Something like Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René?

[Thunder_Chicken]

To my taste nothing is a better treat than a Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René, and I have been wondering about what I could do make a good sour with at least some elements of Lindemans Gueuze Cuvée René.

I have never made a sour of any sort, so I don't know whether this is overly ambitious or not. I've read through these forums and haven't quite figured out the "procedure" to make such a sour. Here is the little that I think I know:

• The base beer is low hopped, low IBUs with aged hops as the bugs don't do well with the alpha acids.
• The dregs of commercial sours can be used to innoculate the bacteria (and yeasts?).
• It takes long periods of time for the sour to fully develop (years).
• Temperature variations are beneficial in helping the sours develop.

The things I definitely don't know:

• Do you brew and ferment a "normal" beer first, then add the bacteria, or do you just toss it all in? Or both, depending on the intended result?
• There are commercial sour starters - are they mixtures of yeast and bacteria, or just the bacteria?

 

[inflictor-of-grimness]

You need to have yeast, but not necessarily Sach. You need brett with pedio. Wyeast has a lambic blend that has everything you need, but you can also pitch the dregs from a bottle of cuvee rene in addition to the blend. Look up some lambic recipes to get ideas for a malt bill.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

The base beer is something close to a Belgian Saison. Do you need to tightly control temperatures during the start of the ferment for the Brett, or does it not matter so much? I've read that, at least later in the ferment, temperature variations are not harmful and even help the sour to develop.

 

[dinnerstick]

cantillon is very open about how they make lambic for gueuze, including their grain bill. they do a really weird turbid mash. search for turbid mash + homebrew and you will find several writeups on how to do it at home, if you want to go the whole hog. i am definitely not speaking from experience here, but i wouldn't try it since people have good results with high wheat % and normal step mashes, and many people swear by extracts for homebrew lambics. saison recipes typically are mostly pilsner malt and quite a bit of sugar, lambic should be more towards half pils half wheat, no sugar.
in all of the publications i have seen on the microfauna of wild fermented beers, there is progression of different types of microbes, from enterobacteria to sacc to various lactic acid bugs and brett. but there's always a sacc population at some point

 

[smokinghole]

To brew something like Lindeman's Cuvee Rene it'd go something like this.

60-70% Pale/Pils malt
30-40% Unmalted white wheat

Turbid mash (or typical step mash if you wish)

I would boil for at least 3-4 hours with old aged hops (can be bought at hopsdirect.com)

I would finish my boil do your normal knock out steps with out actively cooling the wort if you can. I use kegs as fermentors so as soon as I yank the hops I just knock out into the fermentor and leave it outside to cool overnight.

Then when it comes to yeast you can add a lambic culture from ECY, wyeast/white labs. Or you can go the unknown route and just drink a few bottles of Lindemans Cuvee Rene before you brew and save the yeast from them. Then pitch that into your beer. I've done that with a couple beers recently and have had very nice and complex finished products. This method has become my preferred method. My standard pale sour culture has become this random unknown mix of yeasts and bacteria. I have been saving up lambic yeast/bacteria from bottles for two years and finally decided to start using it for something last year. Whatever you do don't make a starter and I am a promoter of massively underpitching a smack pack or vial into these types of beers. There are dissenters here that don't agree with me but I like the results of pitching WAY less than conventional wisdom.

Then just let it ferment until it tastes done. It will likely take a year if not 18 months if you do a turbid mash and possibly longer.

 

[levifunk]

Cuvee Rene is a geuze. So do what smokinghole said above^, but after a year, do it again. And then in another year do it again. Then in another year blend the 3 batches together and bottle.

 

[Thunder_Chicken]

Yep. I actually found all the HBT recipes for sours. For some reason I was set up to only see the last two weeks of activity on the forum, so I could only see two recipes. Now I see what everybody has been up to!

There is a extract recipe, 50% pils and 50% wheat, that looks well within my capability. I think I'll give that a try.