Beer Connoisseur article on traditional Lithuanian brewing. No-boil + hop tea?

the rest

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Cool, thanks!

So i bottled up the batch with the British yeast today. OG was 1.084 FG was 1.032, so only about 60% attenuation. I tasted the hydrometer sample i took and right away got a punch of raisiny flavour followed by a lot of residual sweetness. I'm not sure if this is from the extract I used (never used extract before), the grain bread i added into the mash or the fact that the beer didnt seem to have finished fermenting. I ended up with 3x500ml and 2x12oz bottles from this batch. I'm letting the flemish ale batch sit for a year so no real news on that one. we'll see how the beer tastes once carbonated.

Got some greenery for the MLT coming on Tues. Hope to have some leaf hops by then also if the LHBS has any left in stock.

Still undecided on yeast, but I've got a pack of S33 at the ready. I'd prefer to use something with a bit more teeth like Notty...

Alfa's in - got it from the middle of the slice so it's still green. Smells awesome, fresh. Should go great in the tun, ordering grains this next week sometime. Think I'm going to go with T-58 for the yeast, that way I can ferment it high (80ish). Still on the fence about the hops.

Maybe Magnum. Or Columbus. What to do, what to do...

Also still massaging the brew schedule - thinking i should make the loaves the day before, then treat them like a kvass, and "mash" them overnight in a slow cooker and add that into the tun with the leftover grains.

Sounds cool sumbrewindude. Keep us posted on how it turns out.

I tasted a bottle of my British yeast last night and wow was I pleasantly surprised. The flavour profile has greatly improved with just one week of bottle conditioning. Residual sweetness has toned down and the dried fruit flavours have become more pronounced, yet not overwhelming. A nice winter warmer for sure. Now I wish I had done this earlier in the winter and brewed more of it, lol

Dang it Hammis, now you're making me want to try out the S33. I always keep a few packets in the fridge for those uh-oh moments. I've been trying to make a few recipies that would use the remainder of the T58, so a couple wit's and a belgian just in case. Still need to get the grains on order, it's been a crazy week and it's only Monday.

I need to figure out pictures on here, I have a feeling this is going to be one of those Kodak Brews, if ya dig.

Has anyone cultured up the yeast from Jovaru Alus?

I don't think many of us have access to any of the cool Lithuanian farmhouse brews, I'm trying to get one of my friends who lives in Vilnius to ship me some, but I'm not sure how it will survive transit.

That's awesome, if you manage to get some Lithuanian farmhouse ales and the yeast survives, maybe we can do a trade. I'm in Ontario and have a few interesting strains.

Alright, doing this today.

Had hoped to start this up yesterday and bake the bread/overnight soak in a crockpot, but work called me in and I lost a full day, so this will be truncated a bit.

Grains for 1.5gal S23 Keptinis: Reserving 3# of grain for mash, 14oz for bread.
2lb 2row
10oz Munich 10L
10oz Rye malt
10oz Carastan

From that I mixed all the crushed grains, and removed 14oz of mixed grains and put them into a food processor and ground it to near flour, and mixed in 1oz of sugar. Placed into a mixing bowl and added water slowly until it started to turn to glue, then added a large dollup (1tblspn) of clover honey, and continued mixing. Added regular flour to transfer to a flat sheet with parchment paper and flattened the "bread" down to fill a 13x9 tray. Into the oven at 350F for 45min, watching for browning. Tasted very sweet going into the oven, hoping for some caramelzation at the end of the bake.

Plan is to take that bread, crumble it, and put it with the mash. Mashing 120min at 2qt/gal will give me 1.75gal of first runnings and be enough to clear my 15min boil. Have alfalfa for the MLT, and will be using 0.5oz Pacifica hops in the mash (old, need to get used). Once the mash is done, it's a 15min boil with a 0.5oz Warrior addition at 10min. Then crash cool into fermenter, pitching Safale S04 (Whitbread), and into a water bath with fishtank heater to 78F for 5days then to ambient (65F).

Hoping this goes well! If I can figure out how to get pic's of the wife's Iphone I'll try to get them up here.




EDIT - Baked to 1hr, top and sides are done, bottom's a little sticky yet. Put another piece of parchment paper on it and flipped it, removing the bottom parchement carefully - it's back in the oven for another 15min upside down to finish. Tastes great so far!

Edit 2 - Baked 90min; 60 one side, flipped, 30 the other side. Crust is done, insides at temp, still sugary sticky in the middle. Think the honey had something to do with that - got some "help" to crumble it into the tun.

Edit 3 - 60min into mash, mashed in at 153F @ 2qt/lb. Temp is holding strong at 151.8. Strong odor of "tea" from the alfalfa/hops mix, color looks like tea also. Stirred well, buttoned it up for another 30min.

Edit 4 - Even at 2qt/lb I missed my boil volume. Had to quick sparge to make the 1.85gal I needed for 15min. Shame, had 16.5P on my first runnings. Going into the kettle with 13.8P and a hard boil. Hot break is crazy...

