13 gallons of unintentionally wild Brown, can I use it?.

I am a newbie wild brewer, (GET READY TO FLAME!)
We brewed 18 gallons of Brown beer about a 3 months ago, While we took the first runnings and made a high gravity 5 gallon batch which has been consumed. We also made a smaller brown with all the second and third runnings which ended up as 13 gallons.

To make a long story short, the 13 gallons has ended up with a sour infection, It appears to be brettanomyces from the looks of it, I don't know what young brett tastes like. The beer is sour.

I would like to utilize this beer so, keeping in mind that I only want to make an enjoyably drinkable beer and I realize this won't be accepted as a strict style of lambic, I dont intend to enter this in any competitions:

1. Can I use 5 gallons for straight lambic, 4 gallons as a gueuze base and the other 4 gallons as a fruit blended base?

2. It seems the straight lambic should be appx. 6 months old when consumed? The other two are years in the making?

3. Is this even worth trying? seeing that it is a brown beer base with no unmalted wheat whatsoever, the hops were over-ripe/dry home picked chinooks. Would it help to add wheat in the blend of the next batches for the gueuze and fruit blends? Keep in mind I am not trying to hit a specific style or enter this in any competitions. Just trying to further my understanding of traditional beers.

4. Is there any other way to utilize this beer sooner, besides as grill fodder for brats? If that? We have many different sizes of fermentors to try this in.

5. If this works I am going to push for a new GABF style called brownic.

All comments/suggestions/flames are welcome! I am a newbie wild brewer.

Sounds like you've got something closer to a Flanders Brown than a lambic (FYI on that note- a gueuze is traditionally made by blending aged lambics).

Does the beer taste sour but good, or just sour? Is it intense sour (like straight vinegar) or more moderate (like lemon/lime juice)? Do you like non-fruity sour beers? Do you have any pictures of the infection?

Flanders brown huh, I was actually thinking of a long age in an oak barrel. It appears also that at least earlier in the history some Flanders were blended old with young for balance, according to wiki. Should I plan on blending?

The flavor was initially similar to lemon juice but has changed to a more old sour flavor, not really intense, maybe a stale type flavor.

I haven't had any non-fruity sour beers and the only fruity one I've tried is framboise lambic which I would call too sweet and 1 goes a long way for me. No flanders at all.

I will take a picture tomorrow and post it.

Brett gets tart but never sour. Brett needs Acetobacter to get a vinegar character.

Is it sour like vinegar? Acetobacter.

Softer sourness? Perhaps lactic.

If it were me I'd put it on oak and add a quart of sour cherry concentrate:

King Orchards Montmorency Tart Cherry Products: Cherry Juice Concentrate

If you want to understand subtle Brett character, crack an Orval. Note the aroma as well as the taste.

Here's a couple of pics,

Wow, that is an awesome looking infection!

Yea, the brown chunks are hops. Anyone have a guess as to what form of animal it is?

COLObrewer said:

Yea, the brown chunks are hops. Anyone have a guess as to what form of animal it is?

Click to expand...

If I'd looked closer I'd have known that. I can see the petals now that I look.

That white film with the bubbles says lacto to me. I'd back up the guy above who said put it on oak with some cherries. That sounds pretty tasty. If you go that route, keep the oak mild.. no more than an ounce. It's easy to overpower a beer with oak, especially a brown.

Bobby M,

That cherry concentrate looks great!! How much per/5 gallons? Does it tend towards cough medicine or stay true to the fruit?

Nice find!

That site doesn't specifically say what the fresh cherry to concentrate ratio is but I know from other vendors that it tends to be 100 pounds of real cherry per gallon of concentrate. Most fruiting is done at the 2lb/gallon ratio so a pint of concentrate would be like 12.5 pounds of fresh fruit. The flavor of the straight concentrate is a little cough mediciny but it doesn't stay that way after if ferments out. I think it's just due to all that sugar.

This is slightly

I'm a bit confused here. Are we encouraging the drinking of an infected beer? I've got something that got infected back in January, yes January, and I've been too lazy to empty the carboy. It's just sitting in the corner of my brew closet doing nothing but looking ugly with a layer of white on top. Smelling inside the carboy smells like nail polish remover...

It's really an experiment more than anything else. Some infections are better than others. A lot of people would taste a good lambic and gag so it's all a matter of opinion. It is a gamble to spend money to add things to a potentially wretched beer.

I am now inspired to make a flanders brown. I love sour brown ale, but have never thought of making one...

olllllo said:

If you want to understand subtle Brett character, crack an Orval. Note the aroma as well as the taste.

Click to expand...

Can't find an Orval anywhere, I picked up a bottle of Cantillon Iris, is that decent?

I just put all my sour cherry juice and cherries in a wine I'm making, but I can buy some frozen pitted sour cherries, how much should I add for 13 gals, should I thaw and juice them first or smush and throw them in skins and all?

