Cuvee de Tomme clone group project

Since I am now near the completion of my last big beer project, the https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/westvleteren-12-group-brew-swap-121429/ its time to get another one going. Cuvee de Tomme (herefore known as CdT) I think would dovetail nicely with the work done in the previous project as the base beer is Lost Abbey Judgement Day, also a quadrupel / dark strong ale.

What is Cuvee De Tomme all about you ask? It is supreme awesomeness, one of the best beers I have ever had easily. It is Lost Abbeys premier beer and one of their rarest beers. It is made by taking Judgement Day and putting it in a bourbon barrel, and then their lovely sour brett/bug blend is added along with sour cherries. It is very rich, very sour, very complex and very very good. Since this is a sour sour, it's going to take probably 12 months minimum AFTER your base beer is fermented to get the proper sour characteristics and flavors to meld together.

Here's my plan so far:
1: Base beer recipe
As previously mentioned, CdT's base is Judgment Day which is a pretty big and very belgian quadrupel.

I plan on using my Westvleteren recipe I have come up with in that thread as the base for the beer as I feel it is quite good and would fit into this beer really well. If others have good quad/belgian dark strongs that they think would go well with bourbon and cherries then it would probably be a good fit here too.

If we end up doing a competition at the end or just a group swap it would be interesting to see some different base beer recipes.

2: Souring agents
CdT is sour, VERY sour. A lot of patience is going to be required to get it up to the level of sourness you want.

White Labs and Wyeast both make various forms of Brett, Lacto and other souring agents that you could use to get the beer nice and sour. You are at the very least going to need one form of brett, lactobacillus and pediococous. Possible some acetobacter, but I didn't get much acetic when I tried it. It could be interesting to use some wild yeast/bacteria in this beer.

I've been building up a quart mason jar (called The Funky Bunch) that has some starter wort in it with various bugs collected from every sour I can get my hands on. I've put some RR Consecration, Rodenbach Grand Cru, Norrenboro Old Odense, Cantillon Kriek, Oude Beersel Kriek and other sour drugs in and its starting to get some fairly funky action going on. This is what I plan on doing.

3: Bourbon
Lost Abbey uses bourbon barrels to make CdT, so logically something like https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f16/used-corn-whiskey-barrels-group-buy-141631/ would end up being perfect a perfect fit I've got one on the way which I plan on using.

You could alternatively do your souring in a corny keg/conical/better bottle and add bourbon soaked wood, bourbon char, straight bourbon or something else to achieve this character.

4: Cherries and Raisins.
This one could go a lot of ways, but I'm pretty sure they use sour cherries. They could add some frozen sour cherries into the mix after a good amount of souring action is under way, or add sour cherry juice (100% crushed cherries) right off the bat to get the flavor in there and keep from having to deal with decaying cherries in the fermenter.
Someone in my local brew club knows a good source for 100% cherry juice and I was thinking of using that instead of messing with whole cherries in the fermenter. Raisins would be easier to deal with in the fermenter.

Sounds like a fun project to me, who else is in?

I'm researching it a bit and I'll be playing around with the recipe. I'll be in if I can get one of those corn whiskey barrels, it should be really nice. Even if I didn't get one I think I'd still be in, sounds very awesome. I'll post up my plan when I come up with something I like.

I just brewed up The Pious batch 3 (my westy recipe) last week. I think I might brew it again to get started on this and leave a little for topup. I need to get figures for the kind of evaporative loss you get on a 5g barrel.

Alright, Westy 12 didn't have me up in a bunch but this one definitely does.

A few comments...

