At the end of May, I finished grad school in Indiana and started a new job 500 miles away. I didn't actually move to Iowa until August. In between, my "sour pipeline" did a 3-month stint at my parent's farm in Illinois. That is, my parents kindly stored three barrels of my spoiled funky beer in their shed until I could retrieve them.
 |
| Sour Program: 5 gallon Brandy barrel (left) , 6.5 gallon Wine barrel (right), and 5 gallon Bourbon barrel (not shown) |
As you can see, these smaller barrels are perfectly sized to fit inside standard Rubbermaid Roughneck containers, no barrel stands needed. The handles on the containers aid in transport. The towels just fill empty space and prevent barrels from moving inside the container.
My main concern with moving was sloshing the barrels around during transport and oxidizing the 1+ yr old sour beer inside them. I could have kegged the beer and filled the barrels with water, but I did not want to ruin the the cultures inside. As luck would have it, a friend of mine was also moving and donated 50 pounds of grain! I brewed a double batch of fresh wort, kegged all of the aged beers, and racked over the new batches as close to the moving date as possible. The recipe:
BDSA Barrel Fill (~18 gls)
18 lbs Belgian Pale
14 lbs US 2-row
10 lbs German Munich
4 lbs Belgian Caramel Vienna
4 lbs Belgian Caramel Wheat
1 lb Carapils
0.5 lb Special B
1 lb Dark Candi Syrup 15''
3 oz Styrian Goldings FWH
0.5 oz Zeus 60''
3 oz Czech Saaz 15''
Mash @ 152F
Obviously, this was a 'freestyle', 'kitchen sink' recipe. I used up as much grain as possible and bittered with the hops I had available to approximately 20IBU. I was also lazy/resourceful (lazourceful?) with primary fermentation:
6 gallons fermented with WLP530 Abbey Ale
5 gallons fermented with WY 1318 London Ale III
3 gallons fermented with WY 3942 Belgian Wheat
3 gallons fermented with ECY03 Saison Brett blend
3 gallons fermented with house blend of commonly available White Labs + Wyeast brett strains.
These were basically just all of the cultures I had on hand that I thought would bring complexity without detracting from a belgian-inspired sour beer. I knew these would eventually be blended together somehow, and I consider it a feature to have choices when blending.
When it came time to keg and rack, my plans for the Bourbon barrel sour did not go as expected. The Bourbon barrel is my oldest (4+ yrs), containing a traditional turbid mash lambic. This barrel has produced some great sours, but after nearly a year in the barrel the lambic just didn't taste ready to come out. It was not as sour or complex as I had anticipated. I made the decision to leave the beer in and just pack the barrel with frozen peaches. Hopefully the fruit would fill any headspace and fuel just enough oxygen-scouring fermentation to protect the beer during the move. I racked the London Ale version into my Brandy barrel, the Abbey Ale version into my Wine barrel and then topped them both up with the ECY03 Saison Brett version. The remainder of the batch was blended into a keg.
When the barrels finally made it to Iowa, I sampled all three. The beers seemed a little flat (lost carbonation), but I did not detect oxidation or spoilage. In fact, the beers tasted exceedingly mild, especially the new barrels (Brandy and Wine). The blended keg beer without oak actually tasted the most sour! Now I just had to decide what to do with all of this sour beer.
While I prefer a good straight sour, and I think fruit is sometimes a crutch, I had a lot of excellent fruit saved up from the summer. Plus, I thought the barrels would really benefit from additional fermentation and potential increase to residual CO2. So, I decided to add fruit to everything. I added ~4 lbs of raspberries to the brandy barrel BDSA, 4 lbs of sour cherries to the wine barrel BDSA, and 5 lbs of peaches to the bourbon barrel lambic. This pound/gallon ratio is towards the low end, but I didn't really set out to make a "cherry" or "raspberry" beer. By the time I get around to brewing a huge batch of lambic to fill all of the barrels, the fruit will have completely fermented out. I will blend, bottle and keg all 15+ gallons. I will then fill all the barrels with fresh lambic wert and stash them away for a couple years.
We are near the end of this sour tale, but what about the 'extra' keg of 'BDSA Barrel Fill"? Well, to be honest, the beer was almost too sour for me. While I love sours, I prefer more mild versions. I could have just bottled the beer as is, but I knew the bottles would just sit around in my cellar for years. I wanted to do something more with it, but I really had no clue what to do. Fresh fruit season is long gone. Unexpectedly, I came across 1 pound of baby ginger from my local horticultural farm. Ginger in a sour beer, why not?
I made a little tincture in a glass to sample the flavors and it was pretty good, in fact, my girlfriend loved it! I ended up adding a handful of left over cranberries and 0.5 lbs of sliced baby ginger to the keg (pictured below). It's only been a couple days, but I'm looking forward to having this unusual beer around for the holidays!
 |
| Belgian Dark Strong and Sour w. cranberries and baby ginger |
Next time I plan to talk about how I scaled up my brewing capacity (15 gallons) as well as the brew day for a Russian Imperial Stout that is currently aging in a newly acquired rye whiskey barrel. Cheers and Happy Holidays!
