Here's a beer a long time in the making. I brewed the base beer for this a year and a half ago as part of a split batch with a Belgian wit. While the wit was fermented with a yeast harvested from some La Trappe Witte, the half which became this was fermented with a wild culture. The grain bill is very pale, with a mix of pale ale malt, wheat malt and unmalted wheat and spelt flakes. Hopping was minimal, only 16 IBU from some Saaz.

I cultured the yeast and bacteria from a handful of uncrushed malt in a starter culture first, then pitched this after confirming that no obvious off-flavours were present. Starter cultures are my preferred method for doing spontaneous fermentations as they allow more control over the conditions and mean that if things go horribly wrong you'll only lose a couple of litres of starter rather than a full batch of beer.

Brewing spontaneously fermented sours is an enterprise that requires a fair bit of patience. Wild yeasts and bacteria are often slow to do their thing and over time the conditions in the beer will favour different species and strains. Most of the time the best thing to do it to stick the fermenter in some corner of the cellar and forget about it for a while. Thus this beer sat largely ignored for a bit over a year before I started thinking about what to do with it.

The beer that emerged was fairly sour, and quite funky, but somehow unremarkable. Because of this I decided to try to liven it up with a bit of fruit. I added 500g of frozen raspberries, defrosted first of course. I then promptly forgot about the beer again for another 5 months while I pursued other, more short-term, brewing projects.

Finally, in January this year, I decided it was about time to bottle.

Appearance

The raspberries have given the beer a fantastic, pink colour while during the long conditioning with bacteria has left it crystal clear. Theres a decent bit of carbonation and it pours with a bright white head. As is often the case with sour beers thoough, the head fades very fast.

Taste & Smell

There's something almost wine-like about this, it reminds me of a Sauvingon Blanc, or perhaps a dry sparkling wine. The flavour is pretty sour, probably through a combination of lactic acid bacteria and malic acid from the fruit. A Brett funk of earthy farmyard provides the base layer to the nose, but the raspberry comes through strongly too. The flavour starts full of raspberries, but this is a bone-dry beer without much sweetness at all. The finish is a bit disappointing, the flavour seems to fade somehow and the lack of body means it doesn't really linger on the palate.

Final Words

This beer is still a bit unexciting in all honesty, it certainly doesn't live up to its stunning looks. Although the raspberries did a lot to liven it up, in the end I'd have preferred it with a more interesting finish. Partly it's probably due to the vagaries of spontaneous fermentation, partly probably due to the grain bill. Perhaps the best solution for the beer would have been to wait to blend it with something else to get the best out of it, but unfortunately I don't have quite enough fermenters to wait for ever for the right candidate to come along.

Vital Details

Batch size: 10l
Expected OG: 1.049
Expected FG: 1.010
Expected ABV: 5.1%
Colour (SRM): 4.3
IBU: 16

Grist:
55.6% (1.25 kg) Pale Ale Malt
22.2% (0.50 kg) Wheat Malt
11.1% (0.25 kg) Flaked Wheat
11.1% (0.25 kg) Flaked Spelt

Hops:
Saaz (30g / 16 IBU) @ 20 min

Yeast:
Wild yeast cultured from malt

I find a lot of the commercially brewed imperial souts to be far too sweet and cloying. In designing this recipe I therefore wanted to balance the inevitable sweetness that comes with a really big beer with enough hops to ensure that it did not taste like drinking alcoholic treacle. My plan was to aid in this by using Brett to dry out the beer beyond what Saccharomyces would be able to handle, as well as hopping quite generously to ensure a good balance of bitterness.

I brewed this beer as a parti-gyle brew with approximately half the sugars going into a more conventional stout and half going into this imperial stout, with only half the water. Thus the volume is half the size of my usual batch. I have adjusted the grain quantities to this half size to account for this. In designing the grist I had two goals, first to use large amounts of caramel malts to build body and complexity, and second to use up the last bits of various specialty malts that I had accumulated.

I hopped with Magnum and Newport for a total IBU of 50, which should be enough to balance the inevitable sweetness of such a big beer without the bitterness clashing with the roast character from the dark malts.

