Fortuitous

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sockmerchant

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So about a year and a half ago I brewed a tripel. I was not very happy with it. While the brew day and fermentation went very smoothly, the bottles took forever to carb, and the beer had an odd caramel aftertaste that, while not disgusting was very distracting in something like a tripel.

Long story short, I wrote the batch off as a loss, but left it at the back of the brew cupboard. At about 5 months it was still barely carbonated. A year later I stumble on some of the bottles, fridge them and gave them a try. Lo and behold, it was a very nice tripel. The previously off putting caramel was now quite faint and a positive addition.

However, I was clearly running low on bottles at the time and reused some of the 750ml PET bottles I aquired when i started brewing. Now... I may have been a bit slopy in my bottle cleaning, because every single PET bottle of this beer smacks you in the face with Brett horseblanket. If I gave you one of these and told you it was an oud bruin, you'd say "thanks, this is a decent oud bruid".

I have no idea how every single PET bottle managed to aquire it while none of the glass ones did. I havent actually brewed a belgian sour before, even though I quite enjoy them.

So, I've been sipping away at a few of those for the past few weeks. Tonight, once again not feeling up to 750mm of oud bruin, I decided to try some blending with a belgian amber i recently made. This amber isnt bad, but its a bit... full for my liking. Probably a touch too much biscuit (5%). Anyhow, turns out a 50/50 mix of the brett tripel and the amber makes a darn nice beer.

It gets under my skin when people think they can blend away bad beers, turning them good. But in this case, by blending two decent beers it made an awesome one. Being better than either of its two parts.

So, I've blended 6 bottles to see how they change over time, and stuck another few in the fridge to keep em as they are.

I have kept a bottle to reuse in some future brett experiments. There may well be more than just brett in there, but I get mostly brett from it.

This experience has persuaded me its time to deliberately brew a sour, most likely an oud bruin. I may do a split batch, with half commercial pitch, and half home acquired brett and possible other bugs. See how they differ.

The blend:

IMG_48491-e1360837148680.jpg
 
Darn for a second there I thought the thread might be about creating a Yazoo Fortuitous clone.

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/yazoo-fortuitous/163025/

I have only drained poured a few beers and even then it was after a long aging period to see if things improved. In almost all cases there were great improvements with age unless it was a session/hoppy beer.
 
Alas, I have not even heard of that beer

I was thinking I was fortuitous that I acquired some random brett :)
 
Always good to see aging help taste on a beer you were about to toss.

I made a brown ale back in september that had the worse aftertaste I'd ever had....I almost tossed the batch but instead I gave some to my brother and left he rest in my basement. Now, 5 months later and after some extended cold aging these are drinkable and I almost like them! That is a big improvement from the initial taste that I couldn't stomach more than 6 oz of!
 
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