Rodenbach Clone

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HopHoarder said:
So some yeast does then need to be added along with dextrose just before bottling?

Let it sit a long time on Roselare...12-18 mo recommended by many. Then add yeast and priming sugar like you normally would; there are priming caculators to get the real amount .
 
Bottle it as your would any other beer, but I would highly recommend adding champagne yeast like eastoak suggested. I bottle all of my sours with it just to ensure proper and prompt carbonation. Think of it as bottling insurance for a buck.
 
Interesting thread, I have a a Rodenbach clone for 13 months in a oad barrel.
We plan to brew a second batch somewhere between now and 2 months. After the primary fermentation, we want to blend part of that young batch with the old batch, and put the other part in the barrel (wich isn't completely emptyed).
At the moment allready a extra smackpackl Roeselare in the fridge :D

Can someone tell me your experiences on the method we plan to go for?
 
Great! I'm planning on brewing two 5 gallon batches of Flanders more or less following the recipe as posted on page one. For the first batch though I'm adding around 2lbs of unmalted wheat to give the bretts more to work with. I will have the Roselare and an 800ml starter of S-05 pitched together in the primary and then transfer some of the yeastcake over to secondary. The second batch will be pitched on the remaining yeastcake from the first batch. I also have some used oak spirals that were used in red wine; I'll be putting two spirals in each batch in secondary.
For the second flanders batch, I'll follow for the mostpart the same recipe as the first, but less unmalted wheat and likely add instead some flaked maize. I have 1lb of MD that I will add either to just the second batch or split it to some degreee between batches, depending on my SG before racking to secondary. I'm hoping to do some blending and bottle some of it in November and leave the rest for another year or so.
 
So I brewed 30 liters (8 US gallons) of this recipe (mildly modified) this past Saturday, I cooled it down to 16C (~61F) and pitched the Wyeast 3763 blend despite Beersmith's warnings that I should have made a 1.4l starter (for 1.058 OG/30 liters).

I do realize that I underpitched by quite a margin but my lag time was about 30 hours and the fact that my (fresh) Yeast will produce extra esters/phenols/higher alcohols doesn't bother me much since I'm keeping the temperature low and I will let it mature for a loooooong time (as is appropriate for the style).

I'm curious about something: everybody seems to include a "clean ale" yeast at the beginning and/or together with the 3763 blend that already includes an appropriate Saccharomyces strain for the Style.
http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=194


"...Specific proportions of a Belgian style ale strain, a sherry strain, two Brettanomyces strains, a Lactobacillus culture, and a Pediococcus culture produce the desirable flavor components of these beers as they are brewed in West Flanders. Propagation of this culture is not recommended and will result in a change of the proportions of the individual components. This blend will produce a very dry beer due to the super-attenuative nature of the mixed cultures."


My question is why?
Why do we want the "clean" strain to eat up most of the fermentables and create a minimal ester/phenol/higher_alcohol profile with just a pittance of fermentables for the "secondary" strains to eat?
Isn't the idea to let the exact bug profile that Wyeast labs have developed to represent a Flander's Red Sour Ale do its work?

I'm genuinely curious as to what the brewmasters here have to say about this...
 
So I brewed 30 liters (8 US gallons) of this recipe (mildly modified) this past Saturday, I cooled it down to 16C (~61F) and pitched the Wyeast 3763 blend despite Beersmith's warnings that I should have made a 1.4l starter (for 1.058 OG/30 liters).

I do realize that I underpitched by quite a margin but my lag time was about 30 hours and the fact that my (fresh) Yeast will produce extra esters/phenols/higher alcohols doesn't bother me much since I'm keeping the temperature low and I will let it mature for a loooooong time (as is appropriate for the style).

I'm curious about something: everybody seems to include a "clean ale" yeast at the beginning and/or together with the 3763 blend that already includes an appropriate Saccharomyces strain for the Style.
http://www.wyeastlab.com/hb_yeaststrain_detail.cfm?ID=194


"...Specific proportions of a Belgian style ale strain, a sherry strain, two Brettanomyces strains, a Lactobacillus culture, and a Pediococcus culture produce the desirable flavor components of these beers as they are brewed in West Flanders. Propagation of this culture is not recommended and will result in a change of the proportions of the individual components. This blend will produce a very dry beer due to the super-attenuative nature of the mixed cultures."


My question is why?
Why do we want the "clean" strain to eat up most of the fermentables and create a minimal ester/phenol/higher_alcohol profile with just a pittance of fermentables for the "secondary" strains to eat?
Isn't the idea to let the exact bug profile that Wyeast labs have developed to represent a Flander's Red Sour Ale do its work?