Souring an 11% ABV beer seems... well, damn near impossible, because most souring bugs don't live much beyond 8%. Lactic acid producing bacteria die around 6-7% and Pediococcus can only handle 8-9%. There is a fair amount of sour character from acetobacter in this brew but it can't possibly be all of it, and I would hate to chuck the bugs into an 11% brew and have it not sour one iota. We're gonna have to figure out how to step ferment this thing so that we can get the 11% ABV of the finished brew and still get that Flanders Red type mouth watering sourness this beer has. I wonder if the key is within the cherries and raisins... perhaps if the base beer ferments up to 7-8% with the bugs, and then cherries and raisins are added to raise the potential alcohol up to 11% after about 6-9 months? Or, maybe the cherries and raisins are fermented with lacto/pedio/brett, and then the soured cherry mash is added to the oak casks when the "virgin" 11% ABV beer is added to them, so it doesn't need to sour any further. Actually the latter seems like the most foolproof method, we might be onto something there...

The barrels have only had whiskey in them for two months so I think it's going to take a few beers cycled through them to get them tame enough to clone this beer. I thought the Bourbon barrel note was there in CdT but pretty low key. I don't expect my first couple of batches going into the barrel to have such a low key Bourbon flavor. It'll probably be knock-your-socks off oak.

saq said:

I just brewed up The Pious batch 3 (my westy recipe) last week. I think I might brew it again to get started on this and leave a little for topup. I need to get figures for the kind of evaporative loss you get on a 5g barrel.

Click to expand...

Given the large surface area, I bet it's quite a bit. I'm thinking 8 gallon batch size. Whatever is left over could be aged and blended into the next batch.

Saccharomyces said:

Alright, Westy 12 didn't have me up in a bunch but this one definitely does.

A few comments...

Souring an 11% ABV beer seems... well, damn near impossible, because most souring bugs don't live much beyond 8%. Lactic acid producing bacteria die around 6-7% and Pediococcus can only handle 8-9%. There is a fair amount of sour character from acetobacter in this brew but it can't possibly be all of it, and I would hate to chuck the bugs into an 11% brew and have it not sour one iota. We're gonna have to figure out how to step ferment this thing so that we can get the 11% ABV of the finished brew and still get that Flanders Red type mouth watering sourness this beer has. I wonder if the key is within the cherries and raisins... perhaps if the base beer ferments up to 7-8% with the bugs, and then cherries and raisins are added to raise the potential alcohol up to 11% after about 6-9 months? Or, maybe the cherries and raisins are fermented with lacto/pedio/brett, and then the soured cherry mash is added to the oak casks when the "virgin" 11% ABV beer is added to them, so it doesn't need to sour any further. Actually the latter seems like the most foolproof method, we might be onto something there...

The barrels have only had whiskey in them for two months so I think it's going to take a few beers cycled through them to get them tame enough to clone this beer. I thought the Bourbon barrel note was there in CdT but pretty low key. I don't expect my first couple of batches going into the barrel to have such a low key Bourbon flavor. It'll probably be knock-your-socks off oak.

Click to expand...

Forgot about the raisins!

First off for the sourness. Yes lacto, pedio, acetobacter don't tolerate alcohol really well, could you possibly slowly train them up to being able to tolerate these levels? I'll have to check wild brews to see what tricks they might be able to offer for this aspect.

However, he does use Brett! Definitely C, maybe some A? Brett tolerates alcohol really well. So that can go in the base beer to get it active.

Wonder what the pH of some nice sour cherry juice is? Maybe if you took that, added the raisins to it, and pitched your funky bunch in there if it would provide enough pH to lower the base beer down with sufficient quantity.

I've been to Lost Abbey, and they have quite a few of their barrels dedicated to Cuvee De Tomme, and on the barrel history sheet the only thing thats been in it is CdT. I think all the other flavors going on help tone down the bourbon character some, so I plan on using a fresh barrel.

saq said:

First off for the sourness. Yes lacto, pedio, acetobacter don't tolerate alcohol really well, could you possibly slowly train them up to being able to tolerate these levels? I'll have to check wild brews to see what tricks they might be able to offer for this aspect.

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A.I.R. just to keep the %ABV down to a level they won't die. Doesn't help us here. Well not directly.

Three strains of brett... C&L are easy to come by. Not sure about any others.

