Lambic Marathon

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Texron

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I started a five gallon batch of beer using 3 1/2 pounds light Pilsner Malt Extract and 3 1/2 pounds of 60/40 wheat/barley extract plus 1 oz. Czech Republic Saaz hops and White Labs WLP 655 yeast.. The starting gravity comes out to 1.053. After two weeks in the primary I racked it onto 6 pounds of Oregon Rasberry puree. I then poured a second batch on top of the yeast cake and it has now been two weeks-I plan to rack it onto 6 pounds Apricot puree and am ready to brew another to go on top for cherries and then another for peach.

Since it takes so long to age these sour beers, and I truly like all the different fruit flavors my thinking is that it won't take much longer to make a bunch of it at one time. When all four batches are in the secondary, I also plan to start a new batch with new yeast to brew a straight lambic for blending or consumption.

A few questions.

1. Is it advisable to reuse the yeast four times for the four different batches. Will some of the yeast strains be lost or diminshed with the later batches?

2. When I make the straight lambic blend I have consider taking about six ounces from the straight lambic batch to add to each fruit batch to ensure there are plenty of yeasties and beasties available for the long job of aging and souring these beers.

I would appreciate everyones thoughts or comments on what I am doing here and am definitely interested in any suggestions or advice on how best to proceed.
 
Is there no one that has any advice, suggestions, constructive criticism or comments on this endeavor?

I just racked batch two into a new Better Bottle carboy that had six pounds of Oregon Apricot Puree in it. I have to run to the grocery store to get some water and then will get batch three started.
 
Ideally you would want to let the beer age longer before adding onto fruit, but to answer your questions.
1. Yes, you can reuse the yeast 4 times.... but it will change the ratio of yeast/bacteria. I know with my sours with the Roselare blend each successive beer is getting more sour, so the lacto and pedio are cranking out more lactic acid as their amounts are greater then the initial batch.

2. If the fruit batches are from the straight lambic blend they already have the same yeasties and beasties anyway. You will get a lot of refermentation when it hits the fruit, so just be patient and they will do their job. There should be plenty brett and bacteria left in solution.

You might also think about adding dregs from other sour beers you buy, it will add some more complexity to the sours. When I buy sours from the store I tend to save the last ounce or so and dump it in my sours, get a bigger mix of buggies.
 
I think your plan is awesome, and I will do the same when I start doing lambics. I plan to do something similar with my Flanders Red.

As far as being too sour, nice thing is you have 4 batches you can blend as you please, and the leftovers can be blended with a 'virgin beer' if you need to cut the sourness. IMO, it's superior to doing one batch because you can blend and dial in the level of sourness/funkiness you want from your beer.

:mug:
 
"As far as being too sour, nice thing is you have 4 batches you can blend as you please, and the leftovers can be blended with a 'virgin beer' if you need to cut the sourness. IMO, it's superior to doing one batch because you can blend and dial in the level of sourness/funkiness you want from your beer."

Sort of, since you're adding the fruit so early the sourness won't really develop till later, so you can't really blend them to control sour levels unless you want to mix all your fruit. That's why if you let them sour first without the fruit you can blend then add fruit once you get the levels you want.

Also, careful of blending old with new if you are a bottling. The new stuff will still continue to ferment and can make bottle bombs. Belgian Gueze is still a blend of year old and multi year old, so everything is pretty much fermented out, if you bottle some year old with month old there will still be complex sugars for the brett/lacto/pedio to ferment.
 
Thanks a lot for everyones comments. I started with a recipee I got from a club member. He brewed the beer, the added the Cherry puree in the secondary, aged it for four months and then bottled it. He was raving about how good it was and then said it was much better after a year in the bottle-but was just about all gone too! So I followed his recipee and thought I would just age it a year in the carboy. That was the motivation behind my plan. I have even considered adding an Oude Bruin and Flanders Red to the mix.

Does anyone have some recomendations for commercial beers that would have beneficial bacteria. I'll keep an eye out for them and when all the batches are in the secondary I could split each bottle between them all.

Also, one more question. What about adding oak chips? A guy at my local LHBS suggested I had an ounce to each secondary that has been boiled twice to reduce the "Oakiness". ???
 