I'm genuinely curious as to what the brewmasters here have to say about this...

i wonder the same thing. maybe they are skeptical that the sour bugs can fully ferment the beer? i have done both; a 3 liter starter i made from the dregs of russian river's beatification pitched into the wort with no clean yeast. recently i've used wyeast abby ale mixed with russian river and jolly pumpkin dregs. there may be differences in the end but i claim that they are not detectable or if they are not detrimental either way. these souring bacteria and yeast can ferment a variety of sugars that clean yeast can't so even in a secondary they will continue to develop flavors over time. i keep my sours on the yeast for the whole time and if i go to a secondary i always add wood, so far it's worked out great for me.
 
I brewed 5 gal of this in august and pitched just one package of rosalere on it. I racked it off the yeast in novemberish time frame, saved the cake. I re-brewed it for 10 gal just after the beginning of the year. This time I put a fresh package of rosalere in each carboy, along with the yeast cake from the first batch (split in two for each carboy). In terms of gravity, they all are down to 1.012 or lower (admittedly I have not taken a sample of the first 5 gal in a while, mainly because it's at the back of my crawl space). The plan is to blend all 15 gal together come this November/December. Half will then be aged on oak for a bit longer, while the other half will be bottled.
 
So after 3 weeks in primary I moved my first Flanders to secondary. SG is currently at 1.02 which may seem a bit high but I mashed high (158 degrees) and used 2.5 lbs of unmalted wheat, so there's a fair bit of sugars in there that are going to give the Brett plenty to work on over time (OG was 1.055). I can already taste a bit of sour funk in there so that's encouraging. I also purposely racked some of the yeastcake over to the secondary.
I brewed Flanders 02 today with a similar recipe only I used only 1 lb of unmalted wheat this time and used 1.5lbs of flaked maize instead. I also added 1lb Malto-Dextrine at the end of the boil this time. I used the yeastcake from the first Flanders for the second (S-05 and Roselare blend). I would assume that this second batch will sour more quickly than the first batch as there should be more yeast and the Malto-Dextrine should help too.
 
My sourness level isn't where I want to be at 3mos. My sach finished at 1.016 which seems low after reading through the thread. Even tho it's early I'm going to add some MD. Since MD has an SG potential of 40pts, a 1/2 lb should get me from 1.016 to 1.020 in a 5 Gal batch.

It's about time to start the next batch... (the sour must flow). this time I'm mashing in crazy high 158-162. wish me luck.
 
My sourness level isn't where I want to be at 3mos. My sach finished at 1.016 which seems low after reading through the thread. Even tho it's early I'm going to add some MD. Since MD has an SG potential of 40pts, a 1/2 lb should get me from 1.016 to 1.020 in a 5 Gal batch.

It's about time to start the next batch... (the sour must flow). this time I'm mashing in crazy high 158-162. wish me luck.

i would not worry about the sourness level at 3 months, if you used sour bugs it will be sour come bottling time. it's very hard to predict how sour a beer will be by tasting it 3 months in, i would claim it's impossible. how can one tell that a 1.020 beer will be more or less sour than a 1.016 beer? i'm not saying you should or shouldn't add MD just that adding it is not directly related to the level of sourness.
 
eastoak said:
i would not worry about the sourness level at 3 months, if you used sour bugs it will be sour come bottling time. it's very hard to predict how sour a beer will be by tasting it 3 months in, i would claim it's impossible. how can one tell that a 1.020 beer will be more or less sour than a 1.016 beer? i'm not saying you should or shouldn't add MD just that adding it is not directly related to the level of sourness.

Correct me if I'm wrong here but if your sacch strain finished at 1.016 that leaves .016 sugars left for all those souring bugs that can eat the dextrins the sacch cannot and therefore logic says a lot more sourness will be produced. Fwiw .016 worth of dextrins is probably a decent amount to work with to get you the sourness desired.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong here but if your sacch strain finished at 1.016 that leaves .016 sugars left for all those souring bugs that can eat the dextrins the sacch cannot and therefore logic says a lot more sourness will be produced. Fwiw .016 worth of dextrins is probably a decent amount to work with to get you the sourness desired.

the souring bugs are using more than just dextrins, they are munching on byproducts made by other bacteria or yeast, dead yeast, trub, wood sugars (if you are using wood) in addition to the usual dextrins/sugars.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong here but if your sacch strain finished at 1.016 that leaves .016 sugars left for all those souring bugs that can eat the dextrins the sacch cannot and therefore logic says a lot more sourness will be produced. Fwiw .016 worth of dextrins is probably a decent amount to work with to get you the sourness desired.