I've been to Lost Abbey, and they have quite a few of their barrels dedicated to Cuvee De Tomme, and on the barrel history sheet the only thing thats been in it is CdT. I think all the other flavors going on help tone down the bourbon character some, so I plan on using a fresh barrel.

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The surface area ratio of a 50 gal barrel vs a 5 is huge though, we will get tons more oak out of a 5 gallon barrel which is why the distillery used them... they wanted to get tons of oak into their product fast so they could get it on the shelves and pay for their gear (they are new kids on the block).

A brew pub here in town has an extra JD barrel they will sell me if I can figure out where to put it. If I can get enough guys to go in with me on this (and find a place in somebody's garage to store the thing) I will use that barrel and we can just split the batch up.

http://kingorchards.com/store.htm?category=Cherry Juice Concentrate
I think a good amount of the sugars come from this. 1.342 OG!

Edit: just ordered 3 quarts

I think I'm down for this. It's a good time to start too, Two months ago there where a S#it load of cherries at the farmers markets around here, so I assume next year they will return. I also have an All Brett C, brew that I will be racking soon to do an All brett triple with the yeast cake, so It will be a good time to harvest some of that. as well I have a good Souring culture going in a corny that needs to be replenished soon.

Looks like my stars have aligned for this project.

I'll have to convince SWMBO to come with me to the bar and shill out $45 for a bottle, so I can have the flavor fresh in my mind.

If you haven't read this yet, although I'm sure you have since it's in the comments of the CdT webpage, I think it might help as there is some info that might be useful:
Clicky.

--edit--
From what I understand is that the bugs have been cultured in house, they probably have mutated enough to survive the higher abv levels of the brew? I assume that's only speculation however but according to the description:

this beer is fully fermented before being placed in Bourbon barrels where the beer ages for one year with the Sour Cherries and the wild Brettanomyces yeast that we inoculate the barrels with.

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How far they hold that to truth... who knows.

juvinious said:

If you haven't read this yet, although I'm sure you have since it's in the comments of the CdT webpage, I think it might help as there is some info that might be useful:
Clicky.

Click to expand...

Looks suspciously like a New World Westy recipe for MOAB. I'm sticking with a traditional westy base. Based off my remembering the tasting experience of Judgment Day (never had MOAB) it does actually taste a lot like my New World Westy.

Well I'm not talking about his recipe specifically, you can come up with your own recipe or whatever. I'm talking about his research which partly seems to come from brew like a monk and wildbrews, but I don't know since I don't own the books although I should.

Ok, so after dinner and cleaning the brewing equipment I sat down and did some reading while drinking a glass of Rodenbach Grand Cru for inspiration. I crack open "Wild Brews" by Jeff Sparrow (you MUST own this, all of you) and find two references by Cuvee De Tomme. One is the general description mentioned in this thread already, and the other is a example recipe for a beer called "Donkere Geneeskundle" that says it MAY have been inspired by Cuvee De Tomme. Lets see what it says shall we?

Pilsener 66%
Wheat 6%
Munich 6%
Aromatic 6%
Caramunich 6%
Special B 2%
Chocolate 2%
Sugar 6%

Mash: 90 minutes at 152
Boil: 2 hours
Bittering hop addition 25 IBUs recommended Challenger
Finishing hop addition .5oz per 5 gallons in the last 2 minutes of the boil with Styrian Goldings as the recommended hop

OG 1.087

Primary: Wyeast 1213 or Wyeast 3763 or White Labs 530 at 63f for 1 week

Secondary: Wyeast 3278 White Labs 655 in secondary for 6+ months at cellar temperature

Options:
Age with fresh dark cherries
Age with used bourbon barrel

That looks like a modified New World Westvleteren recipe that was fermented too cold

It also coinincides with the data in the link juvinious posted.

Wild brews was no help with malolactic fermentation (an option discussed in the awesome Homebrewtalk Chat with Saccharomyces) of cherries/cherry juice to help increase the sourness and possibly cut down on some of the harshness of the malic acid that could be included with cherries and especially cherry juice.

