65 Gal Lambic

I guess it was just over a year ago now, that my brew friends Al, Stefen and myself decided we would try our hand at brewing a traditional styled pLambic (while I respect the history, I will be referring to the brew as lambic here out). Independently we had each brewed a sour beer at one time or another, with average results, but our respect and enjoyment of the lambic beer drew us to an epic brewday. We decided to try to brew this as close to the Belgian method as possible, with the only exception of spontaneous fermentation.

First, we wanted to secure a barrel. After trying to chase down some internet leads, I decided to call some of my local wineries. I think I only made 2 calls before speaking with the cellarmaster at Chadds Ford Winery, and we managed to work out a deal on a 65G French Oak barrel. Since this is a fully operational winery, the barrel was recently retired after about 6 batches, and had remained swelled, and recently had a sulfur stick burned in it to prevent organism growth. I picked up the barrel and we really began to move forward with plans for the brew formulation, method approach, and sourcing ingredients.

For the recipe, I deferred to the single best source I have acquired on brewing lambic beer, Wild Brews by Jeff Sparrow. We went with the traditional 70/30 pilsner to wheat grist. We chose unmalted wheat since we were ambitious enough to tackle a turbid mash for this monster brew. Since I had previously brewed a starter batch with unmalted wheat, and had milled it at home, I pushed very strongly to have the wheat milled by the supplier, North Country Malt. Milling wheat is tough enough, milling raw kernels is no joke. Since I only milled 3 pounds and thought my drill was going to explode, 30+ pounds would really suck. The guys took my word for it, and we had the supplier mill the wheat. We also sourced our pilsner malt from NCM. For hops, we went with Hallertau Select since they were under 2% AA and we did not have access to ample amounts of aged hops. For yeast, we used 5 very fresh smack packs of Wyeast Lambic Blend, a half gallon, 4th generation, slurry of Roselare, and the contents of a primaried 5 gallon starter batch pitched with Wyeast Lambic Blend.

Farmhouse Pale

This beer came to me as I read a recent posting on The Mad Fermentationist's blog. I wanted to brew something I had never heard of prior, while still paying homage to the classic style of the Belgian Pale Ale. I chose to use Oat Malt as the base for this beer since I felt it would create a grainy and rustic flavor that would translate well with the dry/earthy/farmhouse flavors with the yeast and hop selections.

To ensure the oat malt converted, I added Amylase Enzyme to the mash, since this is not a naturally occurring component of oat as it is in barley. I think this addition is what created such a fermentable wort. The efficiency for this beer was much higher than my usually predictable 72-74%, but while it is not stylistically perfect, the higher alcohol may hide well behind the other flavors and esters going on in this beer.

For the mash, I went low, like 146-7* - this also helped create a more fermentable wort. To encourage some degree of souring (and to allow me to split the brew day in half) I did an overnight mash, and added acid malt to the grist.

Once boiled and chilled, I aerated, and pitched a big slug of Brett C and a starter of WLPP530 (Abbey Ale) and fermentation took off like crazy in my basement at 68*. Once the ferment dropped to about 80% expected attenuation, I moved to my garage, in the 90's to promote funky and bretty flavors. After a few weeks, I sampled, and found this beer to be very one dimensional, and not quite what I was looking for, so I decided to dry hop with Willamette.