I would recommend oak cubes instead of chips. The oak cubes are better suited for long term aging as they release deeper flavors over time. I wouldn't go about boiling it twice, and ounce shouldn't be that overwhelming in 5 gallons. Also, French and Hungarian oak is much smoother then American oak.

Good readily available beers with bacteria are pretty much anything with "Lambic" written on them... although the Lindaman's Framboise could be pasturized. I know Cantillon, Lindaman's Cuvee Rene, Girardin, and others are probably good bets. Also, beers from Fantome usually have Brett strains, Orval has a Brett strain, beers from Russian River are great choices.

I'm not entirely sure what beers are available in Texas, but find some sours and you are probably safe adding the dregs.

Also, once you do this you can save your oak cubes and reuse them from batch to batch to spread the sour bugs around.
 
Thanks guys, there is just no way to say how much I appreciate everyones advice. I think, since the yeast cake will increase in "sourness" with each batch, I will make the third one the Peach Lambic and save the Cherries for the last batch.

I know after two batches the yeast cake was looking pretty nasty. I probably won't even want to know what it will look like after four batches. The EPA may declare my house as a "Super-Fund" site.
 
Yah, just wait till the pellicles form, talk about funky looking!

Also, at some point the sourness may plateau off, I'm not certain each batch will keep getting more sour. Also, there is no absolutes on the sourness, some may get really sour and some just so-so, hence why they blend them. You can try to add in more complex sugars for the bugs to feed on to try to gain a bit more sourness if you need to.
 
Well, I guess the "Third Times The Charm?!

Got home from work tonight and The top was blown of my fermentation bucket and there was a substantial amount of foam sprayed on the wall and splattered on the floor. What a pain but I guess it happens. The first two batches didn't do this. I guess the yeast cake has developed to the point that it "kicks-off" much faster now. The bucket is now sitting in the kitchen sink with the top just sitting up there; not snapped into place. I placed a towel over it to kinda hold it in place should another "surge" occur.
 
OK-I racked my third batch into the secondary on top of the Sweet Cherry Puree. When the carboy was topped off I still had about one half gallon of the straight sour beer left. I poured it into a plastic container to save it.

I was thinking of pouring this liquid off into however many 12 ounce beer bottles it will take to hold them and then save them in a cool place for future "souring" projects. If I was to brew say, an old brown and then add a bottle of this when I rack it to the secondary it should get it started on souring, shouldn't it?

Is this a viable idea or should I just disgard what was left over?
 
Sounds like it should be fine. Make sure to add an airlock to the bottles, the yeast will continue to work on any sugars left and still produce CO2.

You can also do this with oak cubes. If you add some to your souring beer the bugs/brett take up residence, then you can then save them and add them to other batches that you want to sour.
 
I was thinking of putting it into beer bottles, capping them, and then storing them in the bottom of a refrigerator. It spent two weeks in primary so there shouldn't be a lot of sugar to deal with.

Or maybe I should keep the bottles at room temp and let the sour bugs continue to develope.
 
The thing with sour bugs/Brett is that there ALWAYS seems to be more sugar for fermentation. :D I'd hold off on capping the bottles if they were only 2 weeks in primary. Otherwise, you might be looking at bombs in a few months.

This project sounds really cool. /subcribed

Terje
 
OK-I'll just leave it in the bucket for now.

Its in one of those white plastic buckets that LME comes in from the hobby shop. The worst that can happen there is pop the lid loose and I can just vent once a week or so. I have a few different sour beers that I plan to add a bit to each of my three working carboys to add to the complexity so I will add a bit of each to these "sour Mixer" as well.
 
I am inspired to try something similar to Saccharomyces thread elsewhere in this forum:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/saison-de-provision-119921/

My LHBS made up the following extract menu for me based on Sacc's recipee.

11.5 lbs Pilsner liquid extract
1.13 lbs Vienna Malt grain
1.00 lbs Flaked Soft White Wheat grain
0.50 lbs Aromatic Malt grain

Steeping grain 155-1588 deg F for 30 minutes then a 90 minute boil.

Hop schecdule using Styrian Golding Hops:

2 oz. for 90 minutes
1/2 oz. for 20 minutes
1/2 oz at 2 minutes

I plan to pitch White Labs WLP Saison Ale yeast for fermentation and then pitch White Labs WLP 655 Belgian Sour Mix 1 for aging. Bulk age for at least six months then bottle.

I am most interested in any comments, advice, or recommendations.
 
