re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

What's on your brewing radar? Itching to brew again soon, and need somewhere to log what i'll be brewing next, and interested in what you will be brewing coming up, what you want to brew, and what you have going on right now.

Yesterday I pitched Gigayeast Sour Cherry Funk (Brett Brux variant) in the fermenter with my BOOTLEG BIOLOGY sour solera mixed ferm. sour. I blended this beer (3 gallons) with 1 gallon of WY1007 French Saison new beer on top of 9.5 lbs blueberries. I saw some refermentation start up a couple days ago, and wanted to dry it out before bottling so I don't have potential overcarb issues like whats going on with one of my muscadine sour.

1) Next brew will probably be a full 5-6 gallons of a saison that i'll not split and pitch the Bootleg Milk the Funk Funklandia blend. I'll let this one ride for a year before bottling. May use champagne yeast at bottling.

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This year’s Annual Homebrew Con Milk The Funk Meet Up & Bottle Share was crazy fun. Held immediately after the Sour Power Spontaneous Fermentation panel, a massive number of MTFers popped bottles of their innovative homemade sour and funky beers (including multiple NHC medal winners). A wide array of different mixed culture beer dregs went into this blend, ensuring this year’s release will be just as nuanced as Baltifunk (2016) & Funkapolis (2017).

This blend likely contains a unique collection of Saccharomyces, Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, Pediococcus, among other random microbes contributed by Milk the Funk members.

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2 or 3) Next I think i'll make a Sach/Brett Saison using Bootleg's Saison Parfait sach yeast and co-pitch with White Labs WLP645 Brett Claussini. I'll let that ride for about 3 months or so and see how it tastes. May blend with one gallon of sour that's in my demijohns.

2 or 3) After (or before) that batch i'll try my hand at a Brut IPA using the bootleg NEEPAH Sach yeast. I hear it's highly attenuative. Due to not wanting the yeast to age too long, I may push this up in the brew schedule.

4) Will be another split batch sour. Probably do a Biere de Garde base and inoculate half with Sour Solera blend and the other half with Roselare Blend.

In between brews i'll be bottling the Blueberry sour (#1 above) probably some time in December. I bought another pack of Gigayeast Sour Cherry Funk to use with bottling. I have 2 other split batches that are on Gen 2 yeast for my first couple sours ever made. One or both of those will not get any fruit. Will probably bottle those some time in January/February. Those are already bone dry so i shouldn't need to do anything to get them to dry out further. May still blend with some new beer.

I'm starting to like blending. So far, I've only ever had to blend out of necessity rather than doing it to add some complexity to the beer. I read up on blending before, and with everything else with sour beer, it seemed a bit too much. But blending with new beer is pretty simple. It's the blending of 2 different sours i can't wrap my head around right now. I guess it's more impactful on a commercial scale, but on a homebrew scale, i guess i haven't tasted one of my sours yet that i thought needed something else. I have blended a 100% brett beer with a sour beer, and that ended up being one of my favorite sour/funky beers I've made.

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What's on your brewing radar? Itching to brew again soon, and need somewhere to log what i'll be brewing next, and interested in what you will be brewing coming up, what you want to brew, and what you have going on right now.

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This past weekend I made an IPA because it's been a while since I did one. Pretty basic grain bill, US 2-row, UK pale malt and a little CM I. Magnum for bittering, 6 small additions of Simcoe from 30 to 5 mins and some Santiam and Centennial at flameout. Going to dry hop with Amarillo. For yeast I'm trying a new one: WLP008 East Coast Ale.

After that's done I'm going to reuse the yeast to make an altbier. Haven't decided on that recipe yet.

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I made an alt a couple weeks ago. You make an IPA last weekend. I make an IPA this weekend. You make an alt this weekend.

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Believe it or not, I considered doing it the other way around. I like having an alt on tap this time of year. Seems to go with the cool weather.

Evening all,

I just got back home from being gone all weekend and checked my carboy. My once thick, yellowish krausen has now dissipated some. It’s spotty, although the color looks the same. For what it’s worth, my IPA has been fermenting for 8 days now. I plan to bottle Saturday.

Anything to worry about?

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Anything to worry about?

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Just make sure that the beer is completely finished fermenting. If not, you could be making grenades.

Has anyone messed with BeerSmith 3? is it worth he upgrade?

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I am strongly considering adding 1/4 to 1/2 of a pound of dextrose (corn sugar) at the end of the boil to ramp up the ABV north of 6%. What do you think about that addition?

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you can if you want to make this less of a drinker. But i would like to taste it before i would say if i would do it or not. You might want to keep it north of 5 so you can drink more than a few and not be trashed.

Have you made this? what do you think of the lemondrop? i have gotten some astringency from it. Like lemon pledge.

oohh ok. well hops i use to try and induce lemon would be Amarillo, cascade, simcoe, sorachi.

I aslo want to try this. LINKMotueka and sorachi mix for a lemon lime flavor.

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Do you think the lemon peel will add any noticeable flavor? Should I add it at a later time, maybe at primary?

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i could. i would do it for a whirlpool MAYBE 5mins. but not much.

I’m seeing mixed reviews for the lemondrop hop.

Oh well, we’ll give it a go.