Pitching on a Gose cake

[FatDragon]

I've got a co-pitched Gose that's going to get some hop, coriander, and osmanthus flower tea with its priming sugar in a couple days, and I'd like to pitch a new batch on the cake on bottling day. The cake has US-05, a mixed probiotic with L. Plantarum probably doing the bulk of the heavy lifting for souring, and a bit of salt, but no hops to inhibit the lacto.

One big challenge is that I don't have any wheat for a Gose or Berliner. I can use flour, but even with BIAB that limits me to no more than 30% wheat. Alternately, I've got some rye flour I could use the same way, and oatmeal is another option.

My initial thoughts are a Berliner with rye instead of wheat (bad idea?) or a watermelon Gose with about 16 liters of beer and another four liters or so of watermelon juice added after a week or so of fermentation. Viable? Bad ideas?

I'm also very open to other ideas as long as they don't involve buying extra grains (no time before brewday, but I've got some various specialty malts and grains on hand). I've got some harvested Belle Saison and Brett (not sure what strain, harvested from Boulevard Saison Brett 2015) that could be added to the party if that sounds like a good addition for a prospective recipe.

So anyone have any inspiration to offer?

 

[Soulshine2]

oh boy, try the rye. rye tends to lend a dry spiciness , might be good. Maybe some white corn meal to keep it light in body and not bring much color to the party. I dont see oatmeal doing anything positive for it .
what is osmathus as far as flavor...I see it being very fragrant but its from olive so Im a bit confused as to what it will taste like.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Good, you found a Lacto blend that works well?

I personally don't care for rye. I love wheat malt; it goes into almost all my beers. You can't get it at all, ever? If I didn't have access to it I would be trying shredded wheat cereal or wheat pasta. You don't have spelt do you?

I don't think you need to fit beer to a style. A pale sour will be good without having to assign a German city name to it.

A Brett beer will need to be aged vs the Lacto-only, so that's your call. I have a pipeline of traditional Brett sours but I also brew Lacto sours and accelerated Brett sours to keep up with demand.

I would only use 25-35% of the yeast cake. You don't want to make the next beer salty, or do you? (and that's a large overpitch).

Cheers

 

[FatDragon]

Good, you found a Lacto blend that works well?

I personally don't care for rye. I love wheat malt; it goes into almost all my beers. You can't get it at all, ever? If I didn't have access to it I would be trying shredded wheat cereal or wheat pasta. You don't have spelt do you?

I don't think you need to fit beer to a style. A pale sour will be good without having to assign a German city name to it.

A Brett beer will need to be aged vs the Lacto-only, so that's your call. I have a pipeline of traditional Brett sours but I also brew Lacto sours and accelerated Brett sours to keep up with demand.

I would only use 25-35% of the yeast cake. You don't want to make the next beer salty, or do you? (and that's a large overpitch).

Cheers

It's the same probiotic as last time, but started better, I went overboard on the sanitation of the fermenter and ferm chamber, and I decided to keep the temp at regular ale temps rather than warming it up for the lacto, which almost certainly contributed to the infection last time. I'll probably give it a bit of extra lactic acid at bottling, but it's not not sour, so I'm calling it a success.

Wheat malt is available, but not on this timeline. Anyway, I brew so little these days that I prefer to use ingredients up rather than buying more. Pasta is a good idea to limit the stickiness of the mash as compared to using straight flour. I like a rye beer, but I've never had a rye sour...

Good call on using only part of the yeast cake. I'm not worried about the minimal saltiness, but the pitch rate is worth thinking about. I'm on your side that a beer doesn't have to match a style, but style guidelines can also be good inspiration.

I'll probably leave out the Brett this time. On one hand, I could probably wait on this brew as far as my own drinking is concerned, but on the other hand, this might be a good chance to make something small and refreshing that my breastfeeding wife would be comfortable drinking once in a while without worrying about getting our six month old daughter tipsy.

oh boy, try the rye. rye tends to lend a dry spiciness , might be good. Maybe some white corn meal to keep it light in body and not bring much color to the party. I dont see oatmeal doing anything positive for it .
what is osmathus as far as flavor...I see it being very fragrant but its from olive so Im a bit confused as to what it will taste like.

Osmanthus is very fragrant and lends a big perceived sweetness. It can be pretty candy-like. It's also easy to overdo. My rule of thumb is not to go more than a gram per liter - at that rate I've had a Saison that finished bone dry still taste fairly sweet, and that was balanced out with Sichuan peppercorn. I have a friend who did something like a kilogram in a 300 L Saison early on at his brewpub. It was more or less undrinkable.

 

[FatDragon]

It's in the books. I decided to go simple and light - hopefully light enough for the wifey to have one on occasion. 2kg 2-row "wizard malt" (I call it that cuz it's from Oz), 1 kg domestic whole wheat flour. Mashed in 15L RO water with 6g gypsum, 4g CaCl, and 10 mL lactic acid for about an hour at around 66-67C while I bottled the Gose. Did a little decoction mash out for about 20 minutes because I want to see if mashing out might help with head retention. Squeezed the bag. Gave it a little 10-15 minute boil (no hops). A quick chill to 40C and top off with 9.5 liters of cold RO water, then siphoned straight into the fermenter with maybe half of the yeast cake from the Gose. I'll probably do something similar on bottling day to what I did with the Gose: 10-20 grams of domestic Saaz boiled five minutes or so with the priming sugar for a few IBUs and a tiny bit of aroma. The Gose got 10 g coriander and 20 g osmanthus as well, but I'm probably going to leave this one super simple. Maybe treat it like a Berliner Weisse (it's in the ballpark for the style) and serve it with syrup of some kind.