Ok- I started the Saison de Provision batch today as mentioned above. The specialty grains smelled wonderful while steeping as well as the wort during the boil. It will be interesting to see what we have here in the months to come.
 
Yesterday I pitched a vial of White Labs WLP 655 Belgian Sour Mix. Then I put the primary fermentor into a water bath with an aquarium heater and raised the temp to 80 Deg F. Any suggestions on how much longer iI should live it in the primary before going to a secondary fermentor. And then any suggestion how long I should leave it in the secondary at 80 degrees?
 
Hello everyone. I'm really sorry not to respond earlier but simply haven't looked in on this thread in a long time. All three Lambic batches are still sitting in the carboys on their fruit. I snuck a taste and you couldn't taste the fruit in either of them-each one tasted a bit like a brandy. They were not bad, but not great. I think they need more time to develope.

The Saison de Provision is still sitting in a carboy as well and is starting to taste pretty good. I am considering carbing and bottling this one in the next few weeks or so to give it a few months to bottle condition before the summer gets here.
 
Thanks for the thread! I recently tried a Peach Lambic and absolutely loved it. I decided to make some since it's:
1. So expensive
2. So delicious
3. Something I haven't brewed yet

My plan was to make 2 batches, using the same primary and using different fruits in the secondary. I was wondering if it's a good idea, and it sounds like it is. I'll be watching to see how your turns out.
 
I bottled my Saison de Provision batch last night. I had originally planned to re-pitch WL 655 Sour Yeast after the Belgian Ale Yeast slowed down but for some reason never got around to it. I did add the dreggs of an Orval though. This beer is tasting realy good. I drank about 8 ounces that was left in the bottling bucket and it left me wanting more.

I can hardly wait to see what some bottle conditioning does to this.
 
You don't really "primary/secondary" a lambic. You want to leave it on the yeast cake so the bugs have something to munch on. If you do rack it, steal a bit of slurry and then rack the rest into the secondary. Don't add fruit for at least 6 months, better a year or longer so if can develop it's character and you can decide what kind of fruit will fit it or if it needs blending.

The best thing you can do with sour beer brewing is have lots of non-sour beer around, have some place you can forget about it to put it and make keep making more to fill up a pipeline and have blending material.
 
I tried a few of the Saison's this weekend and they were really tasty. My son and I both tried one and it was a refreshing beer. I am definitely going to make two more batches this fall. One for me and one for my son.
 
My Lambic's are still sitting patiently in their carboys. I decided to just let them "bulk age" as suggested by others. Each one has been going for a little better than a year. Now I think I see the beginnings of a Pellicle on the Rasberry and the Cherry Batches. I'm guessing I want to just leave them undisturbed????? See what happens??

If they do indeed turn out to be Pellicles do I leave them alone until the pellicles fall in then bottle?
 
Is there no one on this forum that could offer me some helpfull comments or advice?

Both batches have been ageing for a bit more than a year. The Rasberry batch definitely appears to have a pellicle forming-its whitish-gray and spreading across the surface pretty fast. The Cherry is progressing more slowly.

Am I correct in thinking that if a pellicle is forming its best to leave it alone until the pellicle falls through.

Right? Then carb and bottle it?

I would truly appreciate any comments or advice someone my have to offer.
 
Is there no one on this forum that could offer me some helpfull comments or advice?

Both batches have been ageing for a bit more than a year. The Rasberry batch definitely appears to have a pellicle forming-its whitish-gray and spreading across the surface pretty fast. The Cherry is progressing more slowly.

Am I correct in thinking that if a pellicle is forming its best to leave it alone until the pellicle falls through.

Right? Then carb and bottle it?

I would truly appreciate any comments or advice someone my have to offer.
I hope someone who know what they are talking about replies, I've only done one batch and it's still going.

I saw what I believe to be a pellicile on it when it was in primary, then again when it racked it to the fruit. I waited for that to fall out before I did anything with it.

Good luck!
 
Hello Mike, I think this is like most everything else. If you know it, it seems simple. If your new to it, it seems mysterious.

Good luck on yours, and Merry Christmas.
 
This isn't so much a question of pellicle as gravity like other beers. Brett may continue down to almost zero. If the gravity is still high then wait, at a year, you might be fine. Just rack under the pellicle.

Hope this helps.
 
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