Had some fun with sours today

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Today I did the most playing around with beer I've done in a long time. I had a high gravity saison (w/ 3 lbs of honey in a 5 gallon batch) that never carbed up in the bottles. I should've pitched fresh yeast at bottling, but I didn't. I let it sit too long before bottling and the ABV was too high for the tiny bit of yeast that might have been left to be able to carb it up.

So, I decided to decant it into some 1-gallon fermenters and blend it with a couple different sours I have working.

Saison - Land of Pilsen Honey - super high gravity saison with 3 lbs. of clover honey and fermented with the Wyeast French Saison yeast - about 12.3% ABV

Sour #1 - Chris' Tall Ale - basically a strong belgian blonde ale dosed with dregs from 2 cans of New Belgium/Brewery Vivant's Escoffier (brett) and 1 bottle of Jolly Pumpkin's La Roja - approx. 1 year old - FG 0.996

This one tasted a lot like a Jolly Pumpkin beer. The dregs from that one bottle really seemed to take over and overwhelm the brett from the Escoffier. I used my super cheap paper pH strips and it looks like this one is around 4.5 or so, by my estimation.

Sour #2 - County Western - A dark sour brewed with a bunch of brown malt and fermented with ECY-20 Bug County - approx. 6 months old - FG 1.000

This one has some strong coffee flavors from the brown malt along with a light sourness, probably from the lacto in the Bug County. I would estimate the pH to be somewhere around 4.7 or 4.8.

What I did is blend together four 1 gallon mini-batches from those three beers.

#1 - Saison + Sour #1
#2 - Saison + Sour #1 + 1 lb. peaches
#3 - Saison + Sour #2
#4 - Saison + Sour #2 + 1 lb. tart cherries

Then I also brewed a batch of a simply blonde wort with low IBUs and topped up the two carboys of sour beer. That was an addition of close to two gallons of 1.064 wort in each carboy. I'm guessing those two large carboys and the four small fermenters will all get somewhat more sour. There is definitely some sugar left in the saison, so the blends without fruit should still have a chance to sour further. The fruit obviously will provide some sugar for further souring as well.

It was probably the longest brew day and the most work I've put into beer in a long time. I probably could have done all of that quicker, but I wanted to make sure I kept track of what was where and how it all tasted. I'm really excited about the Chris' Tall Ale. It is a really clean and simple sour beer. The County Western is interesting, and I knew I was taking a risk going for a dark sour. I am looking forward to the small batch with the cherries; I think those flavors might really pop. As the plain County Western continues to age, I'm guessing it will continue to sour as different bugs take over and do their work. I have one carboy with 4 gallons of County Western that hasn't been touched, as well as the one with the added blonde wort (approx. 5 gallons.).

Before today, I had about 19 gallons of 3 different sour beers aging. Now I have about 24 gallons of 8 different sour beers. I'd say the work was worth it.

Also, being near Detroit, my wife and I went to HopCat for dinner to celebrate our anniversary and they had all of their beers half off in celebration of the SCOTUS decision on marriage equality. A good day all around.

 

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I bottled these last week and tasted some samples. I added just a bit of some T-58 to make sure they'll carb up in a reasonable time-frame.

#1 - Beautiful sourness with some funk and the honey comes through really well. The flowery/clovery honey essence seems almost concentrated. (The honey comes through in all 4 of these variations, and I'm really happy about that)

#2 - About the same as the unfruited version. The peaches didn't come through much in the sample. I expected the peaches to be subtle, though, so I'm not disappointed. I'll be curious to see if the peach comes through more with some carbonation. Another week or so before I dare open a bottle to find out.

#3 - Coffee notes are just about gone. All sour up front that melts away into chocolate covered cherry.

#4 - Again, with just a small sample it was hard to note a major difference between the fruited and non-fruited version. This is slightly lighter in color, due to a smaller volume of the dark beer. The cherries took up space that would have otherwise been filled by the dark beer.

I'm really happy that the honey still comes through so well in all of these. And I guess these are technically sour braggots, because of the high percentage of honey in the saison that makes up half of each of these batches.

I got 10 bottles out of both of the non-fruited batches and 9 bottles from each fruited version. I'll maybe crack open one or two on NYE to check for carbonation.

I'm also going to bottle up a full 4.5 gallons or so of the non-blended dark County Western beer this Tuesday. I'll also be brewing something up to pitch onto that cake in order to keep the ECY-20 rolling forward.

I have a second carboy of the County Western that has had dregs from several other sours added to it. I'm planning on adding some wood to that one soon. I have a full variety of wood choices in the form of those Black Swan honeycomb barrel alternative things. Haven't had the guts to try one out yet, mostly because I can't decide which one to use.