Dog Days of Summer Brew Update

When the temperature and humidity in the 90s, brewing just can't be any fun. Thus, since stocking up on saison in early July, nothing more intense than bottling has happened. I do have some aging beers that I can squeeze an update post out of.


Belgian Barleywine
When bottling the base beer I drew off one gallon to age some more with an "infected" oak spiral. Only bubbled a bit occasionally but never put up a pellicle. I figure at nearly 13% ABV that the bacteria and Brett. were killed off. Not much funk when I tasted it last week but it was still boozy and hot despite the extra aging time. I put it in the back of the refrigerator in hopes a few cold weeks will calm it down a bit. That main portion of the batch never carbonated so I will use wine or champagne yeast at bottling time.

La Fontaine du Sang
After two months in secondary, this one has just put up a bubbly and ropy white pellicle. A sample last week still tasted fairly clean and mostly like sweet caramel malt. Quite a ways to go for this one.

Les Framboises du Mal
I've added all the fruit I can afford to dump into beer, which now totals 5.5 lbs of raspberries and 12 oz plums from the fantastic Kimball Fruit Farm. The samples have tasted very sour and funky but I was dissappointed with the lack of fruit flavor and hue of the raspberry color, so I added plums to help rectify those problems. Although I have never heard of plums added to sour beer. The raspberries floating on top have beautifully disgusting crust.

BBeer* Tasting

I bottled four gallons of the all Brett beer just over a month ago. One gallon was combined with sliced Gala apples and put away to age. Worried about over-carbonation and exploding bottles, I only added 1 ounce of sugar at bottling. My worries have been unfounded as an aggressive pour gives no more than a weak head that immediately falls apart. This color is a cloudy orange.** Lots of fruit in the aroma; green apples, cherries, oranges. The flavor is more of the same with some tartness developing that was not present at bottling. There is also some fresh oak character in the aroma and taste like you would find in white wine.

Overall, I have yet to make up my mind on this beer. It seems very young so I will slowly drink my through the batch. I tasted it with three different cheese, Brie, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and Vermont cheddar. All three were an excellent match.

*The extra 'B' is for Bbrettanomyces Lambicus.

**I keep a single clear bottle in rotation to monitor color and clarity. The flocculation has been so slow that there is a visible difference between the fine and murky parts of the beer. Oddly enough, the portion that I mixed with apples is brilliantly clear.

Brettanomyces Lambicus

We want the funk.

Now here we have a beer I am really excited about (more so than usual). A single strain Brettanomyces beer. For this one I kept the malt and hops simple to let the B. Lambicus shine. Unfortunately, I think using a new oak spiral may have negated that effort.










Higher than expected efficiency resulted in an OG of 1.064, a few points higher than I wanted. After 19 days the gravity had dropped to 1.020. I racked 1 gallon onto a pound of sliced Gala apples and the other 4 gallons to its own secondary fermenter. Other than taking longer, fermentation appeared normal.

At racking the beer smelled of cherries, pears, apples, tropical fruit and a touch of barnyard funk. The taste was similar but with the oak fighting for prominence.