 

[FatDragon]

Oh, and this was my third and best attempt at the ultra low profile brewday so far. Prep while the kids (and usually the wife as well) are napping, then do everything else after bedtime and leave the kitchen and everywhere else my brewing or cleaning takes place cleaner than I left it. Totally nailed it this time, with the bonus of an ultra low profile bottling session for the Gose during the mash as well. Between the short boil and topping off (saves a ton of time ramping up temps and chilling wort with my crappy immersion chiller), and even adding 25 minutes or so for the mash out process, everything but the prep work was handled within three and a half hours, from starting the flame under the kettle for my strike water to putting the clean kettle away.

 

[RPh_Guy]

That's cool. My brew day has gone the opposite way.

I've been loving hop tea post-fermentation. I get a ton of flavor and aroma. The first time I used way too much because I didn't know it would be so potent. Great flavor with no grassiness, harshness, or risk of oxidation. No extra time needed to extract flavor.
I'm surprised the hop heads haven't caught on to doing this yet.

Cheers

 

[FatDragon]

Been busy, but I'll probably bottle this soon and I had an idea: why not add some Brett at bottling?

The challenge: my source of Brett is a several-months-old slurry from a previous batch and it's mixed with Belle Saison, a diastatic strain. My instincts tell me that adding this mixture at bottling will cause gushers or bottle bombs, so I should probably add it to the fermenter a few days before bottling. Come to think of it, I used that slurry in the store juice cider I'm fermenting, so...

Do I:

Use the fridge slurry, which is old, or the cider cake, which is active but has acclimated to a medium of simple sugars?

And do I:

Pitch straight into the sour fermenter, make a vitality starter to get the yeast moving, or make an acid shock starter before adding the Belle/Brett mixture?

In any case, I imagine a week (that's when I'll have another chance to bottle) will be fine...

 

[Gnomebrewer]

Brett can ferment dextrins and starch anyway, so it's irrelevent what the sacch yeast is. I'd just add a mL or so of the old Brett/Belle slurry to each bottle - use heavy bottles to prevent bottle bombs and keep them somewhere they won't do damage in case they do explode! What's the FG of the beer you'd be adding Brett to?

 

[RPh_Guy]

I strongly caution against adding Brett or diastaticus Sacc strains at bottling...

Each gravity point fermented adds 0.51 vol CO2, and both strains can potentially ferment down to 1.000. The higher the FG, the more dangerous.

There are ways to do it, but not like this.

 

[FatDragon]

Brett can ferment dextrins and starch anyway, so it's irrelevent what the sacch yeast is. I'd just add a mL or so of the old Brett/Belle slurry to each bottle - use heavy bottles to prevent bottle bombs and keep them somewhere they won't do damage in case they do explode! What's the FG of the beer you'd be adding Brett to?

I definitely don't like this idea - I want to be sure the Belle/Brett has had time to reach FG before bottling so I can get predictable carbonation and avoid gushers and bombs. It's not like I've got a couple cases of Belgian cork and cage bottles lying around anyway.

 

[Gnomebrewer]

I've been loving hop tea post-fermentation. I get a ton of flavor and aroma.

I'm going to try a hop tea on my next quick sour. I'm not a big fan of hop forward beers but want to see what these are like. I'll use galaxy, because I've go a (figurative) ton of it at the moment from this year's harvest. Adding it to 4.5 gallons of a 4.2% sour (50/50 pils/wheat malt). How much hop, how much water and boiled for how long do you suggest? Do I add the liquid only, or hop-much as well?

 

[RPh_Guy]

0.75 oz / 5.5 gal adds plenty of flavor in my experience, enough to get a good feel for the hop character.
... So 0.61oz (18g) per 4.5 gal. Not much of a dent in your ton.

I definitely don't like this idea - I want to be sure the Belle/Brett has had time to reach FG before bottling so I can get predictable carbonation and avoid gushers and bombs. It's not like I've got a couple cases of Belgian cork and cage bottles lying around anyway.

It might take months to fully attenuate.

 

[FatDragon]

0.75 oz / 5.5 gal adds plenty of flavor in my experience, enough to get a good feel for the hop character.
... So 0.61oz (18g) per 4.5 gal. Not much of a dent in your ton.


It might take months to fully attenuate.

Why would that be? My normal Belle Saison fermentations are done just as quickly as any other beer and often finish at or around 1.000, so the Brett wouldn't seem likely to ferment it any drier in the bottle. Why would this case be any different?

Not trying to challenge you on this, just curious. I'm fine doing a hop tea and bottling this brew clean, but if I can Brett it without a huge time commitment, I'd like to give it a try. I'd drink it like any other beer and get a chance to see how it changes over time with the Brett.

 

[RPh_Guy]

Why would that be? My normal Belle Saison fermentations are done just as quickly as any other beer and often finish at or around 1.000, so the Brett wouldn't seem likely to ferment it any drier in the bottle. Why would this case be any different?

Yeah, you're right. If Belle takes it close to 1.000 before bottling, it'll be good.
I'm just not used to Sacc taking it that low without assistance, sorry! Don't worry about asking me questions if something doesn't make sense. I make mistakes too.

In my experience with adding Brett to sours at bottling, it'll take maybe 1-3 months for Brett flavor to develop, and 3-5 months for it to peak, and it'll continue to evolve after that.