Recent content by FLDanimal

Well, this confirms what I thought/have experienced about lambic. I entered/judged a sour competition last weekend that had horrible judging to say the least. I entered a geueze that got tore up because it "needed more wood character." I judged the Berliner Weisse category. One Berliner was...

I would rather the judges learn to correctly judge a style than have to oak a lambic. I feel oak is distracting in this style. The purpose of the oak is to provide a home for the organisms, not enhance the beer. If I have to tweak a style to meet uniformed judges expectations then I'm just...

Is lambic/geueze supposed to have a noticeable oak character to it? I have never really picked up on any oak character in any commercial lambic/geuze. When brewing my own I have also never noticed any wood pick up imparted from the barrels. The vessels used to age lambic are very spent, often...

Does anyone have any advice for priming gueuze? All the reading I have done says that traditional gueuze has no sugar added and uses young beer to provide the fermentables for bottle conditioning. The tricky part is that the definition of young beer is pretty loose (young beer to one brewery...

I am aware of the judging process. I am Certified (just waiting to take the written to make National should the test ever be made available). Even with the guidelines right in front of them the majority of judges are not very good due to lack of education, technical knowledge, brewing...

The current state of BJCP judging is pretty poor if you ask me. The lack of test availability means fewer people are even studying and the majority of judges at any competition are very inexperienced non-bjcp judges. Competitions seem like a crap shoot to me. This beer I am considering...

I carbonate all my lambics as I prefer that style. I would like to enter enter a sparkling lambic in a BJCP competiton but the current BJCP description of lambic states that the beer should be still. Odly enough the old BJCP style guidelines state that lambic may be sparkling. I cant enter it...

Thanks for the reply. I just got done reading through that thread and am still unsure what method of "sour mash" was used. I assume that since it was brewed in bourbon country where whiskey sour mash techniques were well known, and the recipe was based off an inverted bourbon mash, a berliner...

Im currently researching the kentucky common style and cant seem to tell if this beer is supposed to be sour. Many recipes I have seen call for a berliner weisse style sour mash. The wikipedia article on kentucky common states that the beer used a whiskey type sour mash. It would seem that...

I wasnt sure as to post this in the wild or bottling forum but how do you all go about packaging geuze for competitions? The standard bottles will not hold 4 vols and 750ml champagne bottles are not allowed. I would assume you would need to track down some 375ml Belgian bottles and use a...

You have a great site BTW. One of my favorites to check out.

One vial of White Labs Brett B Trois and One vial of Brett C. That was probably under pitching but I didnt know they needed a starter. It wasnt until after I pitched that I learned they have a lower cell count than the sach tubes. Would under pitching have anything to do with this? Had a...

I just tapped a beer brewed with Brett B Trois and Brett C and it has a hefe like banana taste and aroma to it, not a lot of tropical fruits as I was hoping. I fermented two weeks at 65 and placed it in the secondary at 55 for 4 weeks. The malt bill was 95 percent pils malt and 5 percent...

Woodruff syrup. Although unless it is a berliner weiss its probably going to change the flavor.

Isnt Whirfloc made of seaweed?