First try at a Lambic

Hey guys... next week some time I'll be brewing my first Lambic. I have a little more research to go, but I know there is a wealth of knowledge here on HBT and I thought I'd post my plan and see what advice there was.

Here is the recipe:
5# light dry extract
3.3# wheat dry extract

2.0 oz Hallertauer hops that have been aged 3 years

Wyeast Lambic Blend #3278.

Plan:
1. Brew on brew day as normal. Pitch yeast pack into primary
2. Primary for 1 week at 70-72
3. Rack to secondary (fill secondary with CO2 first to inhibit mold from fruit)
4. Add 10# peaches. Peaches have been cubed into small pieces and in freezer
5. Attach blow-off tube to secondary
6. Add 2 oz of French medium roast oak chips
7. Let sit for 1 year.
8. Bottle
9. One more year...
10. Enjoy.

I saw somewhere that I will not be able to use the bucket again for regular brews after using it for a wild brew. My first question is should I be running the secondary in plastic or glass? If I use glass, can it be cleaned enough to reuse?

I know that the plastic fermenter will allow some oxygen to pass through, but glass should not. Oak barrels used in true Lambic production allow the passage of oxygen through the barrel.

Also, I have seen some using a regular yeast and then adding the Lambic blend after primary fermentation is done. Wyeast suggests dumping the package into the primary fermenter by itself. Should I try to stir up some yeast during racking from primary to secondary to ensure that a wide variety of yeast/bugs are present? I don't want the natural flocculation over the primary fermentation to change the profile of the yeast too much. I see a lot of guys not racking to a secondary, which would prevent the need for this.

Let me know what you think... I'm excited about this brew! All came about because the gf wanted me to brew a clone of Lindeman's Peche... I know this won't be a clone, but she enjoys a good lambic. I won't be pasteurizing or back-sweetening mine.

 

Oak chips are unnecessary.

 

generally you will leave the lambic in the primary for one year, then secondary ontop of fruit, then leave for another year. Then bottle.

 

I second the one year in primary, on the yeast. Rack onto the peaches, and check to see when the FG is stable.... Then you can bottle and age as long as you like. Peaches in the secondary that early, and you will lose some of the aroma and taste. If you wait and age it on the peaches later on, you can preserve some of that nose and taste of the peaches.... How many peaches per gallon are you looking at adding? Apricots give a great peach flavor too

 

I would suggest at least attempting a small mini-mash for this type of beer, also 1wk fermenting is far too short, think about a minimum of 6mos before you do anything especially adding fruit

I would also suggest adding 0.25# of maltodextrin or lactose to help the complexity of the beer

I would also suggest against deciding beforehand what type of fruit to add, IMO sours dont work well like that, you have to taste the beer and see what type of fruit will fit the flavor profile of the beer after its got some age, otherwise things could clash

Like Apache said, oak is unnecessary, personally I would run with a glass carboy for 6mos -9mos before thinking about fruit, and yes glass can be cleaned and used for "clean" beers

If you interested, I wrote up a post about blending and fruiting sour beers here

 

I picked the 7 day mark after reading through some of the other posts. I must have misunderstood what was going on. I've seen some guys pitching a regular ale yeast, and then racking to secondary. What is the thought process behind this? is it to speed up the primary fermentation? Maybe this is where I saw the 7 day primary, but didn't realize what was going on.

I wanted to stay away from that process because I was using the Lambic blend, so I feel that the necessary yeast should be present in the pack. Should I use a blow off tube or can I get by with the regular stopper and airlock?

10# of peaches... That should be enough to get a decent peach flavor. Did a peach wheat with about 8-9# of peaches, and it turned out peachy, but after a while you had to concentrate to taste the peach. Lot of people enjoyed it, because it wasn't in-your-face peach, but the Peche lambics are definitely a peach kick. The other batch was a wheat beer, but the peaches were only held in for 30 days. The 1 year secondary of the lambic should put a peach kick into it.

I'm kinda surprised there is such a consensus against using oak. I figured that the oak barrels that are used in belgium would almost require oak chips used in some fashion to achieve similar flavors. I may have read into the advice wrong, as in "use oak if you want to, but not necessary" vs. "don't use it!"

Ryane... checked out your post. It was extremely interesting and informative. I saw someone else post about maltodextrine. Shouldn't the lactobacillus produce the lactic acid in the beer? Also, when you specifically talked about the three different types of profiles, is there a way to guide the beer towards one from the start? I.e. temperature or fermenting vessel?

I know there is a lot of ?'s here, I basically just realized that I haven't done 10% of the research I need. I've been putting this off and putting it off to try and do more research, but I figured I should just go ahead and do it to finally get moving on it.

And finally...Thanks guys!