I brewed the beer in February 2015 and pitched the M03 yeast. After a month the gravity had dropped to 1.030 and the yeast acitivity had pretty much stopped. At this point I added the Brett claussenii, with the expectation that it would be able to do what the Saccaromyces could not, and eat up some of those complex sugars produced by the high amounts of caramel malts and the high mash temperature. It still took the Brett another 3 months to drop the gravity down to 1.018 and for me to consider the beer ready to bottle.

Appearance

Pitch black and opaque even at the edges of the glass, the beer looks every part the imperial stout. The tan head is quite insubstantial and the low carbonation means you don't get much of it.

Smell

A mild, earthy funk of olives, farmyard and citrus combines with the sweet, coffee and smoky character of the roast malts. The funkiness of the beer has gradually increased as it has conditioned in the bottle, but even now, 6 months after bottling, it is not particularly strong.

Taste

The body is thick, with the slight carbonation providing only a tiny bit of lightness. There's alcohol here for sure, 9.7% ABV can't easily be hidden. But there's also lots of dried fruit and coffee. Above it all there are hints of spices and citrus and olives, perhaps from the Brett.

Final Words

I'm very happy with how this turned out. The funk of the Brett melds well with the other flavours in the beer and has produced a very tasty, heavy beer, perfect for a winter evening.

Vital Details

Batch size: 10l
Expected OG: 1.095
Expected FG: 1.020
Expected ABV: 9.7%
Colour (SRM): 41.9
IBU: 50

Grist:
50.7% (2.25 kg) Pale Ale Malt
11.3% (0.50 kg) Munich Malt
11.3% (0.50 kg) Flaked Spelt
5.6% (0.25 kg) Toasted Oats
5.6% (0.25 kg) Flaked Wheat
4.8% (0.22 kg) Roasted Barley
3.4% (0.15 kg) CaraPils
2.3% (0.10 kg) CaraAmber
2.3% (0.10 kg) CaraBelge
1.7% (0.08 kg) Black Malt
1.1% (0.05 kg) CaraAroma

Hops:
Magnum (9g / 20 IBU) @ 60 min
Newport (20g / 20 IBU) @ 15 min
Newport (25g / 10 IBU) @ 5 min

Yeast:
Mangrove Jack's M03 Newcastle Dark Ale
Wyeast 5151-PC Brettanomyces claussenii

Here's a beer that I finally got round to brewing after having the idea knocking around in my head for a fair few months. The basic premise is very simple and not hugely original, to augment the spicy flavours produced by a saison yeast (Wyeast 3711 in this case) with the earthy, fruity funk from some brettanomyces. The Brettanomyces clausenii I used should produce a slightly less aggressive funkiness than lambicus or bruxellensis and so hopefully will not overwhelm the spicy aromatics of the saison yeast. The superattenuative properties of the brett should also help dry out the beer nicely.

For hops I used Magnum for some clean bittering early in the boil, followed by a few late additions of Saaz for aroma. I don't really want this to be a very hoppy beer, rather the hops should provide a backdrop against which the aromatics from the yeasts are able to shine. The mild, herbal and spicy flavour of Saaz should work well for this.

The grist is a fairly straightforward thing, a pilsner base with some Munich, some caramel malt and finally a bit of flaked oats to improve the mouthfeel since the attenuation will be quite high.

I did a straightforward stepped mash, starting at 63°C for 1 hour followed by 30 minutes each at 65°C and 68°C before mashoing out and sparging. The long mash should have the effect of creating an extremely fermentable wort and as a result the beer should ferment our very dry. My plan is to start fermentation out at around 20-22°C for the first one to two weeks before moving it to the basement and (hopefully) cooler temperatures. This should allow the yeast to develop some of the great peppery flavours that I particularly like in saisons. This being a mixed fermentation with Brett, I will probably give it longer than usual in the primary, perhaps a couple of months, to ensure that the Brett has fermented out too before bottling.

