My birthday plan...

[Rivenin]

Thought you guys may enjoy this...
I'm brewing up 10 gallons of a lambic type base beer...

Fairly straight forward
10lb pils
8lb white wheat
.5 maltodextrin
6oz aged hops at 90

5 gallons is going to get a coolship in the garage (probably just going to leave it in the kettle to cool off overnight)

5 gallons is getting a starter i'm building up with older saison yeasts i've had in the fridge
WY 3724 Belgian saison - best by 8/14/2012
WLP 585 Saison III - best by 11/8/13
WLP 566 Saison II - best by 4/3/15
WLP 670 Farmhouse Blend - best by 10/2/14 (my birthday last year)
- This bottle gushed about half of the yeast out... i was surprised!

Now comes the fun part...

I'm holding a bottle share the day after my birthday on the 3rd... should be about a dozen or so non pasteurized sours and we're going to have a dedicated "dreg dump" mason jar.

Going to split said dregs into each of the 5 gallons and put them away until next year when i can bottle each batch (probably just half of each) then have a bottle share again during my next birthday adn drink the beer we did the year before...

.... as long as the "Coolship" method gives good beer... but i'm guessing it should be fine as it's only a day and then i'm using dregs to hopefully only get a bit of the yeast/bacteria in the air.

 

[slarkin712]

Sounds cool. I've never used a coolship or done a true spontaneous fermentation. But I believe you can acidify the wort to discourage certain kinds of bacteria from taking hold. If I were to do a spontaneous ferment that's what I would do.

 

[Agate]

If you're only waiting a day before adding dregs, I don't think I'd worry about pre-acidifying the wort from the coolship. Some of the bacteria contribute to flavor development down the road, and you should get plenty of microbes in the dregs to generate some acidity and start fermentation. Love the idea!

 

[Rivenin]

Didn't think about acidifying the wort at all, but am doing 6oz aged hops to help out on that end a bit. but yeah, was thinking since it's just a day (maybe about 36 hours from brewing to pitching) i figured it would give just enough time to get just enough "funk" from the town and my garage.

If this works out though i think i'll continue to do this once or twice a year just for the heck of it. Lambic wort isn't expensive at all to mess around with.

 

[Rivenin]

Here is the starter with a bunch of different expired yeasts for the sour saison

Here is what a 13 gallon boil looks like in a chop top keggle with 4500w full blast... LOL

http://vid9.photobucket.com/albums/...l/Brewing/VID_53621213_182503_zpsixynn5vs.mp4

AND! here is the beer sitting around 200* in the bucket / coolship

(this was on october 2nd)
Hit 1.054 btw.

Finally started a krausen last night as well, took almost 3 days to show activity as well... but this is some of the cleanest looking krausen i've ever seen...

And here was the tasting (almost the full tasting, opened a pinchy jeek barrel aged pumpkin ale after this was taken)

(my son muggin in the background)

the plan did deviate a bit as well...

The saison only got dregs from upright gose

the sour / coolship ale got the dregs from...

Bruery - Tart of darkness
Boon - Geuze Mariage Parfait
Almanac - Citra sour
Verboten - Roll in ze hay
Degarde - Dry hop premiere
Trinity - Sauvinage

 

[Rivenin]

The Krausen is looking strange...

it looks like giant soap bubbles! it's an odd one for sure...

 

[Melana]

Happy Birthday btw...

 

[feinbera]

One thing you can try next year is stepping up those dregs a couple times to give the bugs a bit of a head start. I've done this a few times – it can take a week or two for them to wake up and chew through 1/2 - 1 cup of 1.020 wort for the first step, which to my mind implies they're a little too slow to get much of a crack at those simple sugars before the sacc eats 'em up if you don't step them up first. But after that first step-up, they'll make quick work of a second 1.040ish step and be raring to go for your main batch.

 

[Rivenin]

I like that plan... And one i will remember! at least step them up once and let most of the "air-microbes" do the talking.