My Wait and See Experiment - Brown Ale Kriek

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goofiefoot

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Let me preface by saying I know nothing about Lambic brewing. I'm certainly not sure if this even qualifies, or what I will ultimately end up with.

Visiting Mount Hood, OR, I got to sample both varieties of Double Mountain's Kriek. They describe it as a brown ale base fermented over cherries. So, I decided to brew a clone of Doryman's Dark ale from the Pelican Brewery Pacific City, OR, and see what happens.

Here's my base recipe:

9.25# Pale Ale Malt
1.25# White Wheat Malt
1.10# C40
0.25# Dark Chocolate Malt

0.50oz Magnum (60 mins)
1.00oz Cascade (30 mins)
2.00oz Mount Hood (0 mins)

US-05 Yeast

I doubled the recipe size and fermented all 10 gallons together for 10 days. I split the batch from there - 5 gallons straight to keg, and the other 5 I racked over 9 pounds of Oregon Tart Cherries, canned in water. I pitched a package of Wyeast 3763 Roeselare into this batch.

I had fermentation activity within 24 hours, and now it looks to be complete. All the cherries are floating, and the krausen has subsided.

From what I have read, the Roeselare does best with a longer wait time, so I am prepared to let it sit for up to 18 months in the carboy. Of course, I'll sample it along the way to see how it's doing.

Thoughts?
 
Sounds interesting.

I am by no means an expert at sour/funky beers, but I have been doing some research and experiments...

The one thing that catches my eye about your recipe is the hops. Do you know what IBU level this brew is? My understanding is that the Lacto and Pedio in the Roeselare won't like anything over 10 IBU, and will likely be completely inactive at 20+ IBU. The Brett should be ok, so I'd expect your brew to have some Brett character (funky and maybe just a hint of sourness), but won't have much if any lacto/pedio sourness.
 
"My understanding is that the Lacto and Pedio in the Roeselare won't like anything over 10 IBU, and will likely be completely inactive at 20+ IBU"

This isn't correct entirely. While higher IBU levels will mute the Lacto, Pedio will continue to chew away. The bad thing with high IBUs is that they will be accentuated with the lack of body that a sour has. There are limits to what Pedio can take, but my first sour was ~25 IBU and it is nice an sour...and too bitter.
 
Oops. Yeah, my IBUs are expected to end up around 45. Probably should have checked on that. Makes for a darn good brown ale, though. :rockin:

One thing I realized is that I neglected to check my gravity after transfer. The FG for the 10-gallon primary was 1.012 (down from 1.062 OG). I know the cherries and liquid offered more sugars to ferment, but I'm unclear how to calculate additional ABV on a previously fermented beer, or if I even need to worry about it. There was a good deal of activity from the Roeselare, so I guess I need to check the gravity now that it is finished and see where I am. In theory, it should be the same, if not a little lower, correct?

Knowing my IBUs might be interfering with the overall mix, should I re-think my overall timeframe?
 
Two things, first the additional IBU's will fade over time. about 25%/yr is what I have heard (verification someone?) so if you go 2-3yr aging you should be better balanced, of course that can be 18mo in fermentor, 18mo in bottle... Speaking of bottles if you go that way I like 750ml corked for sours. they age out better.

Second, for the gravity - you know the qty and starting gravity of the original beer, so what you need to know is the starting qty and gravity of the cherries. you formula for rough OG on the whole shebang is ((OG1*Vol1)+(OG2*Vol2))/(Vol1+Vol2)=True OG
 
Google the can of cherries. You can get an approximate of the sugar content from the nutrition label.
 
You'll still get plenty of sour with over 10IBUs. I did a saison and pitched a sour culture (ECY20) and it was at 25ish IBUs. Pedio is not very hop sensitive, and some lacto cultures are not very hop sensitive either. Some lacto strains shrivel up and die at the sight of hop acids.
 
Ok, so I found that each can of cherries has 33 grams of sugars. I used 10 cans, so this gives me 330 grams total sugars. I am adding this to a solution that already contains a beer with a gravity of 1.012 and ABV of 6.6%

How does one calculate the gravity that the cherries add to the 5 gallons of beer to come up with the OG2 from Jacob's equation?
 
Ok, so I found that each can of cherries has 33 grams of sugars. I used 10 cans, so this gives me 330 grams total sugars. I am adding this to a solution that already contains a beer with a gravity of 1.012 and ABV of 6.6%

How does one calculate the gravity that the cherries add to the 5 gallons of beer to come up with the OG2 from Jacob's equation?

1 lb of sugar = 454 grams = 46 gravity points.

330 grams of sugar = 33 gravity points

Your OG was 1.062 (I think that is what you said).

I assume the volume you are working with is 5 gallons (the volume in the fermenter before adding the cherries).

Effective OG = (62*5 + 33)/final volume.

Lets assume the 10 cans total 1 gallon (to keep it simple)

Effective OG = (62*5 + 33)/6 = (310+33)/6 = 343/6 = 57. The effective gravity would be 1.057 .... yes, lower than you started with.

To get the actual gravity after addition of the fruit, you would do the same calculation replacing the 62 with 12 (gravity before adding sugars was 1.012). Using the same volumes assumed before, gravity = (12*5+33)/6 = 93/6 = 15.5, or gravity = 1.016.
 
Quick update on this brew. I racked off the cherries on Saturday and bottled (god, how I hate bottling) the batch. I had about 4 oz left and gave it a try. It's pretty darn good! I would imagine age will do nothing but improve the flavor, but it had some funk, had some sour and actually kept some of the goodness of my original brown ale.
 
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