What about toasting the oak?

How about fresh peaches, I have a bunch of those about 30' from the cellar, I could freeze and mash them and throw them in.

anything new with this? what'd you decide to do with all of that brown?!

I added appx. 25 lbs of fresh peaches smashed with skins, also scooped some floating peach pulp/krausen from a bucket of peach wine that finished primary 3 days ago and poured it all in and mixed. It has since started fermenting the fresh peaches presumeably with the wine yeast, I've been punching it down every day like wine. I'll probably stop punching it down when this round of fermentation is complete.

I also have a 1 gallon carboy of open fermentation going (mixture of samples from a bunch of different beers and wines) that I will add to this later, then let it sit for a year or so.

Well fellows, this has been on peaches for about 1.5 months, also I added dregs from a bottle of russian river brewings temptation ale on 10-19, pellicle looks to be formed again over all the floating peachness.

Do I remove the peach pulp that is floating or let it go? for how long? I intend to taste this soon and maybe try some oak, let me know your thoughts? I can take a pic if needed.

I like what you've done with this, sounds like a cool experiment, hope it turns out, keep us posted!

Personally I'd want to get as much fruit out of there as possible as soon as it has done its thing. It'll get rid of the pellicle, but I'd rack it to another carboy and filter out all that junk.

MacBruver said:

Personally I'd want to get as much fruit out of there as possible as soon as it has done its thing. It'll get rid of the pellicle, but I'd rack it to another carboy and filter out all that junk.

Click to expand...

Sweet, when do I know it's "done it's thing"? Do I just wait a few months? Or?

MacBruver said:

Personally I'd want to get as much fruit out of there as possible as soon as it has done its thing. It'll get rid of the pellicle, but I'd rack it to another carboy and filter out all that junk.

Click to expand...

I would actually suggest you leave it on the fruit, you WANT a pellicle, I mean this is a wild beer, and it would reform anyway, its forming because of the presence of O2 in the headspace, I also dont think that 1.5months on fruit is too long, I havent personally used peaches but with cherries/dates/raspberries I usually leave them in for 6mos+

OK, for those interested, here's what I'm doing now, I racked half of this off the fruit and left the rest, I'll be feeding both of these with some new brown in the future. Here's what it looked like before I mixed, let settle, then racked 1/2.


Here's what it looked like while racking:


Racked into my new old guinness fermakegermentor:


This is getting real complex flavours now, still not as sour as it was initially but is coming back. Note that half the grain bill in this was brown malt, I believe 14lbs brown and 14 lbs pale if I remember right.

I may add some more fruit to the half I racked off, depends on how it progresses, right now you can still taste the peach, it's subtle and may go away completely I'm guessing?

Also I plan to infuse some oak in some way, when should I do this? For how long, I believe flanders set on oak for a long a$$ time? Does it matter if I just throw some oak chips in? or a dowel? Do I need a barrel? Is there such a thing as using oak tea? Any comments are appreciated.
Brew on my friends

If you want oak I would suggest going with French oak cubes or chips, and not to use too many of them since you only want a subtle hint of oak. Maybe 1 ounce for the whole batch. Leave them in there to give the Brett you added with the Temptation dregs something to work on.

In about a year this beer is going to be heavenly, I bet!

I still have that carboy of infected goodness. It's an esb extract. Is there ever a time to not try and bother with trying to salvage an infected batch. I smells like nail polish remover and has the layer of white on top. Anyone have any recommendation for what to do with that hot mess?

If it smells like acetone, unfortunately I'd say pitch it. I just had this exact thing happen with a pale ale, and no good can come of it. It tastes about as bad as it smells. I left it for a couple weeks to see what would happen and it only got worse.

janzik said:

I still have that carboy of infected goodness. It's an esb extract. Is there ever a time to not try and bother with trying to salvage an infected batch. I smells like nail polish remover and has the layer of white on top. Anyone have any recommendation for what to do with that hot mess?

Click to expand...

Sounds like it's been about 10-11 months, I would taste it first!, It may be wonderful. But that's just me.

I would suggest oak barrel. I think the slow gas exchange the barrel allows for is something you can't get with chips or additives.

Wow, I just stumbled across this thread! And... subscribed!

sw341034 said:

I would suggest oak barrel. I think the slow gas exchange the barrel allows for is something you can't get with chips or additives.

Click to expand...

I'll probably try this with half and just use chips in the other half.

So, it has re-formed the pellicle after racking half off into the sankementor, A pellicle is also formed in the keg, so now, I'll add some oak and possibly feed it more brown, then taste it every couple months for a few, maybe by summer it'll be good to bottle, maybe not.

Moon shot?

