Sorta Lacambre Method Wit

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smokinghole

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I have "Brewing with Wheat" which outlines a old method of brewing witbier from 1851. The 100% true method sounds like a pain in the butt but the end result is some fairly dextrinous wort with only a portion being boiled and a portion being ran through the spent grains.

So what I'm doing is boiling only a portion of my 10-11 gal batch. I will add a white labs lacto culture to the unhopped and unboiled portion. This should give a somewhat authentic lactic tang to the beer. I might also toss some yoghurt juice in there too in order to assist with the souring. This portion will sour until I'm happy. Then I will ferment it with WP410. I am undecided on raising it up to a temp to kill all the lacto. I'm thinking I'll just let it roll with out pasteurizing the lacto and just let whatever lives to live.

The lightly hopped and boiled portion will only boil for 45 min. Then I will ferment it with T58 (it's mostly for my wife she'll get two unblended cases of this). Then I will blend the remainder of this with the unhopped and unboiled portion.

So I should end up with two cases of "boring" wit for my wife (she doesn't like the clovey spice from traditional wit yeasts) and two cases or so of slightly lower alcohol but sourish wit for myself.

Grain bill Recipe:
Franco Belges Pils 48%
Rye Malt 24.4% (have a bunch on hand and figured I'd try it)
Flaked Wheat 24.4%
Acidulated Malt 3% (for pH adjustment)
Rice hulls (didn't weigh but just grabbed a bunch out of my bulk bag)

Stisselspalt Hops for about 15 IBUs in the boiled portion.
 
Unhopped and unboiled portion came out to 1.043. Boiled and hopped portion came out at 1.051. I have a little over 12 gal of wort that has a nice flavor. Pitching the lacto soon as that portion is close to 100F.

Upon blending the starting gravity will have been 1.047. We'll see how this turns out. I did one last year similar to this only I didn't reserve half to not be boiled or hopped. I only added a lacto culture then yeast a few days later.
 
The T58 portion began to ferment rather quickly.

The unboiled/unhopped and lacto dosed half developed a serious nasty krausen and smelled of putrid eggs. I had to direct the airlock into a milk jug sealed up and topped with a nato gas mask cansiter (left over from a training mask). So now I don't have a fart smelling house. This morning I added the WLP410. I'm not real sure if the putrid smell will come out of the beer. I tasted some via a pipette and its in the beer as well. Hopefully the WLP410 will help scrub out the sulfury smell so I can blend this together and bottle next week.
 
Did you aerate the unboiled portion? Did you give it plenty of headspace? I could see oxygen promoting the growth of the undesirable. After lacto fermentation you may want to boil to try to drive out some of that nastiness.
 
I didn't aerate. There as admittedly too head space, but it was a pure culture. So growth of the undesireable is less of a concern, then again there is the potential for high temp survival of bacteria from the mash that would leave me with who knows what. I'll see how it smells on Friday. If it smells terrible I'll think about boiling it.
 
It could be lacto at work. I normally smell my sour mashes -- I know you're not sour mashing here -- and get more of a rotting creamed corn smell. It's possible it's just what lacto smells like to you. Maybe it's just something strange about the composition of the wort.

Personally if it still stinks/tastes bad at that point I would boil and hope the yeast can scrub out whatever doesn't boil off but you may be more adventurous than I.
 
That sound about right. Rotten creamed corn I guess is a good description. I just haven't found anyone talking about a stank ferment like this. Of course the only threads I can find on a lacto pitch then ale yeast is on berliner weisse. The grist are not very far off realistically, mine is just higher gravity. I will be blending this into the hopped portion which should be about 25 ibus so when blended it will be between 12 ibus and 13 ibus. This may be an awesome way to make a wit but only time will tell. I popped the top and it seems to be dissipating a bit but it is still there. The beer is still very actively fermenting also with a thick krausen on top.
 
Then you may want to let it ride. I usually get that smell still coming through after the boil but it's never there in smell or taste after fermentation.
 
I'm happy to update that the bad smell is quickly dissipating. I just tasted it today and it's nicely tangy. The flavor is nice and basically just tastes like unhopped wort. I think it's still on the high side of attenuation, but I'll blend it soon and hopefully it improves even more. I just hope I can taste the slight sourness after blending.
 
I did a gravity check today. The t58 portion is at 1.007. The lacto unhopped half is at a staggering 1.024. I will try and get them blended up this week. Hopefully tomorrow night. That way I can get the t58 to help clear up the diacetyl from the lacto and help drop the gravity further. My WLP410 didn't do much to drop the gravity. Blended together its going to be nice based on how the gravity samples tasted when poured together.
 
I am hoping the blending of the two batches I did today will encourage a new fermentation considering the high gravity of the soured half and the T58 still left in suspension. I have as close to 10 gal as I'm going to get with the beer blended together. I bottled off a case worth of straight unblended hopped beer. I had to bottle at least one case to make room in the 10gal fermentor. This will allow me to compare the higher hopped portion to the resulting low IBU blend, plus I can decide whether or not this is worth the extra effort.

The rotten corn flavor is basically gone at this point. There's just a hint of it in the blended product. I hope the remaining extract that gets fermented helps scrub that flavor out of the beer. Also the blending should have a detrimental effect on the lactobacillus between the EtOH and the hop acids.
 