 

For a lambic, pitch your lambic blend and put the carboy away for a year. It should sit on the yeast cake. Majority of acid in lambics does not come from lacto, but from pedio. I pitch some malto typically. This will provide some fuel for the brett and pedio. Brett and pedio are super attentive together, so what ever you pitch(including peaches) will be completely fermented. If you want it to taste sweet like peaches, you need to pastorize it or use non fermentable sweeters(sacharin) or add the peaches and drink it quickly. I like oak in mine and the oak cubes give a place for the brett to hang out. I use like an oz, I boil them quickly first and dump that water.

I would suggest getting the wild brews book, it is really good.

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Looks good overall, but I'd make a few changes. Wait until you have a nice funk presence before you add the fruit (6 months-1 year). Also, the chips aren't necessary, but if you want an oak presence I'd go with oak cubes as they impart a more complex flavor. I'd also add some maltodextrin to the boil as well.

Here's a good article on extract lambics:
Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine - Beer Styles - Lambic Brewing

 

I have the Wild Brews book, and the Yeast book by Chris White. I just recently got them and haven't had the time I needed to read through both.

0.25# of malto dextrine has been added to the recipe.

The oak I have is actually cubes, I should have specified that in the initial post.

Any heads up on what I saw for the 7 day primary?

 

Possibly bad information, possibly old information. Homebrew knowledge evolves and some things that were done 10 years ago (or even 5) are considered less effective techniques.

Some sours, like flanders reds and oud bruins, can actually be fermented with a neutral strain and then racked into secondary and then the souring agents are pitched. Lambic is somewhat different because people tend to pitch everything up front and let it sit on the trub. So you might have been reading something about those styles of sours.

To clarify on the oak issue, lambic is usually fermented in barrels but the barrels are so old and so well used that any oak flavor would have been stripped out a long time ago. So even though it is barrel aged there is no oak flavor coming from it. It's not the end of the world if you want to add oak but it's not necessary.

 

RAM,
Thanks for the info. One other question... Should you aerate the wort prior to pitching the yeast? I see a lot of info about O2 in the wort producing acetic acid, but this focuses on the fermenter type. Is there another thread or has anyone addressed wort oxygenation prior to fermentation?

Thanks!

 

I think acetic is a longer term issue, Acetobacter converting ethanol to acetic acid? I assume the sacc. contained in the blend would make short work of any initial aeration that's done.

 

Acetic acid won't be a concern at the beginning, it's a long term issue. The initial O2 from aeration will get taken up by the yeast during fermentation.

However, I would not aerate too much because pedio can die in the presence of too much oxygen. I would just shake the fermenter for a few minutes. Your lambic should be a low gravity beer so the yeast should be able to start fermentation in a day or two without a problem.

 

When would you add maltodextrine? To the boil?

 

Add it to the boil, at least for 15 mins. Sac yeast cannot ferment it.

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about the type of yeast to pitch and the exact timing, I would recommend to start the fermentation with a neutral strain, then add a lambic profile yeast.
why? the fermetation will start better and sooner with cervisiae (and avoid infection) and the lambic strain will do the rest: cervisiae cannot break some complex sugars chains, as you know, but wild yeasts can and then, will still have the possibility to develop longer than the first one.

it is ilso possible to add both at the start: wyeast packages for this purpose are blends.

Laurent

 

I would just buy a lambic blend and add it as it sits in the package. When lambic producers utilize a cool ship they certainly don't get 1mil/ml yeast per degree plato. So if you are under pitching with the lambic cultures I don't see it as a bad thing. In fact I EXTREMELY underpitched a saison using a lambic blend and it didn't start fermenting for 3-4 days. I added heat finally and it took off.

 

So I brewed Tuesday. Now it's Thursday... I guess I was under the impression somehow that the primary fermentation was a slow process, therefore I could put just a little under 5 gallons into a 5 gallon carboy and put a 3 piece airlock on top... Two days later, I have the leaning tower of fermentation sitting atop the carboy. I'm just glad that this didn't clog the airlock while I was at work last night... That would have been a gigantic mess to clean up. At this point, the mess was limited to only the cabinet that I store the fermenting beer in. It's now sitting in the bath tub with a blow off tube on it...

 

I've been thinking about a lambic for a while now. Keep updating! I'll take any advice I can get!

 

Brewhound: just go for it.

Guys, the primary fermentation has been extremely aggressive. I put this into a 5 gal carboy for the primary, thinking that due to a long primary phase I wouldn't need to worry as much about headspace. somewhere in the 24-48 hour range, I had the leaning tower of fermentation sitting atop the airlock. I switched to a blow-off tube and put it in the extra bathroom tub that I'm not using. at day 10 now, and the fermentation is still going at a strong pace. Is this to be expected? I have to admit, this caught me by surprise.