Alcohol is less dense than water, so there are more than .016 worth of sugars left. Approximately twice as many, in fact. Depending on the proof, most liquor has a specific gravity just under 0.800 Not that all of those remaining sugars will be fermented, but they're in there.
 
Alcohol is less dense than water, so there are more than .016 worth of sugars left. Approximately twice as many, in fact. Depending on the proof, most liquor has a specific gravity just under 0.800 Not that all of those remaining sugars will be fermented, but they're in there.

Good point I forgot to figure for that... but still supports my point that there is still a decent amount for all those bugs to chomp on. :mug:
 
When you add oak into these beers, do you let the oak sit in water or beer or whatever for a week or two before putting it into the secondary for... the duration of the secondary aging process? How long do you leave the oak in there? I'm thinking of using american or french oak cubes.
Thanks!
If I used WLP530 and WLP001 in primary then racked to secondary onto rosalare... how different would the two versions be?
 
When you add oak into these beers, do you let the oak sit in water or beer or whatever for a week or two before putting it into the secondary for... the duration of the secondary aging process? How long do you leave the oak in there? I'm thinking of using american or french oak cubes.
Thanks!
If I used WLP530 and WLP001 in primary then racked to secondary onto rosalare... how different would the two versions be?

i put some red wine in a mason jar along with oak cubes then put it in a pressure cooker until it got to max pressure for a minute. i vented the cooker, got it open, screwed the lid shut and let it sit on the counter for a couple of weeks. this killed any weird bugs that may have been in the wood and pushed the wine deep into the wood. i dropped the chunks into the better bottle (after the ropey phase had cleared up), they have been in there for 3+ months and the sour tastes fantastic so far.
 
i put some red wine in a mason jar along with oak cubes then put it in a pressure cooker until it got to max pressure for a minute. i vented the cooker, got it open, screwed the lid shut and let it sit on the counter for a couple of weeks. this killed any weird bugs that may have been in the wood and pushed the wine deep into the wood. i dropped the chunks into the better bottle (after the ropey phase had cleared up), they have been in there for 3+ months and the sour tastes fantastic so far.

Sounds like a good idea to me!
 
When i punch this into Beersmith my og comes to 1.073 at 70% efficiency without the maltodextrin added. Your Og is only 1.060. Is anyone else getting a difference?



Nevermind. I had it set for 5 gallons instead of 6
 
Just started a 60 gallon Lambic Solera aimed at an RGC clone. From what I've read the Roeselare is the key to the tart cherry flavor. Below are the recipe details I used (probably a bit lighter than a true Flanders Red but I can adjust that with some Special B on Year 2). The entire batch will remain in a 60 gallon conical fermenter for the duration. Each year I will dump the yeast trap / trub catcher (4700 ml in volume), siphon off 15 gallons and add 15 fresh gallons. By year 3 it should be an amazing blend!

The 15 "Year 1" gallons will be put on 2lbs/gallon of fruit for 6 additional months and then kegged/force carbonated. I will add oak cubes to half of it (figuring it will take four 5 gallon carboys with the fruit taken into account). I'm going to prepare the cubes like eastoak mentioned to weaken the new oak flavor, control the bugz and add the wine tint.

Fred's Sour Lambic

Straight (Unblended) Lambic (17 D)

Type: All Grain
Batch Size: 16.00 gal
Boil Size: 20.68 gal
Boil Time: 90 min

Equipment: Stainless Kegs (15 Gal/37.8 L) - All Grain
Efficiency: 62.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 65.9 %


Ingredients

Amt Name Type # %/IBU

25 lbs Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 58.1 %
10 lbs Wheat Malt, Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 23.3 %
6 lbs Munich Malt (6.0 SRM) Grain 3 14.0 %
2 lbs Caramel/Crystal Malt - 20L (20.0 SRM) Grain 4 4.7 %
2.50 oz Saaz [3.80 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 10.5 IBUs


Gravity, Alcohol Content and Color

Est Original Gravity: 1.062 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.019 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 5.7 %
Bitterness: 10.5 IBUs
Est Color: 6.5 SRM

Mash Profile

Mash Name: Single Infusion, Full Body, No Mash Out
Sparge Water: 12.40 gal
Sparge Temperature: 190.0 F
Adjust Temp for Equipment: FALSE


Total Grain Weight: 43 lbs
Grain Temperature: 72.0 F
Tun Temperature: 72.0 F
Mash PH: 5.20

Mash Steps

Name Description Step Temperature Step Time

Mash In Add 61.75 qt of water at 166.7 F 156.0 F 60 min

Sparge: Fly sparge with 12.40 gal water at 190.0 F
Mash Notes: Simple single infusion mash for use with most modern well modified grains (about 95% of the time).
 