It did however say that Tart/Sour cherries were totally the way to go with any kind of Wild Brew.

Great catch saq. It's right there like he handed it to us on a silver freakin platter. Sub raisins for half of the sugar, and wha-bam. Done.

I think aging in oak barrels for any length of time malolactic fermentation will likely occur whether we kick it off or not since oak often harbors ML bacteria along with many other goodies. I would hate to see it happen after bottling and end up with volcanoes shooting out of my bottles (I know I will be bottling such an epic brew in Belgian bottles... will you?) so I would plan to add ML bacteria along with the bugs to help it along. The Brett will clean up the diacetyl produced by the pedio and ML bacteria nicely. As you pointed out in chat, it is quite possible that ML is the key to getting the lacto sourness they get in this brew, since there should be quite a bit of malic acid in the cherries. Pedio may also contribute somewhat assuming that a lot of the sugar comes from the cherries so that they have time to work before the brew gets pushed over that magic 8% mark.

Ok, found a few other interesting tidbits that will be useful for this project regarding acid production, alcohol tolerances and other goodies

Acetobacter: 18% alcohol tolerance, produces up to 8% acetic acid, needs lots of oxygen, needs about 30 days for optimal growth and likes temps in the range of 70f to 110f.

Brettanomyces: 18% alcohol tolerance, produces both lactic and acetic acid, survives up to a 3.4 pH, needs about 100 days for optimal growth and likes temps ranging from 40f to 95f.

Enterobacter (this is a bad guy): 2% alcohol tolerance and a 4.3 pH tolerance, produces lactic acid, will produce up to .5% acetic acid, 2 days for optimal growth and is good 50f to 122f.

Lactobacillus: Up to 8% alcohol tolerant, 3.8 pH tolerant, produces up to 1% lactic acid, needs 4 days for optimal growth, likes temps 60 to 140.

Pediococcus: Up to 8% alcohol tolerant, 3.4 pH tolerant, produces up to 2% lactic acid, needs 100 days for optimal growth, likes temps 45 to 140.

Sounds like sour cherry juice being 3.1-3.4 pH would really help us lock in a low pH, plus some additional lactic acid from a malolactic fermentation would help smooth out a large amount of cherry juice.

Mmmmmmm, sour cherries. Saccharomyces, how much do you reckon we will we need for a barrel?

http://www.petersonfarmsinc.com/pfi_tart_cherries_product.html

KopyKat said:

Mmmmmmm, sour cherries. Saccharomyces, how much do you reckon we will we need for a barrel?

http://www.petersonfarmsinc.com/pfi_tart_cherries_product.html

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Two gallons of juice concentrate would be enough for the barrel by my calculations. I'm assuming we have 1.087 OG and then bump to 1.095 with 70 brix juice after the pedio have had time to do their thing (3-4 months) since the extra sugar will probably put them out of business.

If we don't get enough interest for a whole barrel I will roll ahead with a 5 gallon batch.

I'm thinking Rodenbach mash. 145*F for 40, raise to 162*F for 30... hopefully that will prevent the primary strain from attenuating too much, leaving more for the bugs to chew on. That's what I'm planning for my Flanders beers anyway...

Yeah, it would be nice to do a barrel but I am not sure if enough people would be into doing it. As I said on my PM, I would be in for 5 or 10 gallons. I would also be good for an equal share on the expenses of cherry juice, yeasts, etc.

Corey is going to host the Jack Daniel's barrel at his house and we have enough brewers committed from the Zealots that we are going to forge ahead with 60 gallons here in Austin area.

I made a pretty tasty clone of this a few years back (recipe is on my blog). It never got as much sourness as the original, but that may be because I used sweet cherries instead of sour. About to give it another try with some sour cherries I bough/froze a few months back. I don’t think the base recipe details are all that important, but some chocolate malt will add to the character.

