Very Wild Saison ECY20

[lowtones84]

I'm sorry if I missed this, but did you use flaked spelt or "whole berries?" I'm considering doing a saison with spelt very soon and the only spelt I can find so far is whole, unmalted. Glad to hear that it's tasting nice! How would you compare it to a saison made with wheat or rye?

 

[smokinghole]

It was a mix of flaked and whole raw "berries". I couldn't get 4lbs of either at the store I went and bought them at. In the future I would likely just get flaked because I don't have a mill that deals with hard wheat like grains that well. I tried raw wheat/spelt in my monster mill but it sort of binds up because of how hard the grains are compared to barley. Maybe if I had a fixed motor to drive it instead of my cordless drill I'd fare better but for the time being my wrist/drill cannot mill the whole raw wheat/spelt grains.

 

[smokinghole]

Well I'm giving a sour saison another go. I liked the results so much from the first one I'm doing it again only this time I brewed up 16 gallons and dropped the gravity a tad. I added a decent amount of oats and rye to try and thicken up the 1.043 beer. I also did dedcoction mashing to provide a little structure and body to the beer hopefully. I am splitting the 16 gal into 8 gal of brett trois and 8 gal of wild stuff. Will report back in about 6-7 months how the new batch turns out.

 

[Coff]

Sounds awesome, Im 22 days in primary on a Brett Trois table saison (1.045) of which I also pitched 1 gallon of the same wort with ECY20 since I hadnt used that wash in quite some time and wanted to wake it up a bit.

 

[smokinghole]

22 days on the table saison? Isn't it finished yet or are you just waiting for it to clear up? I know it's very non-flocculant based on how dusty it looked in the tube and how easy it was to re-suspend the culture in my starter flask.

You will want way more than 1 gal of that trust me. I only ended up with 4 gal of my first go, and regret not making the whole thing with ECY20.

 

[Coff]

Yea just waiting for the Trois to drop, Im thinking about hitting it with some gelatin to help it out a bit. Although I do see some very slight activity still as I'll see something shoot up from the bottom if I stare at the fermenter for a minute, but at 1.004 Im confident in bottling soon. I have 15 gallons of funky beer that needs bottling so its about finding the time over the next week or so.

Yea I just didnt have the available carboys to do anymore than 1 gallon of the ECY20, it had been ~3 months since I had harvested that culture and really wanted to get it going again so I was able to kill 2 birds with one stone. I usually bottle these 1 gallon beers in those 187ml champagne bottles so I can have a small taste from time to time but yea, I'm sure Im going to want more.

 

[Coff]

Im thinking about doing the same Table Saison in about a month but 15 gallons of it and splitting it 3 ways, ECY20, Bugfarm 5, and ECY03. Im really excited for that one.

 

[smokinghole]

DO IT. Once I get this one out and bottled I will do another one again in like 6-7 months. My last saison with ECY20 took like 5-6 months to lose the ropiness. This is ECY20 and every bottle sediment dumped from sours I've had in the last two years. So the culture is growing in complexity and genetic variety.

 

[Sebas83]

Bugfarm 5 gets REAL if you pitch it with your primary yeast/oxygenated wort, if you haven't used it before. Mine took about 8 months to be palatable. But, it's REALLY good now.

Sounds tasty!!

-S

 

[smokinghole]

Bug farm 5 and Bug County have been primary pitches for me and I have never preceded them with a different primary yeast. In fact all ECY strains I've used that are souring strains were direct pitches into wort. So I get you, and I love the ECY stuff.

 

[Coff]

I'll be entering my 4th generation on ECY20 not sure how much longer I can use it as a primary strain. My second pitch of bugfarm was on a 1.070 beer so I may only use that as a souring culture and pitch it alongside WLP500 or 565 in the future.

I need to get Bugfarm 6, I'll treat it a bit differently next time.

 

[smokinghole]

Well this table saison portion has pretty much finished primary fermentation at 1.007. So I think in six months or so it will be around to 1.000 and done. Certainly don't need a year, just need as long as it takes the brett to eat the exopolysaccharide complex from the bacteria. The WLP644 half was at 1.006 last I checked but I gave it a couple days of heat to get it to finish out. I hope to have the WLP644 portion crashing next weekend and bottling the following weekend with two other beers possibly.

 

[smokinghole]

This saison tastes done. I decided I wanted more sour saison instead of 8 gallons of each sour and 100% brett. So I ran some of the 100% brett into the sour fermentor and bottled 6 gallons of the 100% brett. The gravity is sitting at 1.005 crystal clear and no ropiness. So I may begin looking to get some bottles lined up to package up this almost 10 gallons of saison.

Today I brewed 12 gal of a 1.044 saison that got a mixed culture. I bought 3724, 3726, 565 to mix together. I know 3724 and 565 are the "same" but the labs seem to be in disagreement about dupont being a culture of 4 separate organisms. So I figured I'd get their reliable yeast cultures, a little more complexity from the 3726, and just to be certain I cultured up some bottle yeast. Then I happened into a contaminated yeast culture that soured my 8.5% dubbel with 35ibus so I isolated the bacteria out using a Wallerstein labs differential agar plate. So I added that to the saison fermentor. Nothing like having a non-rope forming lacto that is hop and alcohol tolerant. Hopefully this is done in a couple weeks.

 

[smokinghole]

So the lambic bottle yeast saison is sitting at 1.003.. It may have the slightest hint of rope but it's so difficult to tell the difference between a silky mouth feel (think 3711) and miniscule rope from the bacteria.