I just brewed this today but just used a packet of us-05 and all the white labs bugs they had at the brew store: B. clausenii, B. lambicus, B. bruxellensis and B. bruxellensis trois. My concern is that the second runnings (with s-33) are bubbling up a storm, but the carboy with all the bugs and us-05 is completely still. Both yeasts were pitched @ 80 degrees farenheit. Am I just being paranoid?
 
I just brewed this today but just used a packet of us-05 and all the white labs bugs they had at the brew store: B. clausenii, B. lambicus, B. bruxellensis and B. bruxellensis trois. My concern is that the second runnings (with s-33) are bubbling up a storm, but the carboy with all the bugs and us-05 is completely still. Both yeasts were pitched @ 80 degrees farenheit. Am I just being paranoid?

yes.
 
I've been researching sours for a while now and came across a process for souring your wort before the boil by chilling your mash to under 90, pitching your bugs, and keeping in a carboy as warm as possible. The author claimed it soured extremely fast and the boil kills off the bugs so you don't have to worry about contaminating your equipment. I will try to dig back up the article so I can link it here but I was wondering if anyone has tried this and what your results where.

I'm not looking to rush a Flanders Red or Brown. But I would say its could be a great way to dial in on the tartness of the batch.

Thoughts, suggestions, and feedback welcome.
 
I've been researching sours for a while now and came across a process for souring your wort before the boil by chilling your mash to under 90, pitching your bugs, and keeping in a carboy as warm as possible. The author claimed it soured extremely fast and the boil kills off the bugs so you don't have to worry about contaminating your equipment. I will try to dig back up the article so I can link it here but I was wondering if anyone has tried this and what your results where.

I'm not looking to rush a Flanders Red or Brown. But I would say its could be a great way to dial in on the tartness of the batch.

Thoughts, suggestions, and feedback welcome.

That is how a sour mash is done. Perhaps this is what you're referring to?

EDIT: I have done a 48 hour sour mash using 20% of the grainbill for a saison and the result (so far) has been very good. I actually kept my sour mash between 112-120F for the 2 days with minimal oxygen exposure (co2 purging) to ensure quick lactic (smooth) souring with minimal butyric (vomit) acid development. It was then added to the brewday mash prior to lautering, after which the boil proceeded as normal. At this point, it's still in a carboy aging but I've sampled a couple times and it's super tasty. Last sample was prior to some wine barrel oak and brett was added so I suspect it's changed a fair amount by now.
 
Now that you mentioned Sour mashing I do believe that is exactly what it was about. The article went on to say it eliminates the need to rack sours for extended periods of time and still get a great result.

I was surprised not to have seen any mention of it throughout this thread. Is there a downside to sour mashing, I would imagine if you can cut your process down from 1-3 years to 1-2 months it would have come up more.
 
Now that you mentioned Sour mashing I do believe that is exactly what it was about. The article went on to say it eliminates the need to rack sours for extended periods of time and still get a great result.

I was surprised not to have seen any mention of it throughout this thread. Is there a downside to sour mashing, I would imagine if you can cut your process down from 1-3 years to 1-2 months it would have come up more.

There are many aspects of sour beers that cannot be replicated by sour mashing alone; specifically, pedio and brett characteristics (and probably some others too). Once you boil a sour mash, the "wild" microbes are killed leaving the character of the beer as-is unless you later reintroduce other living microbes. Additionally, it's hard to specify how a boiled sour mash beer might differ from a post-boil lacto soured beer, but there MUST be some discernible difference.

I do believe that lacto sour mashing may be an easier and less-prone-to-error method of souring a beer using lactic acid then the traditional post-boil method while still allowing you to hop your beer enough to provide safety from other unwanted lactobacilli microbes (and eliminating the potential for contaminated equipment). Pedio and Brett microbes can always be reintroduced post-boil/chill/ferment to continue the true wild aging processes of a traditional sour beer if one wishes to do so.

I think what I'm getting at is that sour mashing is a tool to keep your arsenal for those times when it's useful, but the traditional post-boil sour method has it's place as well.

