Project Lambic underway

Well I finally got around to brewing up my base beer for the lambic project. I did 10 gallons total, half in a old old barrel and other in a carboy. The one in the barrel is going to be a straight lambic maybe blended down the road. The beer in the carboy is going to eventually have fruit added, the Sg was 1.046 and is being fermented with wyeast #3278. It's a little slow but finally kicking off after a day. I also tossed in some dregs from some sour ales.

A thing of true beauty

Please keep us posted.

Will do I have a notebook going to record my data. I used 2 packs of 3278 one was over a year old and I used a starter for each. The beer in the barrel took about a day longer to get roaring , now have a blow off tube in that. The carbon I pitched last night and already has a good krausen but not fully developed yet.

I originally was planning a AG base but just haven't had the time so I used extract instead.
3lbs wheat dme
3lbs golden light dme
3 oz of aged hops
4oz of malto-dextrin

Day after carboy was pitched

Sweet,thanks for keeping us up to speed. Just wish i could see the action in the barrel. Oh to have the opportuniyy of a yeast eye view!

Badlee this ones for you! I had to time the pulling of the bung and snap photo as its actively sending krausen out the tube.

badlee said:

Just wish i could see the action in the barrel. Oh to have the opportuniyy of a yeast eye view!

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Like an embedded barrel webcam? I'd watch a time lapse pellicle video.

How long are you planning on keeping the beer in the 5G barrel? Little barrels have a really high rate of oxygen diffusion and aren't great for long term aging unless you reduce the amount of oxygen getting into your beer. There are several blog posts about coating small barrels with parrafin you might find helpful.

You probably can't tell in the original photo but the upper portion of the barrel I coated the crap out of it with paraffin wax. I also plan to keep the barrel topped off as recommended by my lhbs who is a lambic mad man.

Hunterlab, thank you sooooooo much, total sour porn.
The embedded webcam,love it! I dont think i would be able to get anything done in the day.

dcHokie said:

Like an embedded barrel webcam? I'd watch a time lapse pellicle video.

Click to expand...

That would be brilliant

Just thought I would give a update. The barrel is still actively sending foam through the blowoff tube at day 2 of active fermentation. The carboy still has a nice krausen and appears to be dropping a bit.

Krausen is finally going down and the carboy is switched to a airlock. Every time I put the airlock on the barrel it gets filled with yeast and kraus-foam so it needs to mellow out more.

Here's some new photos, about a week after they were pitched things have finally slowed down. They actually smell really good for a young brew slightly funky.

Great pics. Thanks,longingly,for the update.

Well how about a update.

The beer is currently at 1.012 and is tasty at a young age , has a little funk to the taste with the aroma of a gueze but faint.

Both the barrel and carboy have started to form a light , whitish pellicle.













A long journey still ahead but a enjoyable one at that

Dan

And thank you for the postcards along the way!

Well I haven posted a pic in a while, but the carboy bounce back an forth with a pellicle. I just peeked at the barrel and it was amazing!

This makes me wish I had a barrel. I still need to brew six more gallons so I can fill a fifteen gallon bourbon barrel with my imperial flanders red.

Update : tasted the barrel and wowza crazy sour , I've been topping off the barrel about once every few weeks. There is a nice Pellicle on top .

The carboy I added tart cherries to about 3 months ago and I ended up moving it to a warmer room. Now it's finally reforming a Pellicle over the top of the cherries. I pitched some roselare for added bugs and plan is to allow them to eat the fruit until gone.

good work there

Could you tell a difference between the carboy and the barrel lambics flavor before you added the fruit? I don't want 50 or even 15 gallons of the same beer so I'm interested in using smaller barrels.

Smaller barrels will leak I think unless you coat the inside. I'd use chips or a barrel stave or something else to get oak flavor in there, but I wouldnt use a 5 gallon barrel.

The oak barrel is a old barrel with very little flavor. If you do some research you will see if you coat the upper half of the barrel with wax it actually prevent o2 from entering the beer. There is very little oak flavor at 11 months in.

The beer in the barrel is a nice gold color where as the fruit lambic is a darker color and more tart . These were the same base beers just different additions.

It's not the O2 I would be concerned about with a small barrel, it's leaking beer. Honestly I'd put chips or a stave in a carboy just to be secure about both o2 and beer leakage not being a factor.

Did you taste before you added the fruit?
Was there is difference between the two batches?

There was a difference between the too as I used different bottle dregs and yeast.