re: Homebrewing Thread: Volume II

I know you do a lot of saisons. What’s a good yeast that is very bland? I don’t want a farmhouse or banana clove thing. I want a low ABV Ale with a little tartness and crispness. Side Project in St. Louis makes some great ones that I’m describing and they call them Saisons. Every other Saison I had has been funky.

So what are your brew plans this weekend? I'm brewing up some base sour stock for future blending. Brewing a saison base and a biere de garde base. Minimal hops will be used (5 IBUs worth) to encourage acid growth. Will primary with beglian saison strain for the saison, and belgian ardennes strain for the de garde. After primary, will pitch the Yeast Bay Amalgamation II for some good funk. The saison will then get 1 gallon of the dregs from my first mixed fermentation beer. I think i'm on generation 4 or 5 at this point. The de Garde will get the dregs from a mixed ferm i made with built up wicked weed dregs. Again on generation 3 or 4. These will sit for at least 9 months to a year before they will be used for blending. I plan on this being my house sours for mixed ferm blending. I'm down to only 3 fermenters of sours aging right now. 1 is a cherry version of my Biere de Garde, which is ready to be bottled. Another is a blend of my saison and funky belgian pale ale that were leftovers from bottling day that didn't make it into bottles. Plan to put this on some fruit. The other is my solera which a portion could be bottled by now, i'm sure. Or i could use it as blending stock until my base beers are ready. So as long as i have some solera, i should be able to have a few more sour beers bottled before i'm totally reliant on my base stock to be ready.

I've been also doing some heavy research on lambics. So many options or ways to make them. Do i turbid mash or single infusion at a higher temp? The first batch will be turbid, and depending on how that goes, will determine if i continue with turbid mashing. Will probably make a turbid batch and a single infusion batch.

The next question is aged hops. I feel aged hops have to be used. I bought some aged "lambic" hops from yakima valley but i dont have any information on it. I don't know how old they are, and the AA count. They are usually anywhere from 0-1 IBUs. However, from Milk the Funk, another homebrewer had his lambic tested and at a rate of .3 oz/gallon of aged hops, his lambic came back at 71 IBUs. Which shouldn't be the case with such low AA's, which leads one to believe that IBUs detected by the palate are at a much lower threshold than previously thought. Once i get some data back from Yakima i hope to have the aged hop qty/timing done. If i get soemthign back before tomorrow, i may use them in one of the 2 sours i brew friday.

Another factor in regards to all of my sours i'm trying to find out, is the affects of lighstruck on my green belgian bottles. I have a number of sours in green belgian bottles, but due to how i store my beers, light never comes in contact with the bottles. For those that don't know, lighstruck is that skunky flavor you often get in green bottle beer (Heineken). Most belgian lambics/sours are sold in green bottles, and they have a subtle lighstruck character that adds to the beers, IMO. I want that subtle character, but don't know how long to let the bottles sit out in a window/sun. So i plan to get 3 or 4 bottles and do a little experiment. 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2-3 hours in mostly direct sunlight and will see the results.

As a side note, i've been going deep into sour beer, as many has noticed. I was getting a little bored with standard brewing, other than trying to perfect an NEIPA (which i still haven't done). I was even getting bored with my original sours, as they were very acidic. But once my blending started improving, and the acidity became a part of the sour, rather than the main expression, i started diving deeper. And then my brother and I did a blind tasting of Gueuze one night and that got me going down the Gueuze rabbit hole. My mind has to keep busy or else i get stir crazy, i guess. Cheers!

Nothing brewing this weekend. My dip tube filters should be in the afternoon so maybe I will get to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Gnarly barley posted their recipe for korova milk porter celebrate homebrew legalization day. May try to recreate their PB variant since I can't get it up here. I scaled it down from an 11.17 g batch in beer Smith and I can't seem to get the gravity's, srm, and ibu to match up.

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I scaled it down from an 11.17 g batch in beer Smith and I can't seem to get the gravity's, srm, and ibu to match up.

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Hmmm

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16 lb Pale malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM)
4 lb Munich 10L (Briess) (10 SRM)
2 lb Brown malt (Simpsons) (150 SRM)
2 lb Caramel/Crystal malt - 30 L (30 SRM)
2 lb Chocolate malt (350 SRM)
2 lb Oats, flaked (Briess) (1.4 SRM)
1.5 lb Barley, flaked (Briess) (1.7 SRM)


1 oz Fuggle hops, 4.5% a.a. (60 min)
1 oz Fuggle hops, 4.5% a.a. (30 min)

8 oz Milk sugar (lactose) (10 min)
8 oz Maltodextrin (10 min)

White Labs WLP810 San Francisco Lager yeast
SPECIFICATIONS

Original Gravity: 1.069
Final Gravity: 1.022
ABV: 7.2%
IBU: 12.6
SRM: 35.6
Boil Time: 60 minutes
Efficiency: 72%
Pre-boil Volume: 13.44 gallons

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Well if you divide everything by half, what is your SRM, IBUS, and OG?

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90-120 minutes at 147-149 degrees

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Yeah, I second the low mashing, that way your beer dries out. I’ve never mashed my saisons longer than an hour, however.

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Even putting the batch in as is doesn't yield the same gravities, ibu or abv for me. I will go double check that I got the right brands and srm for each grain.

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I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Clone recipes rarely match the final product from a brewery. Efficiencies differ and scaling change things.

It takes me six hours to brew one beer...

So, i did a sort of experiment (not intentional) on my double brew day. I made 2 starters. One with Proper Starter can (which is very convenient) and one with DME and yeast nutrient. The proper starter starter was much brighter than the DME. The DME appeared much darker at yeast pitch. However, at yeast pitch time for the beers, both starters had the same appearance.

One starter was made with Belgian Ardennes yeast (DME starer), the other with Belgian Saison (Proper Starter can). The Ardennes had a much more active fermentation than the saison, and a slight blow off. Now this could be simply due to the yeast strain, but i would have thought the saison would be a little more vigorous up front, than ardennes. Take from that what you will, it probably would be a more apt comparison of starter wort if it were the same yeast.

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Thanks for the recommendation on the dip tube filter. Works great!

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No problem. They really helped in solving my clogged dip tube and transfer problems. I have 3 of them now. One dedicated to sours for fruiting, and 2 for heavily hopped beers. One for the fermenter, and one for the keg, if i do keg hops.