As for recreating a Rodenbach, I haven't the faintest idea. Without having the Rodenbach brewery to mash, boil, ferment, sour and blend (I believe Rodenbach is blended) at then we are all just approximating the beer style.
 
Thank you for your insight. After you mentioned Sour mash I was able to locate a few good threads and articles. Looks like the sour mashing is used more towards your Lambic and Berliner Wise styles and not really applicable to a true red or brown flanders due to the other bacteria's used to create their profile.
 
Thank you for your insight. After you mentioned Sour mash I was able to locate a few good threads and articles. Looks like the sour mashing is used more towards your Lambic and Berliner Wise styles and not really applicable to a true red or brown flanders due to the other bacteria's used to create their profile.

I would move Lambics to the other group. I use sour mashing (sour worting acutally) for berliners and gose. I have been thinking about playing around with some other things, such as "sour ipas", and also sour mashing, then fermenting with brett. There are quite a few US breweries that do it.
 
Made this brew over a year ago. Used two packets of Wyeast 3763. Fermented like a beast. A lot more blow off than I've ever seen. Did not control temp. Probably reached up to 75F. After fermentation I let it sit for three months. Upon sampling, I thought the sourness could be up'ed a bit. I added the recommended amount of maltodextrin and sampled around a month later. It was really sour! I thought I ruined the batch. I decided to let it ride out for a year and see what happened.

Over time it developed a small film, nothing to write home about. I stopped sampling it and let it hang out. Bottled it after a year and two weeks. Great red color:

http://imgur.com/JxMzjdy

Tastes awesome. I am currently carbonating it with Danstar CBC-1 and can't wait to enjoy it carbed up.

Would I recommend this beer? Sure, if you have an extra carboy. Would I go out of my way to make it again? Maybe. Tastes great and I think its worth the wait, but I like regular beers just as much.

Thanks for the good recipe.

11072910_10100930599852305_3802567975014284458_n.jpg
 
Doing this on the weekend. Just want to be sure about my starter. Plan is to use 1056 and do a starter first plus also pitch Roselare blend at the same time (I will not do a starter with the Roselare blend).

I understand the importance of starters but have been reading stuff about the ratio of the Roselare blend (i.e., bugs to sacch) so you definitely don't want to do a starter for it. So I guess what I am wondering does pitching the 1056 (starter or not) throw off the ratio of the Roselare blend. Hope that makes sense.

Probably over thinking this.

Anyway, should I be good to go with 1056 starter plus Roselare blend (no starter) all at the same time?
 
Doing this on the weekend. Just want to be sure about my starter. Plan is to use 1056 and do a starter first plus also pitch Roselare blend at the same time (I will not do a starter with the Roselare blend).

I understand the importance of starters but have been reading stuff about the ratio of the Roselare blend (i.e., bugs to sacch) so you definitely don't want to do a starter for it. So I guess what I am wondering does pitching the 1056 (starter or not) throw off the ratio of the Roselare blend. Hope that makes sense.

Probably over thinking this.

Anyway, should I be good to go with 1056 starter plus Roselare blend (no starter) all at the same time?

If you're set on adding 1056, pitch everything at the same time, but there really is no need to pitch 1056. Roeselare already contains a sacch strain and is intended for primary fermentation.
 
If you're set on adding 1056, pitch everything at the same time, but there really is no need to pitch 1056. Roeselare already contains a sacch strain and is intended for primary fermentation.

^^I like this advice.

Based on posts of people experiences with Roeselare blend alone (i.e. not sour enough), I would suspect that pitching it with 1056 may lead to an underwhelming flanders red sour ale and/or a reallllllllly long wait. Granted, I have never used the roeselare blend so I don't have first-hand experience, but I would probably pitch only the roselare blend along with the dregs from a bottle of sour beer you like and is known to have viable dregs (jolly pumpkin always works); then I would use the 1056 to brew a non-sour beer :D
 
Based on the information in the thread when I was planning this batch I concluded that to get the most sour out of things was to pitch both 1056 and Roselare and at the same time. As I would prefer more sour this is what I ended up doing. Brewed it two weeks ago and will transfer it next weekend and then WAIT. We'll see how it ends up.
 
Ready to bottle mine today after 18 months. Anybody had any worries of bottle bombs from this in regular beer bottles? I was going to use champagne bottles but don't want to spend the money for them.
 
How long has it been at a stable gravity? I normally wait 6 weeks after gravity stables so I know it's done fermenting.
 
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