Edit 5 - Final numbers at just over 1.5gal into the fermenter, 15.3P - getting the water bath ready. Not sure if I should start with 78F immediately, or let S04 start then move. S04 takes off and finishes fast, may just put it in immediately and hope for the best.

Now to figure out how to put pics in here.

SBD - Sounds good. Don't eat all the bread before you brew!

Fermentation took off after 4hrs, fish tank heater's only keeping the waterbath at 76F it seems, lower than I'd hoped. SWMBO took off with her Iphone shortly after the madness started, so I was forced to use the old Sony camera (which I'm having a terrible time finding the transfer cable because someone *ahem* didn't put it with the camera case...).

Have pics, as soon as I can get them out of the demon photo box I'll upload 'em.

Definitely and interesting experience in brewing!

Radegast said:

...One of the styles involves making spent grain bread then crumbling it back up into the wort, pre-fermentation...

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marsav said:

...The bread is made not from spent grain, but from mash dough....

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I am finding these two statements interesting.

While I guess grains that have been mashed could be called "spent grain", I guess that grain in a thick mash with no sparge would indeed be different from "spent grain" after a sparge.

So is that what the second comment means? And if so...what about the water from the mash?

In that case I suppose it could be like a pseudo Berlinerwiess, but there's a couple things I'd like to mention with the mash/spent mash (at least the way that I did it, right or wrong).

The addition of the hay/straw/whatever really made quite a mess in the mash - even with it bagged separately, it soaked up wort and floated up vs staying at the bottom of the tun (like I've seen with spruce branches, etc). So trying to separate the grains from that addition would prove to be a real pain. Also, when I made the bread (and added to the mash, not the wort) I ground up the grain reasonably fine and used water/honey as a binder with no yeast to raise it. Just a regular flat bread with crust, which was fine on it's own but the moment it hit the hot water it disintegrated back down into grains. I'd imagine you'd have a spectacular mess in your fermenter with the amount of bread that I added, roughly a quarter of the total grain bill.

After reading up a few times with the articles and the websites posted, it really is a shot in the dark AFAIC, unless you really have access to the process all we're doing is adapting established techniques to fit hearsay.


Whiffed the airlock on my Keptinis last night - smells of fruity "tea". Bubbling away like a mad-man in there, almost makes me wish I'd have tried an open ferment with it. Maybe next time...

sumbrewindude sounds cool, let us know how it turned out. I have a DVD about craft beer in lithuania, it's pretty interesting and shows how they use the hay as the filter bed at the bottom of the mashtun, so they fully anticipate that some of the grain will get mixed in with it. Unfortunately the video is only in lithuanian, otherwise I would try to rip and post it.

I was also able to reference a book from the 1930's and from what i found, the grain "bread" (term used VERY loosely), was literally just milled grain pulled from the mash tun after 1 hr of mashing, the liquid was drained off (and added back to the mash) and the remaining removed grain was loosely formed into "loaves" (again, that term is very loosely used) and baked for an hour

Hammis - Can do, as soon as I can figure out how to get pics off the camera I'll up load them also.

So, technically the bread should have been added to the wort and not the mash? I based my process off of Kvass, and a BYO recipe's process as I couldn't find a lot of info on the bread inclusion.

Huh. Well that might change some things around, I guess it really would be close to a Berlinerwiess - the major difference being though that they have a top-secret, super-aggressive yeast to pitch immediately that probably helps with the no-boil thing.

Dang it, I guess I'll have to re-tool and try this AGAIN. :rockin:

BTW, I know I posted a quick and dirty recipe in my above post, but if anyone wants the whole shenanigan I'll post it up.

From what i understood of the text i read, the bread goes back into the mash. For this particular style from what I can gather, they typically didn't boil the wort, hence the use of a hop tea (which would have been added right into the fermenting vessel). Like you sumbrewindude, i changed the recipe a bit to experiment. Either way I this this has been a very worth while thread and experiment and I will definitely be brewing more of this beer in the future

I did the boil mostly because of the hay. I have no idea what's been hanging out in/on/under it for the last 6mo's, and I'm pretty sure something stuck it's snout in it. Rather than end up stuck on the toilet for a half hour, I figured the 15min boil was worth it to at least give the icky-nasties a good sucker punch.

And if I'm boiling for 15min, why not make "tea" in a hop bag, if you dig what I'm saying.

Either way, I'm going to brew this again and possibly change up a few things like the yeast/etc. I'm not sure I'll do the bread again, as I'm not sure what it actually added to the mash - part of that may be due to the fact that I made the bread prior to doughing in vs pulling/draining and then baking. That actually might have a different effect, especially with caramelizing the sugars that have already been leeched from the grains.

Hmmm.

And lacto. More than likely will pitch some kind of lacto next time.

I agree with the boil, i did the same to sterilize as well as concentrate the wort. Lacto would be super cool. The small batch of Flemish yeast I did fermented out but the Brett/Pedio/Lacto portion doesn't seem to have done anything yet (no pellicle sp?). Thoughts?

