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Thanks Sweetcell for the comments! Especially about the bottle bombs. It didn't even come to mind as it should have so now I'm going to have to keep an eye on the bottles. Luckily I only used champagne bottles but I'll still have to keep an eye and release pressure from them every once in a...

My wife was out of town for 4 days last week and I had a couple of empty damigianas so I decided to take some brewcation days. Thursday I brewed up 40 liters of a continental lager with 5 kg of chestnuts I had gathered recently. Friday I brewed up 28 liters of a nice christmas ale. As I brewed...

Quick update...I'm at 4 weeks since noticing the new growth on the cherries. Thought I would give the beer a try to make sure it was going in the right direction. The SG = 1.0121 since the last time I measured it so it has gone down 0.0006....that's some slow wild progress! It was nice outside...

Describe rotten vegetables? Sounds like it could be DMS. I've heard of DMS-like smells/flavors coming off of brett but I don't have any experience. Don't toss it! I would keep the cherries in the beer. The pits in the cherries are important to the flavor and the cherries staying a long time...

So I went down into the cellar to shelve some goods...and what do I see to excited amazement! We've got some wildness a'brewin! A couple photos for those interested: one with flash and one without. (Sorry...it was pretty hard to get a good photo) It looks like brettanomyces to my untrained...

Sweetcell, You're right on the mark I think. 1) I don't think I got good enough contact with the open air to get a wild inoculation. 2) I'm going to check the beer in another 6 weeks or so to see how it's progressing. If there aren't major changes I was planning on bottling. However, I'm...

So I'm at 6 weeks post-brewday and 5 weeks post-cherry addition...and I was needing to check how things were going. The cherries floating on top in the damigiana are really dark, almost blackish...probably from oxidation. Actually the cherries probably work as a nice protective layer against...

Has anyone tried this? I live in southern Switzerland on the Italian border and as you can imagine wine is king around here. However, the craft brewing scene has been developing before our eyes over the last 5 years since we've been here. Having grapes easily available, I had been...

So about 8 hours post racking the beer onto the cherries there was a little foam on the surface but no noticeable fermentation activity going. I left for work and came back about 10 hours later to the beer fermenting like crazy. It has been fermenting like crazy for three straight days now with...

Picked another 6 kg of cherries today and racked the beer on to those and the others that I took out of the freezer. The cherries mostly (5.1 kg) came from one tree that was a cultivar that was sweet, meaty, and thick skinned. Then I picked a bunch of different sour cherries (0.75 kg). See the...

I grew up in Wisconsin and I loved late September to October for apple and pumpkin picking. One thing I learned is that beauty is superficial and true goodness is has no looks...that is as long as the fruit is natural it shouldn't matter how it looks. Ugly apples make great cider and ugly...

So I got home tonight and the wife gave me permission to go cherry picking for a couple hours. I picked 4 different trees for a total of almost 3 kg. Cleaned them and put them in the freezer. I figure the final flavor and tartness of this beer will be highly dependent on what cherries are added...

Thanks for your advice. It's nice to hear about the tannins taking 6 months to calm down, I was wondering about that. If I understand correctly, your beer was bottled right away and wasn't sitting for 6 months on the cherries in bulk, right? Also, did you measure or calculate the additional ABV...

MileHigh, It isn't my deciding not to calculate the IBU contribution of the dry hops that were boiled for a long time. But rather hops that have been aged this long (actually almost two years since we collected this bunch) can be assumed to contribute 0 bitterness since all the alpha acids have...

Nitpicking is totally allowed...in fact it helps those reading clarify what was in the brewer's head. Yeah...giving it a stylename was a hard task and you are right about the decoction not being saison-ish. I like to use decoction because it is much easier to calculate and hit the programmed Ts...

Yeah...I drew up the mash schedule to mimic a lambic turbid mash. Also, I liked the idea of adding depth and complexity to the beer through more Maillard reaction with the long boil. The long time also passes nicely as I play with the kids anyhow. I've finally figured out a nice way to combine...

So here is my first attempt at producing a saison (and first attempt at posting) with a second fermentation of cherries. I've incorporated aspects of lambic and other wild beers to make it interesting. The mountain top where I live has hundreds of fruit trees (predominantly cherries) so I will...