cloudy
• Light sourness.  Earthy funk with a little fruitiness.  Finish has some bready malt.
• Nice full flavor with a  fair bit of complexity

Flanders Red 3.1.1.A:

• Brewed:
• 1/24/16
• Overview:
• Batch fermented with a culture built up from Rodenbach Foederbier
• Cereal Mashed with Corn Grits
• Used Maltodextrine to give yeast a bit more to work on
• Primary fermented with Belgian yeast
• Soured a portion of the batch with lacto during primary
• Aged in a glass carboy
• This is half of a split batch - the other half is aging in a bucket fermenter.
• Tasting Notes:
• Funky and earthy aroma.  Dark fruit mixed in as well
• Orangish red and cloudy
• Light sourness with an interesting Brett funk (band aid like)
• Mild flavor with a fair bit of complexity.  Doesn't taste particularly like Rodenbach unfortunately.

I will be mixing together 2.5 gal of each of these beers.  Each beer brings some unique flavors to the table which I hope will be complimentary.  Both ended up with a fairly mild level of sourness which I'm thinking will leave some room for the acidity the fruit are going to impart.  I'll combine the remained beer back into the 6.1.1.B fermenter (this will get me down to 6 glass carboy of Flanders Red).

I'll be using 10 lbs of fruit for this batch.  This amount of fruit ended up giving a very strong character to the Black Raspberry Tart I brewed a couple years ago.  The raspberries have been kept frozen solid in the freezer for the last couple months - this should allow the juices to be released more easily.

I plan to give this beer 3-6 months on the raspberries to ensure all the flavors are well incorporated.

Blending Notes:

• 12/17/17
• Transferred 2.5 gal of Flanders Red 3.1.1.A to a bucket fermenter

• Transferred 2.5 gal of Flanders Red 1.6.1.B to the bucket fermenter
• Added 10 lbs of raspberries and stirred them in
• Racked the remainder of Flanders Red 3.1.1.A into the 1.6.1.B fermenter

• Set this up with a 3 piece airlock
• 5/6/18 - Bottled the beer today
• Made some Invert #3 syrup to back sweeten and carb the beer.  Used 1.75 lbs Dimarara sugar, 1/4 tsp of Citric acid and 2 cups of water.  Heated at medium low until it was 290 F and a nice red color.  Added a cup of boiling water after it had cooled down to 200 F to make sure it stayed a liquid
• Re hydrated some red star wine yeast
• The beer has a funky looking pellicle with the fruit floating on the surface

• Measured the gravity as 1.004
• Transferred to the bottling bucket with the Invert #3 and yeast.  Ended up with 5.5 gal.  Had quite a bit of the fruit flesh make it to the bottling bucket.

• Got 54 bottles of beer out of this batch.  Bottling was a bit more painful than normal due to fruit getting stuck in the bottling wand spring
• The beer is a really lovely red color with an intense raspberry aroma - it is almost candy like.  It is quite sour and, before the sugar addition, was very dry.  I think the sugar will balance the beer nicely and let the fruit come through a bit better.
• I will open a bottle of this every few days to check on carbonation levels.  Will pasteurize these when the carbonation is where I want it.
• 5/17/18 - I've had a couple bottles of this over the last few days.  They have reached a nice level of carbonation now.  Pasteurized the bottles in a 150-160 F water bath for 15 min.  I had two bottles explode on me in the process.
• 9/30/18 - Tasting Notes - I really enjoy the Raspberry character of this beer.  The complex base beer has been almost completely overwhelmed by the 10 lbs of fruit but still comes through enough to provide some balance.  The acidity a bit more intense than I would preferred but is still easily within the range that I can enjoy.  The slight sweetness from the backsweetening really helped this one a lot I think.

Sour Blonde Top Up Batch & Sour Blonde 5.1.1

In my recent tasting of the Sour Blonde ales I've accumulated so far I was a bit disappointed in the level of complexity that had developed in beers that I'd been aging for 2-3 years.  Many had no sourness and only very light Brett character.  I plan to make a few blends with these in the next month or so and was thinking they would benefit quite a bit from the sourness being raised slightly.  To try to accomplish this I am going to brew up a top up batch that I'll acidify in primary using Lactobacillus and blend that into the older beer.

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:

1. 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
2. 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.
3. 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.