 

[smokinghole]

I pulled some and carbed it with a carb cap. No rope detected. That's not to say that I might not develop a little in the bottle again after the slight oxygen exposure.

I am planning on brewing up another batch this time with using pils, goldpils vienna, and spelt. The hops will be half fresh and half aged hops. It will sit overnight to cool in the fermentor and then I will give it a small amount of the mixed culture to get it rolling. This time I will track pH from the start. I have a bad habit of not checking things like gravity and pH on these beers.

 

[berebrando]

Can you provide more information on the Lacto strain you isolated?

So, it's alcohol and IBU tolerant - what type of sourness does it produce? Do you think it is hetero or homofermentative? What else have you used it in?

 

[smokinghole]

The sourness isn't very intense so it's hindered by the abv and ibus. However it still provides a nice clean lactic flavor. I don't know whether it's hetero or homo fermentative. I haven't tried using it by itself I no longer have it isolated unfortunately. I did and then used up the culture and now I'm just using the yeast culture that last had the bacteria. I will get it isolated again, just need to grab plates from work. I used it in a saison, and dubbel so far.

I like this total shot in the dark lambic mix I'm using in these saisons as of late though. I never got around to bottling on Friday so I didn't brew this weekend. I need to get that taken care of this week sometime.

 

[smokinghole]

Brewing now. Aiming for 1.037 OG and 20ibu.

66% Pils
26% Raw Spelt
8% Rye Malt

4oz Aged Hops
2oz Serebrianka FWH 2hr boil
4oz Serebrianka 5min boil

I'll let it cool over night in a 10gal corny then drop in a very small amount of this lambic culture I've been using with a little bit of ECY20.

 

[dstar26t]

So you're going to ruin that lambic culture with that **** from New Jersey?

 

[smokinghole]

So I just drank a bottle of the first batch I did this with back in Nov 2011. The hops have died down quite a bit but are still present. The beer is real nice, not too sour but certainly sour. Its been more than a year in the bottle and its pretty awesome.

 

[smokinghole]

After 3 days I got active fermentation. It smells funky thats for sure. Aged hops always have a way of making a weird smelling fermentation.

 

[smokinghole]

Checked the gravity and pH today. It made it down to 1.011 and 4.06 pH from the day I pitched the yeast. Its got a bananay ester thing going on right now with an aged hop funkiness. It's got a long road ahead. I will likely transfer out of the 16 gal spiedel fermentor to a 3gal glass carboy and a 10 gal corny in the coming days.

 

[smokinghole]

The batch I brewed up 9 months ago is drinking nice, I just bottled it threeish weeks ago. I think a little aging is in order but it's pretty nice already. Not bad for a 9 month time frame with a complete shot in the dark yeast culture. This has me excited for the lower gravity version in the fermentor right now.

 

[smokinghole]

Acid production went into high gear since I checked gravity and pH last. I transferred it to a 10gal keg and 3gal carboy for the remaining few gravity points. I think those speidel fermentors are pretty awesome but I think the lids and the head space I had lets too much oxygen in the headspace.

Anynow it's now been 25days since brewing. It's sitting at 1.004 and 3.18pH. It smells like a nice citrusy beer, the flavor is like bitter pineapple. I wonder how long these last few gravity points will take and if it will get ropy or not.

 

[smokinghole]

Took a pipette taste today. Not ropy at all and it's getting fruity and nice. I think I'll bottle it next month. I estimate the gravity is near 1.000 at this point and will check sometime next month when I decide whether to bottle or not. At this point I'll just let it develop in the bottle, nice and quick fermentation on this beer. The beer had a drying astringency two months ago but that's now gone. It's now developed into a nice bright acidity with citrus like acidity and fruity esters. The brett did its work on the fresh and aged hop compounds.

 

[BootsyFlanootsy]

just dropping in to say I really appreciate your threads.

I don't post with the kind of frequency that you do, but I think we share a lot in common.

Are you on the bbb as well?

 

[smokinghole]

Sure do, same username. I like leaving detail and gravity/pH for these type of beers so people can learn through my processes. It takes some of they mystery and "folklore" out of making sours and wilds. I don't just post successes, I will discuss failures too. Like using anthocyanin rich fermentables in sours, and why you shouldn't. I figure if I can help someone through a question from my detail and updates then its worth the time I take to update. Plus by removing the mystery a bit it might convince others to play like this.

 

[metic]

Was the ECY20 you used for this similar to the current release, i.e. with no primary sacchraomyces strain? I'm wondering what I can expect if I pitch it by itself in a saison

 

[smokinghole]

It is basically the same blend from what I gather. As to what you can expect, you will get a nice sour blond ale. I will be dominated by Brett character and other complex flavors. It will not be identifiable as a saison my modern modern standards according to any style guidelines. I suspect that something like this is much more like what saisons tasted like before the cultures got cleaned up with the advancement of brewing science in the late 19th and early 20th century.

 

[smokinghole]

I added about 4lbs of cherries to a three gallon portion of this. I will look into bottling in the next few months. Then it'll be another good year until its drinking as nice as the first lambic yeast fermented beer I did with this.

The ECY20 portion is almost all gone at this point. I have a 3L bottle left and a handful of smaller bottles. I prefer the mixed random lambic/gueuze culture to the ECY20. My own random assortment of lambic yeasts gives a drier more complex funky beer with a sharper acidity compared to ECY20. Plus I don't have sick period issues to deal with using the lambic culture compared to the extremely viscous stages I get with ECY souring cultures.