It is certainly possible to get a big beer to sour with the right bugs. We are currently sitting on a 55 gallon bourbon barrel of ~10% abv wee heavy that went sour through no effort on our part… the good news is that it tastes fantastic (probably better than it would have without the funk).

Oldsock glad to see you signing in on this, your vast experience in sour/funky beers is whats inspired some of my funky efforts

I did check out your post about the sour cherry bourbon quad and how it didn't get that sour. That was a while ago, have you had a chance to try the real CdT yet? It is among the most sour beers I've ever had, wish I could get an extra bottle and a good digital pH meter so we can get an idea of our target pH.

If you want it really sour there's no reason to undergo a malolactic fermentation, as lactic acid is much less sour and sharp than malic acid. Malic acid is the main acid in apple juice, and whenever I do a malolactic fermentation in my ciders (sometimes on accident) it leaves some strange tastes. Heck, with the malic acid in there, you probably don't need any acerobacteria, one less bug step to worry about.

So what is the specific recipe we will be brewing? It looks like so far the below is close to what has been discussed. As soon as it is finalized I will start getting the ingredients bought and ready. I am stoked!!!

Pilsener 66%
Wheat 6%
Munich 6%
Aromatic 6%
Caramunich 6%
Special B 2%
Chocolate 2%
Sugar 3%
Raisins 3%

Mash: 40 minutes at 145° then 30 minutes at 162°
Boil: 2 hours
Bittering hop addition 25 IBUs Challenger
Finishing hop addition .5oz per 5 gallons in the last 2 minutes of the boil with Styrian Goldings

OG 1.087

Primary: White Labs 530 at 63f for 2 weeks.

Transfer to a keg for transport and addition to the barrel.

I had a bottle of the 2008 version and a sample of the 2009, it thought both were sour, but I didn’t find either of them to be that sour. Each batch certainly had a bit more tartness than mine, but not that much more so. Might just be my pallet or the samples I tried.

Beatification Batch #2 from Russian River was the sourest beer I have tasted, it was like taking a sip of grapefruit juice when you are expecting milk.

Freezeblade said:

If you want it really sour there's no reason to undergo a malolactic fermentation, as lactic acid is much less sour and sharp than malic acid. Malic acid is the main acid in apple juice, and whenever I do a malolactic fermentation in my ciders (sometimes on accident) it leaves some strange tastes. Heck, with the malic acid in there, you probably don't need any acerobacteria, one less bug step to worry about.

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I agree, my fear is that it will undergo spontaneous ML fermentation anyway from the barrel, in the bottles... but there isn't going to be as much malic acid as say, red wine, since we only will be using 2 gallons of juice concentrate in the barrel. So if we forego the ML fermentation I will recommend Belgian bottles with corks and wires or bottling in Grolsch-type bottles that can go up to 4 volumes without bursting.

KopyKat said:

So what is the specific recipe we will be brewing?

Pilsener 66%
Wheat 6%
Munich 6%
Aromatic 6%
Caramunich 6%
Special B 2%
Chocolate 2%
Sugar 3%
Raisins 3%

Mash: 40 minutes at 145° then 30 minutes at 162°
Boil: 2 hours
Bittering hop addition 25 IBUs Challenger
Finishing hop addition .5oz per 5 gallons in the last 2 minutes of the boil with Styrian Goldings

OG 1.087

Primary: White Labs 530 at 63f for 2 weeks.

Transfer to a keg for transport and addition to the barrel.

Click to expand...

Looks good to me....

For those who want to forego the step mash, 157-159*F seems like a good target range so it doesn't attenuate too much in the primary fermentation.

Raisins are chopped up and boiled in some of the first runnings before adding to the kettle.

White Labs 655 or Wyeast 3278 Lambic blend goes into the secondary 1 vial per 5-6 gallons, and cherry concentrate added after 3-4 months to give the bugs a chance to work on the wort before giving the Brett a fresh feast. Adding the concentrate with the bugs is an option as well and will likely result in a less sour beer.

