Mort Subite Framboise Lambic Clone ??

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Lambics are one of the most complex styles to brew. They use a complex mix of different microorganisms (the blended lambic cultures you can get from White Labs or Wyeast are a good start) and take many years to mature.

If you're interested in this style, I highly recommend reading "Wild Brews" by Jeff Sparrow.

This article is a decent introduction: Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine - Beer Styles - Lambic Brewing

If you don't want to wait 2+ years, you could try making an American style wheat beer, adding a ton of raspberries and some lactic acid, then back-sweetening with splenda. That won't taste anything like a lambic, but the combination of fruit+sour+sweetness might be close enough for your wife.
 
If you don't want to wait 2+ years, you could try making an American style wheat beer, adding a ton of raspberries and some lactic acid, then back-sweetening with splenda. That won't taste anything like a lambic, but the combination of fruit+sour+sweetness might be close enough for your wife.

I think I'll do both.
I'll start a raspberry lambic and wait a couple years for it. If I screw it up, oh well, lessons will be learned. In the meantime I'll try a wheat beer with raspberries.

Any recipes??
 
Just like the women to pick one of the most difficult styles to brew. When SWMBO is looking for a beer I make her help me prepare fruit for a simple wheat beer as it goes into secondary. Some have been good and some have been O.K., but when she takes bottles to co-workers of "her" beer and drinks it at home all is well on the beer brewing hobby front. Much quicker gratification so that your stops to LHBS are easier to swallow.

I must disclose that my wife is a laboratory scientist at a hospital so lactobacillus and the like turn her stomach. :D
 
I think I'll do both.
In the meantime I'll try a wheat beer with raspberries.

Any recipes??

Extract or grain?

The main thing is to make a clean base beer with low bitterness and no hop flavor/aroma. I'd start with something like:

4 or 5 lb wheat DME (depending on how alcoholic you want the end result)
1 oz Saaz @60 mins
Clean ale yeast (eg. WLP001)

That'll give you around 15 IBU. You want to undershoot on the OG, because you'll get more alcohol later when you add the fruit.

Wait until primary fermentation has subsided (a week or two) then rack into secondary, and add 5 lb of raspberries. It's a good idea to use frozen ones, as freezing breaks down the cell walls which makes them easier to ferment.

This will kick off a secondary fermentation. Once that is done, bottle or keg as usual. You'll get some sourness from the fruit: if this isn't enough for your taste, you can add food grade lactic acid at this point.
 
...or you could make a pLambic (psuedo-lambic) with the above recipe by souring your malt over a day or two, boiling to kill off the lacto, then proceeding as normal. Check out the wild/lambic forum for tips on this technique.
 
Back
Top