What yeast did you pitch? I'm assuming it was a combo yeast like Roeselare 3763 or something. I would have expected to see something within 3 weeks/month.

I want to try a saison yeast next, probably the Belgian strain from Wyeast (3724), or for an off the wall, pitch a spoonful or two of plain greek yogurt. I remember someone else doing it on here and it ended in a beautiful disaster.

Man, now you've got me wanting to brew again. Thanks Hammis....

Bringing this back to the top -

Exciting day - other than the torrential rain and the backyard becoming a pond/swamp.

Bottling day for the Keptinis! Honestly had no idea what to expect on this one - fermenting S04 at 78F (according to the product sheet that's on the extreme end, and I was guarenteed some esters from it), a 15miin boil on AG, two fist-fulls of alfafa in the mash-tun, a full oz of Warrior hops, a third of the grain being mashed bread.... success or sucks-ass.

Bottled it all up with the Domino sugar cube trick (really, this is now becoming my favorite way to bottle, thanks Rave808!) and tasted a sample at the end. Its really weird, but in that exciting/different way not the "oh crap it's a dumper" way. Definite esters, but fruity. Strong rye bite, with an upfront calm bitter from the Warrior, and finishes slightly caramelly sweet, 6.5% according to the calc. Can't wait to get this carbed up and try one then - there are definitely somethings I want to change (sub Bravo in for the Warrior, change up the yeast to a Belgian Saison), but believe it or not this will be brewed again.

It's wild.

Check back in 2 weeks for updates, and hopefully photos... seriously, where did the stupid camera cord go....

Snuck a bottle and tried it early.

Carb was still a little low, but overall it was fine. Drank cold it's got a ton of fusel alcohol flavors, more than likely from the hot S04 ferment. A little disappointed on that front. Once it warms up to room temp the fusel taste hides into this pepper/rye/fruit ester thing and it's crazy easy to drink. Way better warm than cold. Can't taste the "tea" from the alfalfa anymore, the rye is way more prominent. Also the hops went from a slight citrus to a just a blah bittering. Color is beautiful, the small head was great for an undercarbed 6.5ABV beer.

It's not bad at all, but I definitely see some room for improvement, hoping to see how it is when it ages up a little.

I'll be making more. it's just too much fun.

Gentlemen, I found a video about Alus

What a pleasant surprise to see this thread alive, and all the experiments you guys are trying. And @VonSchmitt such a great find of the video. It's published recently, I wonder if I should go and try finding those brewers in Rokiškis..

A couple of interesting points regarding the life of Keptinis:

- there's a new effort of commercial Keptinis by Dundulis brewery - they collaborate with a famous local bread bakery Biržų Duona to bake the rye malt breads! The beer is called Kurko Keptinis, here are some photos from the process: http://dundulio.lt/blog/archives/1486

- on a side note, they also made a one-off stone beer brew, another nearly forgotten Lithuanian farmhouse tradition, photos here: http://dundulio.lt/blog/archives/1589)

- yeasts from as many as 5 Lithuanian farmhouse brewers were recently sent to a specialised yeast research facility in UK. The last brewer (whose sample is still on the way), is ok with commercialising his yeast. If this works out it could become available from some US yeast producers similarly as the new Norwegian farmhouse yeast Kveik. If you can get your hands on Kveik, I'm pretty sure you can use it in Lithuanian farmhouse beer recipes. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Norway, Finland are pretty close to each other geographically and there's quite some similarities in their brewing traditions.

Gah! What a treasure-trove of obscure information this is! Thanks y'all!

I came here after reading this.

I'm definitely going to try my hand at some of this.

About the bread: way I understand it, this looks like rustic way of performing a decoction mash. Remove some of the mash grains, heat them (in this case quite extremely so, as the video shows), and return them to the mash.
The whay the straw stopper thing works is much clearer now, too. Sometimes, you really need to see things to truly understand them.

Also: I believe the no-boil really is necessary. Boiling brings out the hot break, and from what I've pooled together now, a vital part in appreciating these kind of rural ales is precisely the heavy protein content.

I've a friend from Ukraine (I know, not the same as Lithuania but probably comparable where beer is concerned) who's promised to get me some authentic kvass recipes from his grandparents. Let's see how they compare to Keptinis

marsav, would you happen to have a mash dough bread recipe?

Something I need to try...

Kupiskenu Keptinis - Lithuanian Baked Beer.

In a very nice 1-Liter Swing Top!

Has a nice carmel and bready taste....nice. Not much in hop flavor.

http://m.aukstaitijosbravorai.lt/?url=http://www.aukstaitijosbravorai.lt/bravorai-ekupiskio.html

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I'll be visiting Vilnius next week for a few days. Any good places to visit to try these?

JKaranka said:

I'll be visiting Vilnius next week for a few days. Any good places to visit to try these?

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Anyone still working on this or try Omega yeast Jovaru™ Lithuanian Farmhouse?