I'm planning on adding enough tart cherry concentrate to get to 1.094-1.095 equiv. OG which should be 2 gallons in a big barrel by my calculations. For a 5 gallon batch that would be about 24 fluid oz. in the barrel/carboy if I did the math right (the cherry concentrate is 70* Brix, 1.360 SG).

saq, you wanna add all this to the OP?

Oldsock said:

I had a bottle of the 2008 version and a sample of the 2009, it thought both were sour, but I didn’t find either of them to be that sour. Each batch certainly had a bit more tartness than mine, but not that much more so. Might just be my pallet or the samples I tried.

Beatification Batch #2 from Russian River was the sourest beer I have tasted, it was like taking a sip of grapefruit juice when you are expecting milk.

Click to expand...

CdT is quite sour, not as sour as Beatification. I've had Beatification Batch 1 PH1 (the La Folie barrel!) and Beatification Batch 2. I'm wondering what a good strategy for getting enough sourness in the beer is going to be.

So far I'm thinking of

Primary in conical with 530 yeast to get it fermentd.

After 10 days when it's done (it really only takes 7 at 82f) I'll transfer it into the cleaned barrel.

Top up the barrel (I think I'll be about .15g short) with some of the cherry extract and throw in some Brett C and Brett B and hell Brett L to and let them go to town.

Get a second mini batch (1g? 1.5g?) fermented out and into a 3G better bottle, pitch my funky bunch (lacto, pedio, brett) and dilute it down with cherry extract. Top up the barrel with this as needed.

So what are we looking at with these corn whiskey barrels? Should I be doing a 8 gallon batch to fill the barrel and reserve the rest to top off? I'm not sure I want to blend a second separate batch because of the unpredictability of the bugs.

juvinious said:

So what are we looking at with these corn whiskey barrels? Should I be doing a 8 gallon batch to fill the barrel and reserve the rest to top off? I'm not sure I want to blend a second separate batch because of the unpredictability of the bugs.

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I'm planning 7.5 for the 5 gallon barrel, these barrels vary but are ~5.25 gal.

Ok sounds good I think I'm going to follow nearly the identical route as saq since the traditional westy 12 recipe is indeed awesome. I was pondering about what to do with the raisins since I remove my stove during brew day then I remembered that I have a small gas burner stove. I think I might run the raisins through the food processor (to get the most out of them) take some of the first runnings and caramelize the hell out of them then add them to the boil along with the candi syrup.

I'm thinking of doing the raisins in the barrel, give the brett something else to chew on.

saq said:

I'm thinking of doing the raisins in the barrel, give the brett something else to chew on.

Click to expand...

this will also give you some wild yeasts and added funk this way. good idea.

Right makes sense since you are using juice instead of whole sour cherries. I might just use the whole cherries and deal with the trub that the bugs leave behind.

Freezeblade said:

this will also give you some wild yeasts and added funk this way. good idea.

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I was actually thinking of dicing, rehydrating some and then sauteeing them in some of the cherry juice to cut down on this and then throw them in the barrel.

I asked Vinnie from RR about souring high gravity beers with my split souring system and this was his response.

Actually, Pedio and Lacto don’t work so well with higher alcohol, they really slowdown in growth with the higher ABV, this makes Consecration a little less sour than some of our other barrel beers. We have no problem with souring the Consecration to the level that it is soured at.

Vinnie

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I'm definitely interested in this project. Since I rarely can find time to brew my normal size batches out in the garage I'll probably end up doing a 3 gallon batch of this or maybe 2 3 gallon batches a few weeks apart and blending them.

I'm so excited about this brew last night I woke up dreaming about it.

If this goes well maybe we can get it written up in something like BYO

I was doing some digging about raisins and came across this:
http://www.honeycreek.us/brix.php

18.5 brix for raisins

14-16+ for sour cherries. The local tart cherry concentrate I can get is 68 brix at 1 quart. They also sell frozen pitted tart cherries, I'll have to check the size and cost of those. Last time I bought the concentrate it was between 12-18 dollars for a quart