I have a question, well a few actually,

Recap:
This Oud Bruin is doing great so far. The reason it soured originally, I guess, is the fact that it never dropped below 1.040 during initial fermentation which caused me to wait a couple of months trying to get it down. The reason for that, I guess, is the high percentage of brown malt I used, 50%.

So after a couple months in the large fermentor with alot of head space and me checking/sampling it, it formed a pellicle (Presumeably lacto) from wild bugs from my cellar. I have since added dregs from Russian Rivers temptation, peaches and fermenting peach pulp from the top of a wine fermentation.

So here are the questions I have, keep in mind I have very little experience with wild fermentations so far.
1. Is there any way for me to tell if the bugs from the temptation dregs have taken off? Will it have a more vinegary flavor? Do I need to add oak for these "new" bugs to work?
2. Whatever I do to it, it keeps forming a pellicle, I think this is good, will the pellicle remain until fermentation is complete?
3. Can I expect these bugs to ferment out all the remaining sugars and bring gravity down to 1.0000 or thereabouts?
4. Does one bottle this when fermentation is complete?
5. Or, . . . Does it keep souring/changing after FG is reached?

More info:
It is all in the cellar which is at appx. 46F right now.
I will be adding oak at some point, probably in the form of a dowel, I have plans to save the dowel(s) in the rafters of the cellar trying to re-use it for the next sour (assuming the beer turns out good).

1 - Take gravity readings and/or taste it

2 - pellicle is just a response to oxygen in the headspace, you say it keeps reforming, are you mixing it up to get it to drop? if so dont, oxygen and brett = ethyl acetate aka nail polish remover, Ive yet to see a pellicle actually drop on its own and Ive done quite few sours, what it will do though is if its bumped etc and it drops or submerges a bit it will not reform on the surface

It can get vinegary if too much 02 gets in there ie no pellicle lots of 02, but id put my bet on ethyl acetate if thta happens, no oak is not needed but it allows a nice place for bugs to grow which you can subsequently add to batches later

3 - I dont think it will get to 10000, Id guess somewhere in teh 1008 range

4 - bottle when it tastes good, you can stabilize with campden, a lot of times blending really helps these beers so keep that in mind

5 - after a FG is reached it wont sour, some organic acids and esters may be assimiliated by the bugs and transformed but not much else is going to happen

ryane said:

. . . you say it keeps reforming, are you mixing it up to get it to drop? if so dont, oxygen and brett = ethyl acetate aka nail polish remover . . .

Click to expand...

Nope, just reformed after I added the peaches (formed over the floating portion of peach pulp) and then again after I strained the floating portion and racked half off the peaches into a different fermentor.

ryane said:

. . bottle when it tastes good, you can stabilize with campden, a lot of times blending really helps these beers so keep that in mind. . .

Click to expand...

So blending would be with another "finished" beer? Does this need to be a "young" finished wild beer (Gueueze I guess)? Or can I campden after blending a normal yeast fermented beer. I do plan on feeding this more brown in the next 2-4 months, does this have any bearing on blending?

When you say blending helps, Is that for one that is overly sour or in some other way undesireable. Or just to mellow some flavors?

I'll probably end up bottling some of it straight anyway since this is all a big experiment for me.

I wish I could find an example of a good commercial flanders brown around here, what's a good one to look for, imported or not?

Another question(s), I've heard that high alcohol content will inhibit the wild bugs, at what point is this? Is this only for bugs added to an already high ABV brew? What is an example of the highest ABV wild brew?

Thanx for all.

A little update on this brew, I emptied this into a kegermentor while straining the peaches out, it's been a few months, didn't taste it because it was mucky, so both halves are in kegs now, the other half was racked off the fruit before the porter was fed to it. both kegs have an oak spiral in them.

is there a football floating in there? lolz... it looks like the pattern of a zipper or the threads of a football. super strange. you should add your photos to my Pellicle Photo Collection:cross: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/pellicle-photo-collection-174033/

Tasted these yesterday with gravity test, They are getting sour again, both have a subtle rotten peach after taste that really makes them complex. The one that has been on peaches the longest is noticeably more sour with the sourness overpowering the peachness, pellicles have re-formed in the kegs since warming from winter. Gravity on both is now appx. 1.026, still high but it doesn't surprise me since initial fermentation never got below 1.040. Both are clearing nicely at this point and have a deep orange/brown colour. Both kegs still have an oak spiral in them.

I plan on bottling this in the fall, unless the gravity keeps falling or it changes drastically in other ways that require further action. I presume the warmer summer months will spur on the bug activity, cellar temp right now is fluctuating between 60F and 68F, in the winter it got as low as 36F, it was a long cold winter here.

Keep on brewing my friends

This thread is awesome. I've been wanting to play around with some wild brews but I have a tendency to get mold instead of yeast when I try. I hope this batch turns out. Hopefully, I'll get lucky soon and get something that I can actually work with.