Vital Details

Batch size: 22l
Expected OG: 1.058
Expected FG: 1.012
Expected ABV: 6.1%
Colour (SRM): 6.4
IBU: 34

Grist:
72.7% (4.00 kg) Pilsner Malt
9.1% (0.50 kg) Munich Malt
9.1% (0.50 kg) Flaked Oats
4.6% (0.25 kg) CaraBelge
4.6% (0.25 kg) CaraAmber

Hops:
Magnum (20g / 29 IBU) @ 60 min
Saaz (20g / 3 IBU) @ 10 min
Saaz (30g / 2 IBU) @ 5 min
Saaz (50g / 0 IBU) @ flame out

Yeast:
Wyeast 3711 French Saison
Wyeast 5151-PC Brettanomyces clausenii

It's been 5 months since I brewed this beer and almost a month since I bottled it. I finished off the beer with 55g of Newport a week before bottling. With the gravity finishing off at 1.009, the beer comes in a touch lighter than planned at 3.4% ABV. As such it's very much a light, fresh, summer beer; and with spring just warming up, I seem to have timed this quite well. I was a bit conservative when priming it for bottling, aiming at only 2.8 vol of CO₂, in retrospect I ought probably to have been a bit more aggressive in that regard. The carbonation is slightly lower than I would like it.

Appearance

The beer is a very pale straw colour and almost, but not quite, clear. I'm hoping that a bit more time conditioning in the bottle will allow the bugs to munch up a few more proteins and clear the body up a little bit more. The head is white, and fleeting. This is not hugely surprising as sour beers rarely have a head that sticks around.

Smell

The brett from the De Bom blend comes through well in the nose, with hints of olives, lemons and perhaps a touch of goat. The funk is not overwhelming, though, and gives a nice bit of interest to a beer that I fear might otherwise be a bit bland. The hops added at the end have all but disappeared, with only a hint of hoppy aroma in the nose. Perhaps Newport was just not assertive enough a variety for this.

Taste

The lacto sourness provides a lemony, vinous quality with hints of apple and some grainy character too. The body is rather thin, and higher carbonation would have been a good idea. For my taste it could certainly be more sour as the sourness is quite gentle, more reminiscent of a tart apple juice than a riesling.

Final Words

For a first attempt I'm not too unhappy with how this turned out, but next time I will need to try and get a bit more sourness into the beer. I might try giving the lacto more time to do its thing before adding the yeast, or perhaps I will try to aquire a more aggressive lacto strain through spontaneous fermentation.

This is my first attempt at brewing a Berliner Weisse. Usually when I brew a style for the first time, I try to stick quite close to the style description. This is especially true of a style like Berliner Weisse, which has a bit of a reputation for being difficult to get right. Thus my plan for this brew was to brew a fairly faithful version. My initial recipe plans were slightly altered when instead of pale wheat malt, I accidentally ordered dark wheat malt. This makes for a slightly darker beer (around 5 SRM instead of 3 SRM) than I had intended, though it will still be quite pale. Thus I ended up with a beer made up of 57% dark wheat malt and 43% pilsner malt. The malt bill was a rather small 3.5 kg in total as Berliners are generally very light beers. The plan was for an OG of 1.035.

The mash was rather more complicated than my usual single-infusion affairs. I went for a single-decoction mash, as I expected that the wheat malt would benefit from it. The mash schedule went as follows:

1. Mash in at a lowly 63°C, giving initial mash temperature of 59°C.
2. Remove a third of the mash into a smaller pot, heat that to 65°C.
3. Rest decoction for 15 minutes.
4. Increase temperature of decoction to 73°C
5. Rest decoction for 15 minutes.
6. Bring decoction to the boil, simmer for 10 minutes
7. Return boiling decoction to the main mash, bringing temperature of mash to 64°C
8. Rest the mash for 40 minutes.
9. Mash out at 77°C

As is typical of Berliner Weisse, the hopping was extremely minimal with 40g of Saphir (2.9% AA) thrown into the mash for 30 minutes. This will provide the beer with some hop aroma as well as the micro-biological protection offered by hops but impart minimal bitterness, only about 2 IBU by my calculations. This is a no-boil beer, so I did not bring the wort to the boil at all, but just raised the wort to 82°C for 10 minutes to pasteurise it. Thanks to the lack of evaporation during the boil I ended up with a generous 26 litres of wort at the expected original gravity of 1.035

