Big Old GUEUZE project - Advices needed!

[Tiroux]

Hey!

I'm really digging into sours and wild beers. After next week brewing marathon, I'll now have 8 filled carboys. 7 of them will contain bretts... 3 of them are lambics (straigh, kriek, flanders red), others are 100% brett of brett aging.

The problem is that I find that 1-2 years is a LONG way for, at final, get only 5 gallons of beer or less.

So I have this 54L demi-john (14gallons) that is sitting around, empty. You see me coming.

My plan is to fill it up with a big straight lambic (around 7-8%) that I will age for a LONG time. Maybe I would brew one by year, buying a 54L demi-john each time... and end with 150L of Gueuze in 3 years... or with a big stock of old straigh lambic to blend with multiple other lambics I will have laying around at this time.


So I want this one to be real great, if not perfect D). I want to hear your advice on the recipe, the fermentation process, the yeast, the bugs, I should use/do.

I brew 5 gallons batch so I will brew and ferment three batches and then transfer to the demi-john with bugs.

Thanks!

 

[soonami]

Couple suggestions.

I would consider making a lower alcohol base beer. Wild yeast and bugs tend to not like higher ABV beers. Most traditional breweries brew a base beer that is 4-6% abv

You don't necessarily need the same amount of each beer. Depending on the brewery, they blend in different proportions. From what I've read Boon Marriage Parfait Gueuze is like 75% old lambic, whereas Cantillon is more like 25%.

It's probably better to have a couple small carboys so that you can innoculate with different cultures, kind of like bet hedging to make sure that you like what you get and you can dump a carboy if it gets acetic or isn't sour enough and blend between them for taste. Also, for later blending, you probably want a couple carboys so you don't have to open the same one too many times and disturb the pellicle and introduce O2. Also as you take out to blend, the headspace in the fermenter will increase, with more carboys, the maximum headspace will be lesser.

Consider a couple different methods of fermenting. There are a few methods:
1. Clean primary fermentation then souring bacteria and wild yeast
2. Saccharomyces + wild yeast at the same time
3. Either of these plus bottle dregs
4. Starter from dregs of your favorite sour beer.
Personally, I started my first batch using method 2 and then started adding bottle dregs. I then repitched some of the yeast into each new ferment and continue to add bottle dregs to it.

Don't bother witha turbid mash. It takes so much work and I'm not convinced that there is any difference between different batches with and without it. I would definitely use unmalted wheat though it's not a nice flavor even if it's a pain in the ass to work with.

Most importantly give it time and don't be too anxious to open it up too early