 

That's how mine was. I had a gallon of headspace and filled three two liter jugs with foam. After the primary finished I mixed up all the yeast at the bottom and racked it into the secondary. This way I can see the pellicle when/if it forms.

 

Did you fill the jars with any type of sanitizing solution? seems you wouldn't want to return anything back to the carboy unless it was from an empty/sanitized jug, but then again you'd want some type of sanitizer to create the airlock effect and prevent anything from returning to your beer.

how exactly did you set this up?

 

I just dumped out the foam.

 

My first lambic has been sitting on the cake for about 4 months now, the initial fermentation was also very aggressive for the first 7 days or so. Similar to other advice here, I plan to let it sit in the primary 10-12 months before pitching fruit.

Will the lambic blend be viable enough to bottle condition after a year or should I pitch a clean ale or champagne yeast when I bottle?

 

Mike,

It sounds like one of the best ways to go about this is to brew a second lambic about 6 months after your first, and then blend the two together to bottle. You get the sugar and active fermentation from the second batch, plus the complexity and flavors from the first batch. This results in a highly carbonated, complex beer.

Just my 2 cents, I'm there's another recommendation available. Pick up Wild Brews if you haven't yet.

 

That sounds like a plan. I have read about blending for complexity but I hadn't considered it being beneficial for carbonation.

With multiple carboys tied up for months on these lambics it looks like I'm going to need to buy a few more!

 

I brewed a batch, fermented with ale yeast and want to sour it. If I add brett to the primary and store it for a year, do I have to worry about autolysis or would the brett clean that up?

SALUTE!
~XM~

 

The brett will take care of it. Did you add any maltodextrin for the bugs to munch on?

 

The brett feed on the dead yeast. To sour, you will need to pitch pedio too. Some say pitch together, some say stagger by a few months. I like to pitch together with 8 ozs of malto. I prefer to primary with a blend, sours much faster. My scotch ale that I pitched roselare into secondary with malto is just slighty tart and funking after a year. Letting it ride for another.

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I did not add any malto, i was going to do a quick 1gallon extract batch to bring volume up..i'll add malto to that. how much for about 6 gallons total volume? (i am not trying to hijack the thread, but this is my first one too)

 

8 oz is plenty. Are you going to pitch brett and pedio to your 1 gallon batch?

Edit: just realized this post put me over 1000. Time to celebrate!

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No worries about adding to the thread... I hope that other new lambic brewers can find something to help them along.

How long before the pelicle forms? It looks as if the most aggressive part of the primary fermentation is starting to slow down... I'm curious to know when I should be looking for the pelicle. I pitched the Wyeast blend right from the start.

 

It might or it might not form a pellicle. I don't think it will until you open it a few times.

 

The pellicle will only form in the presence of enough oxygen. I have a saison going with a lambic blend that should be done in a month or two as soon as the brett breaks down viscous snot from the pedio. Anyway the beer has no pellicle and neither does the other half of the batch with just brett/saison blend.

 

From other posts that I have been reading they say to just keep it on the yeast cake. So what is better?

If I use LME could I just do 5# Briess Gold Extract and 3.3# Briess Wheat Extract?
I want to try making a Blackberry Lambic.

 

So what's better. Leaving it on the yeast cake for the whole time or doing a transfer?

I want to make a Blackberry Lambic. But I would prefer to use LME. Should I just do 5# Light Liquid and 3.3# Wheat liquid extract?

 

Leave it on the yeast cake for a year give or take then transfer it onto the blackberries.

 

GRATZ ON 1k!
I will be pitching a bret blend, probably from WLabs, all into the other 4g that has finished its primary. this will bring the final volume to 5g before i add fruit some time next year. going to keep 2 one gallon samples to age and blend back and as a starter for a second batch later.

SALUTE!
~XM~

 

I've read that in several places, but I'm not sure I agree. I have some in glass fermenters with airlocks which only have a small air space, and they have pellicles. They should not have any oxygen in the airspace, so I'm a little confused about it.

The Brett feeds on the decaying sacc yeast. That's why you leave it on the cake. I usually ferment with just Sacc until the beer starts to clear and form sediment, then I rack it off (with a lot of yeast still in suspension) and then add the bugs to it. This gets it off the trub, but still leaves a lot of yeast for the Brett to work on. Then it stays there for a year.

Extract is fine. Use the lightest you can find. Go 100% wheat if you want (Wheat extract is usually 50/50 wheat/Barley). 8 ozs of maltodextrin would also help, adding non-fermentables for the bugs.

 

Airlocks only keep oxygen out when the fermentation is producing large amounts of CO2. During the extended aging of lambics, diffusion of oxygen through the airlock+water happens. This is why you will see pellicle formation