Flemish Morado

Well after asking about the purpose of corn, I decided I'd get corn. While I was at a grocery store in NJ that had a serious import selection of ethnic stuff I ran across Peruvian purple maize. I got two packs of corn for myself.

I had done a down and dirty test on the corn to sort of estimate the color I'll get from the corn. I did 25g in 250ml water. I placed it on a stir plate with a bar at 80C for about 20 minutes to roughly imitate a mash. Then I vacuum filtered the solids out and placed it in a spec. Based on the way SRM is determined for beer I came up with about 30srm.

I didn't feel like the corn would go through my mill. I didn't have any other sort of grinder to use besides my conical coffee grinder. I didn't want my corn to taste like coffee and I didn't want to ruin the grinder running corn though it. So I just took a medium sized pot and poured the whole corn into some water. I left it simmer for a good hour, and then I used a blender to break up all the softened corn.

The base recipe is for a flemish brown on the lighter side of brown but with the purple maize in there it should have an interesting color. It also have a neat flavor, for the most part like corn, but it is very rich in anthocyanins. As much as it pains me to use wikipedia as a source. According to wikipedia, purple corn has more antioxidant properties than any other food listed at more than 1600mg/100g.

Yeast will be ECY20 BugCounty. I will be fermenting in a bucket first than then transferring to a 6gal better bottle for the lengthy secondary fermentation.

This will be a sour beer destined for the super foods shelf!

i think it could be interesting to use nixtamalized purple corn in a brew and see how that turns out, that would be a true super foods beer

I never heard of nixtamalization until you typed that. At first I was thought "what the hell did he mean to type?" I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of other nutrients in the wort and produced by the yeast that would otherwise be supplied by the nixtamalization process.

smokinghole said:

I'm pretty sure there will be plenty of other nutrients in the wort and produced by the yeast that would otherwise be supplied by the nixtamalization process.

Click to expand...

I was only really half serious anyway

Slight update on this beer. We're sitting at three months in and I just pulled a small sample. It has a nice acidity but not as intense as the saison I made got. I think that is attributed to the alcohol level more than anything. Eitherway this beer has a LONG way to go. It still has sweetness and while the acidity is noticeable it's very subdued. I'm really looking forward to the finished product of this beer.

Just brewed another flemish sour using purple corn last monday. This one is considerably lower in gravity and using the ECY02 culture. I hope to have that thing done and bottled in 6-7 months. I got a report from another user of ECY cultures that his flemish sours were done in 5-6 months due to the aggressiveness of these cultures. Sure bulk aging would allow the flavors to develop more but the fermentation was finished for him at least.

This corn has a real cool flavor compared to yellow corn. I just ordered more to get another batch of flemish sour brewed in the coming months using rosalare blend.

Well I did a gravity check on this brew. It started at 1.082 (12 higher than I planned for), and it is currently sitting at 1.003. It tastes DAMN good too. I will check on it again when I go to bottle my imperial stout with brett L and see where the gravity is at. If it's still at 1.003 then I'll go ahead and bottle the oud bruin too.

Could you post a recipe? This sounds awesome.

Flanders Brown Ale/Oud Bruin
Type: All Grain Date: 11/18/2011
Batch Size (fermenter): 7.00 gal Brewer: Adam Cole
Boil Size: 8.70 gal Asst Brewer:
Boil Time: 120 min Equipment: Penrose Kettle and 13gal Igloo Cooler
End of Boil Volume 7.70 gal Brewhouse Efficiency: 82.00 %
Final Bottling Volume: 6.70 gal Est Mash Efficiency 86.7 %
Fermentation: Ale, Two Stage Taste Rating(out of 50): 30.0
Taste Notes: Gravity at transfer to secondary 1.012.
Ingredients


Ingredients
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
6 lbs Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 1 36.0 %
5 lbs Vienna Malt (Franco Belges) (3.5 SRM) Grain 2 30.0 %
1 lbs 10.9 oz Purple Maize (30.0 SRM) Grain 3 10.1 %
1 lbs 9.5 oz Caravienne Malt (22.0 SRM) Grain 4 9.6 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz CaraBrown (55.0 SRM) Grain 5 9.0 %
14.6 oz Wheat, Flaked (1.6 SRM) Grain 6 5.5 %
1.42 oz Legacy [7.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 7 26.1 IBUs
1.0 pkg Bug Country (East Coast Yeast #ECY20) Yeast 8 -

Beer Profile

Est Original Gravity: 1.070 SG Measured Original Gravity: 1.082 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.003 SG Measured Final Gravity: 1.012 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 8.9 % Actual Alcohol by Vol: 9.3 %
Bitterness: 26.1 IBUs Calories: 279.4 kcal/12oz
Est Color: 16.3 SRM
Mash Profile

Mash Name: Flanders Mash Total Grain Weight: 16 lbs 11.0 oz
Sparge Water: 5.28 gal Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Sparge Temperature: 168.0 F Tun Temperature: 72.0 F
Adjust Temp for Equipment: TRUE Mash PH: 5.20

Mash Steps
Name Description Step Temperature Step Time
Mash Step Add 5.42 gal of water at 131.6 F 122.0 F 20 min
Mash Step Decoct 2.34 gal of mash and boil it 152.0 F 40 min
Mash Step Decoct 0.94 gal of mash and boil it 160.0 F 30 min

Sparge Step: Fly sparge with 5.28 gal water at 168.0 F


Let me know if you brew it or something like this beer.

So I bottled this today at 1.003. As I was drinking the left overs I started to notice that the bitterness is unlike a hop bitterness and it's higher than it was brewed to be by far. So I started looking up brett and bacteria things for wine and found this.

"Bitterness taint or amertume is rather uncommon and is produced by certain strains of bacteria from the genera Pediococcus, Lactobacillus, and Oenococcus. It begins by the degradation of glycerol, a compound naturally found in wine at levels of 5-8 g/L, via a dehydratase enzyme to 3-hydroxypropionaldehyde. During ageing this is further dehydrated to acrolein which reacts with the anthocyanins and other phenols present within the wine to form the taint.[10] As red wines contain high levels of anthocyanins they are generally more susceptible."

The key in that paragraph is reaction to anthocyanins. Which this beer had tons of due to the purple corn, and my flanders red has even more. Both the beers has the strange uncharacteristic bitterness that gets your whole tongue. I just hope that aging will allow the brett to reduce this flavor into something else over time. Either that or I will be blending these batches into something else to the point you can't detect the bitterness.