Well meaning wife, and a Fruit Lambic Kit.

Hello all,

On my doorstep this afternoon I found a christmas present from my wife. (I got to open it now because it warned of live yeast)

She picked me up an Annapolis Home Brew Peach Lambic kit, as Lindemans Pêche is one of the few beers she will drink (the others also being made by Lindemans)

It's a Partial Mash 5 Gallon batch that seems to aim for a 7.2% ABV finish.
It's this one half way down the page here: http://www.annapolishomebrew.com/shoprecipekits112.asp

It comes with two 3 pound cans of Oregon Peach Puree, some Pectinase, a ~1lb bag of "Brewing Sugars" (white rock candy), some peach flavoring, and WYEAST Lambic Blend, as well as LME, grains and hops of course. It also came with a fairly comprehensive, but generic set of instructions. So nothing I didn't know from past experience, and nothing to tell me how to ferment a Lambic style beer.

Now I concider myself primaraly a German style brewer. I mostly do Lagers, Alts, and Kolsch. I barely even drink Belgian beer (I'm saving it for when I get bored of other beers.) I tend to be an anal, perfection obbsessed idiot, and my wife spent a lot of money on this kit. (I could make 3 of my normal beers) So I could use some real help on the whens and whats of getting this thing to ferment out well.

I'm guessing all my plastic (I use ale pails primary and better bottles secondary and various hoses and racking equipment) will have to be sacrificed to the lambic?

What Fermentation Temps Primary and Secondary?

When does the fruit go in? The stickers on the cans say 3# plus pectinase when primary fermentation ends, then 3# 2-3 days later. Should I stager? Or feed it all at once?

Does the fruit get dumped in the Primary Bucket? Or should I rack onto it in a 6.5 gallon Carboy? How much of a mess is likely to occur in (or rather coming out of) the carboy? Should I even rack it to a carboy?

Just how many months will it reasonably take to actualy get some work out of the lambic blend? I plan to bottle half, and kill sweeten and keg half.

Thanks all!

You should take a peek at: www.themadfermantationist.com

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/08/lambic-3-turbid-mash.html

A great site for all about brewing lambics & sour beers.

Don't be too worried about giving up $20 worth of brewing equipment in pursuit of sour beer. You will earn much more back in compensation if you please your wife.

Good luck with it.

XXguy said:

You should take a peek at: www.themadfermantationist.com

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/08/lambic-3-turbid-mash.html

A great site for all about brewing lambics & sour beers.

Don't be too worried about giving up $20 worth of brewing equipment in pursuit of sour beer. You will earn much more back in compensation if you please your wife.

Good luck with it.

Click to expand...

same place many of us go.
lots of good intro info and plenty for the advanced sour brewer.

Thanks guys, always nice to hear the blog is a help.

If you are lucky she might get to drink it by next Christmas. I’d leave out the candi sugar, what Lambics need is dexstrins not sugars (Not to mention that the OG sounds much higher than most sours). You can pitch the blend in primary, but if you want a subdued sourness you could pitch an ale yeast to get things going. I had issues pitching just the blend on my first sour, so since then I’ve always added a healthy pure culture of yeast along with the bugs.

Let the beer ferment in primary for ~9 months (or for a less funky character rack it to secondary after 2-3 weeks), then rack it onto all of the peach puree. 6 lbs probably isn't enough to give a strong peach flavor (I did 2 lbs/gal with good results in a sour), but it should be noticeable. I don’t think the pectinase is necessary, all my sours clean up with time.

For primary anywhere in the 60-75 F range is fine, after that even a bit higher/lower isn’t a big issue.

You don't have to separate your equipment, but it's a good idea. I just demote my old gear to sour duty after a year and get fresh tubing/racking stuff. I share fermenters, but it always makes we squirm a bit.

Hope that helps, good luck.

Hey thanks all for pointing me in the right direction, and thanks Michael for breaking it down for me.

I suspected it would be next year to drink it, I just wasn't sure how it was going to go down.

I'm guessing this is more targeted at the Liefmans Fruit Beer style, so a sort of oud Bruin or Flanders Red with Peach? And I suspect the majority of the peach flavor will come from the giant bottle of peach Flavoring that came with the kit.

I guess I get to buy a 6.5 gallon Better bottle though, so that's never a bad thing. (no way I wanna risk my lagers!)

Try out the peach extract on a sample before adding it to the whole batch. It may be that you like it without, or with a smaller amount. After spending that amount of time on a batch I can't bring myself to add extracts.

I'll definatly see how it tastes first. but My target is Lindemans level of Peach, so we'll see how well it holds up.

Thanks Again!

i would not worry about reusing glass carboys. the microbes are as easy to kill with sanitizer as regular yeast. just clean and soak in starsan for at least 24 hours before using again.

It's cool I got a buddy who's gonna let me contaminate his 6.5G Better Bottle.

I know this is a late response, but Guildenstern, how was the lambic beer for your wife? I live very close to AHB and my sister want me to brew her a lambic, but I'm still debating due to the time & cost of the batch relative to my IPA's.

Did your wife think it was close to a traditional Lindemans?

It's still Sleeping, I plan on racking it once I get a free gas line in my kegerator. (Hopefully middle October?)

It has a kind of DMS smell to it, but we'll have to see when it's keg time.

Lambic Update!

Well after a long year the lambic has been racked into the keg and is carbing up at mad high PSI as we speak. Overall I detect a bit of a DMS like tone to it which I got out of a flailed Berlinner Weisse I tried a year prior. I plan on sweetening in the glass and I was amazed at just how clear and crisp the beer ended up. Can't wait for it to hit carb and try it full on. Thanks again all for the help.

I'm really happy this turned out well for you. I'm going to get something started here in the Spring and sucess stories like this are just adding fuel to my fire.