HopHoarder
Well-Known Member
So some yeast does then need to be added along with dextrose just before bottling?
HopHoarder said:So some yeast does then need to be added along with dextrose just before bottling?
Would you be are to share a calculator site ?
So I brewed 30 liters (8 US gallons) of this recipe (mildly modified) this past Saturday, I cooled it down to 16C (~61F) and pitched the Wyeast 3763 blend despite Beersmith's warnings that I should have made a 1.4l starter (for 1.058 OG/30 liters).
I do realize that I underpitched by quite a margin but my lag time was about 30 hours and the fact that my (fresh) Yeast will produce extra esters/phenols/higher alcohols doesn't bother me much since I'm keeping the temperature low and I will let it mature for a loooooong time (as is appropriate for the style).
I'm curious about something: everybody seems to include a "clean ale" yeast at the beginning and/or together with the 3763 blend that already includes an appropriate Saccharomyces strain for the Style.
http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=194
"...Specific proportions of a Belgian style ale strain, a sherry strain, two Brettanomyces strains, a Lactobacillus culture, and a Pediococcus culture produce the desirable flavor components of these beers as they are brewed in West Flanders. Propagation of this culture is not recommended and will result in a change of the proportions of the individual components. This blend will produce a very dry beer due to the super-attenuative nature of the mixed cultures."
My question is why?
Why do we want the "clean" strain to eat up most of the fermentables and create a minimal ester/phenol/higher_alcohol profile with just a pittance of fermentables for the "secondary" strains to eat?
Isn't the idea to let the exact bug profile that Wyeast labs have developed to represent a Flander's Red Sour Ale do its work?
I'm genuinely curious as to what the brewmasters here have to say about this...
My sourness level isn't where I want to be at 3mos. My sach finished at 1.016 which seems low after reading through the thread. Even tho it's early I'm going to add some MD. Since MD has an SG potential of 40pts, a 1/2 lb should get me from 1.016 to 1.020 in a 5 Gal batch.
It's about time to start the next batch... (the sour must flow). this time I'm mashing in crazy high 158-162. wish me luck.
eastoak said:i would not worry about the sourness level at 3 months, if you used sour bugs it will be sour come bottling time. it's very hard to predict how sour a beer will be by tasting it 3 months in, i would claim it's impossible. how can one tell that a 1.020 beer will be more or less sour than a 1.016 beer? i'm not saying you should or shouldn't add MD just that adding it is not directly related to the level of sourness.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but if your sacch strain finished at 1.016 that leaves .016 sugars left for all those souring bugs that can eat the dextrins the sacch cannot and therefore logic says a lot more sourness will be produced. Fwiw .016 worth of dextrins is probably a decent amount to work with to get you the sourness desired.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but if your sacch strain finished at 1.016 that leaves .016 sugars left for all those souring bugs that can eat the dextrins the sacch cannot and therefore logic says a lot more sourness will be produced. Fwiw .016 worth of dextrins is probably a decent amount to work with to get you the sourness desired.
Alcohol is less dense than water, so there are more than .016 worth of sugars left. Approximately twice as many, in fact. Depending on the proof, most liquor has a specific gravity just under 0.800 Not that all of those remaining sugars will be fermented, but they're in there.
When you add oak into these beers, do you let the oak sit in water or beer or whatever for a week or two before putting it into the secondary for... the duration of the secondary aging process? How long do you leave the oak in there? I'm thinking of using american or french oak cubes.
Thanks!
If I used WLP530 and WLP001 in primary then racked to secondary onto rosalare... how different would the two versions be?
i put some red wine in a mason jar along with oak cubes then put it in a pressure cooker until it got to max pressure for a minute. i vented the cooker, got it open, screwed the lid shut and let it sit on the counter for a couple of weeks. this killed any weird bugs that may have been in the wood and pushed the wine deep into the wood. i dropped the chunks into the better bottle (after the ropey phase had cleared up), they have been in there for 3+ months and the sour tastes fantastic so far.
I just brewed this today but just used a packet of us-05 and all the white labs bugs they had at the brew store: B. clausenii, B. lambicus, B. bruxellensis and B. bruxellensis trois. My concern is that the second runnings (with s-33) are bubbling up a storm, but the carboy with all the bugs and us-05 is completely still. Both yeasts were pitched @ 80 degrees farenheit. Am I just being paranoid?
I've been researching sours for a while now and came across a process for souring your wort before the boil by chilling your mash to under 90, pitching your bugs, and keeping in a carboy as warm as possible. The author claimed it soured extremely fast and the boil kills off the bugs so you don't have to worry about contaminating your equipment. I will try to dig back up the article so I can link it here but I was wondering if anyone has tried this and what your results where.
I'm not looking to rush a Flanders Red or Brown. But I would say its could be a great way to dial in on the tartness of the batch.
Thoughts, suggestions, and feedback welcome.
Now that you mentioned Sour mashing I do believe that is exactly what it was about. The article went on to say it eliminates the need to rack sours for extended periods of time and still get a great result.
I was surprised not to have seen any mention of it throughout this thread. Is there a downside to sour mashing, I would imagine if you can cut your process down from 1-3 years to 1-2 months it would have come up more.
Thank you for your insight. After you mentioned Sour mash I was able to locate a few good threads and articles. Looks like the sour mashing is used more towards your Lambic and Berliner Wise styles and not really applicable to a true red or brown flanders due to the other bacteria's used to create their profile.
Doing this on the weekend. Just want to be sure about my starter. Plan is to use 1056 and do a starter first plus also pitch Roselare blend at the same time (I will not do a starter with the Roselare blend).
I understand the importance of starters but have been reading stuff about the ratio of the Roselare blend (i.e., bugs to sacch) so you definitely don't want to do a starter for it. So I guess what I am wondering does pitching the 1056 (starter or not) throw off the ratio of the Roselare blend. Hope that makes sense.
Probably over thinking this.
Anyway, should I be good to go with 1056 starter plus Roselare blend (no starter) all at the same time?
If you're set on adding 1056, pitch everything at the same time, but there really is no need to pitch 1056. Roeselare already contains a sacch strain and is intended for primary fermentation.
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