I went for a combination of three types of microbes, lactobacillus, brettanomyces and Brewer's yeast. Berliner Weisse does not necessarily contain brett, but I've read in various places that brett tends to add extra dimensions to a beer that otherwise can be a bit over-simple and one dimensional. As I wanted to give the slow-moving lacto a bit of a head start, I first pitched a 3-day old starter of Wyeast 5223-PC Lactobacillus Brevis. After about 48 hours, and with the Lacto showing good acivity, I then pitched one some US-05 and Wyeast 3203-PC De Dom. Wyeast's De Dom is a blend of lactobacillus, brettanomyces and brewer's yeast, which I chose primarily because it was half the price of the pure brett cultures that I could get from my brew shop.

Due to the heat-loving nature of lacto, I started out fermentation next to a radiator at a temperature of around 25°C. I will probably move the fermentor somewhere cooler once primary fermentation slows down. I expect that this beer will need a good 2 months at least before I can consider doing anything more with it. Until then I can only listen to the plaintive cries of the air-lock...

Vital Details

Batch size: 26l
Expected OG: 1.035
Expected FG: 1.007
Expected ABV: 3.6%
Colour (SRM): 4.9
IBU: 2

Grist:
57.1% (2.00 kg) Wheat Malt, Dark
42.9% (1.50 kg) Pilsner Malt

Hops:
Saphir (40g / 2 IBU) @ 30 min in mash

Yeast:
Wyeast 5223-PC Lactobacillus Brevis
Wyeast 3203-PC De Dom
Fermentis US-05

After reading about beers brewed with wine yeasts and brettanomyces at both Bear Flavoured and The Mad Fermentationist I really wanted to try it myself.

The result is Death and Gravity, an old ale fermented with Lalvin K1V-1116 and brettanomyces cultured from the dregs of a few bottles of Orval.

The combination of wine yeast and brett is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, wine yeasts produce a range of toxins which are deadly to most ale strains. Brettanomyces, however, is not susceptible to these toxins and so can happily co-exist with it. Second, wine strains are, by-in-large, unable to ferment maltotriose and so leave lots of complex carbohydrates to feed the brett. K1V-1116 is primarily a white wine yeast and the original "killer" strain, it should produce a fruity end result with minimal hydrogen sulphide. This said, my basement smelled terribly of rotten eggs for the first couple of weeks of fermentation!

I mashed pretty high, aiming for a 68°C mash to get lots of complex carbohydrates for the brett. My plan was to extract as much of the sugars from the mash as possible and then to boil down to my target gravity. With this in mind I extracted 30l of wort at 1.060 which I boiled for 140 minutes to end up at 21.5l at an original gravity of 1.082. I hopped with a bit of Magnum and Saaz, with the malty grain bill and long conditioning time I didn't bother with much in the way of aroma hops. I racked the wort into a fermenter and pitched the K1V-1116 and the brett.

While planning this beer I visited my good friend Al (Hopsinjoor) in Manchester and got some oak cubes from used rum barrels from him. After 5 weeks in primary I racked the beer into 2 12l PET carboys and added the oak cubes as well as the rum I'd used to sanitise them. Now the beer gets a minimum of 6 months to mingle with the oak and the rum. So sometime in spring 2015 I expect to get to bottling this beast.

Vital Details:
Batch size: 20l
Expected OG: 1.081
Expected FG: 1.018
Expected ABV: 8.3% (+0.5% from rum)
Colour (SRM): 18.2
IBU: 37

Grist:
47.2% (3.5 kg) Halcyon Pale Ale
40.4% (3.0 kg) Munich
6.7% (0.50 kg) Carared
3.4% (0.25 kg) Flaked Oats
1.4% (0.10 kg) Special B
0.9% (0.07 kg) Black Malt

Hops:
Magnum (25g / 33 IBU) @ 60 min
Saaz (20g / 4 IBU) @ 20 min

Yeast:
Lalvin K1V-1116
Orval dregs

Other:
Yeast nutrient @ 15 min

Wood:
Toasted rum barrel oak cubes
225ml dark rum