Silence of the Lambics

[Richard]

I'm planning on a long-term project involving three different yeast/bacterial blends for lambic fermentation, starting with the Wyeast Lambic Blend (3278), and blending in a few years. The basic recipe is going to be the same for each batch.

15lbs 2-row
5lbs Light Wheat Malt
3lbs Dark Wheat Malt
1lb CaraFoam
1lbs Cara-Munich II

Hops: 1oz EKG "aged" @ 120 mins.

Modified "Boon Method" mash:

Mash 6.75 US Gallons @ 150F, pulling 1 gallon after mashing in and bringing it to a boil, adding back another 1 gallon @ 150F to replace it for the 30 minute mash. Add back the boiling gallon to bring temp up to 168 and take first runnings. Immediately heat first runnings to halt saccharification.

Sparge 4 gallons @ 190F (yep - tannin extraction will happen, but it's desirable here).

Sparge another 4 gallons @ 170F

Total boil volume was around 10 gallons at the end, at an OG of around 1.065. Dilution  to 13 gallons brought this down to about 1.050... right where I want it.

This recipe will fill a modified Sanke for fermentation - not spunded, just standard air-lock.

[sdixon]

Hmmm, I like the sound of this. I have been thinking of something along these lines myself. What are the timelines here... 1 yr, more?

[Richard]

The plan is to go three years running, and do a blend (Gueze) in the third year. Time makes fools of us all though, so if the lambic is excellent after the first year the plan may change

[Ian Grant]

I'd like to get into doing some sours too.  I like how the guys from northern brewer was blending there's.

[Richard]

I heard a podcast (basic brewing radio) lately which made me finally want to get on with this.

[Ian Grant]

Well it's one of those thing if u don't start it'll never happen.  From what I've heard just wait it out and someday it'll be good.

[Richard]

Did run this in the end - made 13 gallons. Smack pack said not to use a starter, but didn't do jack in 7 days. Added extra smack-pack at that point; air-lock showed heavy activity 24h later.

Not planning to do much to this save for filling up the air-lock with sanitiser.

[Richard]

I took a sample of this today; the flavours are right-on where they should be, but the gravity (1.018) concerned me a little. After some googling around, I'm not so worried any more. This graph shows that I'm pretty much right on track:

http://www.beerbrewer.co.uk/beer/sponta ... evolution/

(see line 5 - "extract content" - SG)

It would seem I've passed the majority of the saccharomyces phase and am into the brettanomyces/pedio phase... will test this one again in a couple of months to see if the brett is doing its thing.

[jamie_savoie]

It's cool to see when it looks like everything seems to be steady, then suddenly at ~18 months the ph start to rise.  Cool graph!

Would be cool to see over a period of 5 years.

I have a limbic lined up sometime this summer...can't wait!

[Richard]

Well, I can recommend the wyeast blend already from what I've seen/tasted - not bad at all.

Want to repeat this with the whitelabs blend and the Roeselare Ale Lambic Culture Blend from wyeast, too.

[Richard]

Tried again last night... this is getting really good. The pedio and brett are starting to make their stand, with a small hint of funk. At about two months now, planning to go six before bottling.

[TomFogarty]

Did a batch this afternoon, boil just started rolling. Didn't have any dark wheat malt so I just upped the light, and I used tettnang instead of EKG.
I'm interested to see the difference in profiles, seeing as I'll be using that Cantillon starter after the S-05 gets a foothold.

[Richard]

One year old today... haven't tried it in a few months, but I'm going to need to start hoarding bottles soon methinks.

[Richard]

Willing to return one bottle of SOTL for every 12 Duval, Sierra Nevada, or similar bottles (the stubbies).

[jamie_savoie]

I'll check how many I have at home but most likely it's more then a dozen.  I also have a bunch of 333ml-375ml belgian bottles.  If you have 375ml champagne bottles I would trade/buy them if you don't use them.

Are you going to re-use the cake?