Nooby Dånbær

My two favorite 'types' or 'kinds' of beers are anything brewed with coffee or fruit. My favorite of the latter kind is anything sour. So I decided it was time to finally get my first sour going. I did a bit of research and thanks to Mikes blog I got a lot of useful information about where to start. I found his Brewing Sour Beer At Home post exceptionally helpful and decided it was time to dive in (plus a few emails from Mike back-and-forth answering a few more specific question). I also started reading Wild Brews but haven't got through it yet. I mean I only have to wait a year to decide if it's good or not right?

On my search to find a suitable recipe I decided I wanted a very light Lambic base so that I could add plenty of fruit at a later date. Which fruit? I don't know yet. After the beer sours up I'll try it this summer and decide which fruit(s) will go best. I can almost guarantee one will be peaches though. I loves me some peaches. For the initial base I think I'll use some Pilsen and Wheat. Why exactly? I'm not sure but I have to start somewhere.

My Saccharomyces choice was fairly simple to start with since the end result isn't going to have any actual yeast character. The little bugs will take care of that. So I just went with Safale US-05 since it's cheap, easy and produces a fairly clean end palate. The bugs were a fairly simple choice as well. I went with Wyeasts Brettanomyces Lambicus 5526 blend since it has the full bevy of Brett and Lactic Cultures along with more Saccharomyces. Also, to make sure the beer really sours up nicely, it's recommended to pitch the dredges of a bottle of a commercial beer. Mine happens to be Cantillon Blåbær Lambik since I just happened to trade for (hence the name of the beer). I drank it 4 days before I brewed so pitched the dredges into a starter that I made to give the microbes something to do for a couple days. Since there is this sort of oxygen/non oxygen thing that each particular culture likes/dislikes (great description of these differences on the how to brew to brew sours link above) I decided I'd aerate the beer as normal, pitch the US-05 and give it a 6 hour head start before I tossed in the bugs.

I plan on letting the beer ferment and settle out for about 2-3 weeks before racking to the secondary for it's extended stay. I will be adding a Oak Spiral to the secondary as well. And then come this summer when the fruit is nice and fresh at the farmers market, I'll split the batch accordingly. This will be a fun first go at a Lambic and it should be a good learning experience. I'll probably brew up another in a couple months so I'll have a steady flow of sours to play with and blend. Need more carboys though!


Recipe
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Batch Size - 5 Gallons
Boil Size - 6.4 Gallons
Total Grains - 11.67lbs
Anticipated OG - 1.063
Boil Time - 60 min

Grains
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8.33lbs Pilsen (36ppg, 1L) - 71.4%
2.5lbs Wheat (38ppg, 2L) - 21.4%
0.42lbs CaraPils (33ppg, 1.5L) - 3.6%
0.42lbs Vienna (33ppg, 14L) - 3.6%

Hops
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0.5oz Saaz (4% Pellet) - 60 min

Yeast
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Fermentis - Safale US-05 (75-80%, 59-75F)
Wyeast Belgian Lambic Blend 3278 (--, 63-75F)
Cantillon Blåbær dredges

EDIT: The yeast blend above is correct, I originally posted that I used the Wyeast Brett Blend and that was incorrect.

Extras
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1tsp Irish Moss - 5 min


Brewed January 9th 2010

1/9/10
Cold as shit, probably not the best planning ever. It's literally so cold that when I pull the lid off the brew kettle, the condensation on it freezes within less than 10 seconds. Brew day went really well, actually the most efficient day I've had in terms of brewing time and not forgetting one thing or another and slowing down the whole process. I mashed a bit hotter than usual to give the microbes a bit more num num's to munch on. I'm definitely more interested in sour than alcohol. Once the beer cooled and was aerated I pitched as normal. This is the first time I've used dry yeast in years so it was weird just sprinkling it on top. After about 6 hours the yeast had already starting doing it's thing so I dumped in the Wyeast packet and the Blåbær dredges. It's amazing how purple the starter is from just a ounce or so of the beer. Hopefully it doesn't girly up the color of the Dånbær!

OG measured in at 1.050. Slightly smaller than expected but definitely okay. This should put my ABV around 5.5% which is perfect. I think if it ended up at 6% with better efficiency, that would be a bit much. Although with the higher temperature mash who knows what the real ABV will end up being. Looks like this puts my efficiency at about 60%.

1/30/10

Transferred to secondary today and the beer has a nice Lambic nose. It smells sour but the taste isn't at all. It basically tastes like a totally unhopped, super dry wheat beer. Hopefully in the end, it tastes like it smells! The FG is down to about 1.009 or so already.

I boiled the oak spiral for about 10 min and it's amazing how intense the wood smells and how dark the water got. The recommendation on the package is one spiral per 3 gallons. I'm not 100% sure if that's for beer or wine but either way I'm going to be safe and only use one for the entire 5 gal batch. Now we wait...