I wouldn't give up on the rotten corn flavor going away until the beer has been bottled and fully carbonated. I don't know what it is about carbonation but it definitely does something more than make it bubbly. It's been fairly well documented that brett beers really get those great funky flavors after carbonation. I once had a somewhat wild beer that tasted and smelled like wet goat all the way into the bottle but when I popped the top on carbonated beers the ethanol and fatty acids producing the wet goat aroma and flavor converted into some delicious flavors. It tasted like juicy fruit.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if additional fermentation scrubs the rest out.
 
I moved a lot of beer today so I could bottle my acidulated malt soured saison.

Anyhow I'm not worried. I'll bottle it next week most likely. I'm not worried one bit about the flavor leaving. If it doesn't oh well it's not so offensive that it will keep me from drinking the beer.
 
Morning after pitching lactobacillus culture in unhopped wort.
HPIM2452.jpg


Third day unhopped portion lactobacillus only.
HPIM2455.jpg
 
I decided to pull a gravity reading today as well as sample it after some decent time with more yeast. The beer has almost completely lost the assy flavors which is good. The somewhat bad thing is that the beer went all the way. The hopped portion stopped at 1.007 but my gravity reading on this today was at best 1.002. So I basically have a low hopped slightly spiced sour saison at this point rather than a sour witbier. I think it'll be just fine as summer refreshment in the long run. Just not was I was aiming for, I wonder why the blended batch attenuated further than the unblended. I know the hopped portion was done fermenting. If not I have bottle bombs waiting for me, but I'm damn sure t58 took it as far as it was going in two weeks on the hopped half.
 
I went to bottle this last week and I took a taste before getting all setup. The beer has gone ropy. At first I assumed I got a pedio contamination from another beer but because it was unboiled and unhopped wort there's no telling what sort of bacteria made it out of my mash tun. So I assume it's just from whatever made it into the wort. I did some research and Lactobacillus delbrueckii spp. bulgaricus can make an exo polysaccharide complex just like pedio is known to produce. So while I likely didn't get the formation from the white labs pure culture anything that made it into the fermentor from the mash certainly could have. I have now added brett to consume and digest the exo polysaccharide hoping the ropiness clears up fairly quickly. The beer fermented out to dryness but now the viscosity is giving the brett plenty of fuel to chomp on for a little while at least.
 
This beer has another month to lose the hint of butt corn flavor or its getting dumped. I am not going to go through the trouble of bottling it and or waiting for the beer to clean up in the fermentor just to still have a crap corn flavor. May 18th, either it's clean or it goes down the drain. So far I'll chalk up this experiment up as a bad way to do sour wit.
 
At this point you might as well bottle it either way. Sometimes bottling gets rid of some weird stuff. I had a batch that smelled like wet goat go into bottles but come back out after conditioning for a few weeks with a nice juicy fruit flavor and aroma. No more goat. The same is true of brett beers. A lot of times carbing intensifies the brett flavor/aroma.
 
Well bottling is tough with the beer being like the corny urine from Slimer. Basically the beer has a month for the exopolysaccharide (rope) to break down, or I will ditch this beer like a slimy booger.
 
I didn't realize it was that dense. Very strange.

I have a couple of projects going on with a mix of various lacto strains and some other stuff. One developed a very thick sludge in the bottom of the fermenter, plenty of CO2 and a ton of diacetyl but neither has developed any ropiness. One is a little older than your wit and one is younger but stayed warmer. The warmer one developed the sludge. Cooler one developed a pellicle after about six weeks.
 
So it's showing signs of coming around with the ECY04 addition. There was significant CO2 production for two-three weeks. Now it's still producing just not nearly as much. The ropiness seems to be being broken down in fairly quick order. There is a nice underlying lactic acidity and the brett is further assisting with taking the weirdo pseudo rotten DMS flavor away.

So I am thinking about doing a sour wit again REAL soon. Only this time I'll just hop/boil the whole thing (low IBUs), add a pure lacto culture, and ferment with ECY11. I will consider the no boil/unhopped technique as a bad way to do a wit.

There is much left out it seems from the Lacambre technique even in the most general sense. I couldn't find any description of what the beer tasted like, what happened if it went past 2-3 weeks. Possibly what I ended up with is what happened if the beer went past two weeks from brewing. I would guess that the final rinse of the grains through the mashed grain bed then not boiling it would cause a pickup of a bunch of thermophilic bacteria. Who knows what they ended up with....
 
I am happy to update that the rotten-ass corn flavor is gone. The hydro is showing less than 1.0000 and the viscosity is almost gone. I think I should have this in bottles next month or so. I think it'll be a nice refreshing beer if I carb it up to 3.5volumes.
 
Well I had some frozen sour cherries from the local farm. I decided to add some to this beer a while ago. I'm not letting it sit with fruit for 6-8 months. This was bottled today and I'm getting a .990 gravity. So the combo of whatever made it out of the mash and the ECY04 culture this beer is super dry, fairly sour, and plenty funky. Some is in a 6L bottle and the rest in 750s and some 12oz bottles.
 
Well here I am over a year later and I'm drinking a bottle of this beer. It's actually pretty nice. The 6L bottle that I filled will be opened at post baptism party where I'm actually going to be the godfather. I didn't know this when I gave my friend the bottle. In fact I think when I gave him the bottle, they weren't expecting. So the rotten butt corn flavor aroma did in fact go away.

I may actually try this again soon but in a completely different method. This time a full boil on the wort, split it off, continue boiling the souring portion for DMS, and hop the rest in the boil. The side portion will be 3 or so gallons and will get a pure culture of lacto that I will then boil again and blend. I'm not dealing with what happened to this beer again.
 
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