Souring Halvtreds

The Selected Line-up for the Experiment

Having missed another opportunity to get my hands on some East Coast Yeast, I decided it was time to go with plan 2 (really plan b but blogger will only let me do numbered lists) on souring Halvtreds.

Wait you mean to tell me you had backup plans? Hey, it's me.

So basically I went in knowing I had three options for souring the beer post primary/lager.

1. A vial from East Coast Yeast.  I was eying (and still am) ECY01 BugFarm, ECY02 Flemish Ale, ECY04 BRETT Blend #1, ECY05 BRETT Blend #9 and especially ECY20 Bug Country.
2. Harvest dregs from select sour beers into a starter wort. 
3. Grab a vial of White Labs sour mix.

The Harvesting Station

The reason I went with the second option as my backup plan is that I wanted to create something a little bit more funky and in your face sour.  Everything I've read online suggested that to do this bottle dregs from similar level beers was your best option.

I selected three beers for my experiment in harvesting dregs: The first beer I selected was Batch 50 from the Bruery. It has a nice level of clean sourness to it and contains ECY04 BRETT Blend #1 as a bonus.  Next came Oude Tart, again from the Bruery, which is a Flanders Red Ale and one of the inspirations for Halvtreds. For the final beer I brought out her highness the Duchesse de Bourgogne.  The Duchesse as I call her is my favorite Flanders Red Ale and having it back to back with Oude Tart really showed off how young the Bruery is when it comes to it's sours.  Both are exceptional beers but the Duchesse has a level of sour complexity that is in another league when compared to Oude Tart.

After all the Dregs were Pitched

With the three beers selected it was time to find someone to help be drink them.  Fortunitly my brewbrother Daniel was available to stop by for several hours to help me enjoy them, I know, tough work. 

Just prior to Daniel coming over I put together a quick pint starter using a 1/4 cup of wheat DME and 16 oz of water.

Given that I wanted to preserve the yeast and keep it uncontaminated I devised a system for opening, pouring and then harvesting the yeast in a santiary way.  To start I whipped up a fresh 5 gallons of StarSan.  This allowed me to fully submerge (carefully to not disturb the yeast) to sanitize the bottle prior to opening.  To open the bottle I used my metal mickey opener which I kept in a bowl of StarSan.  Once opened I pour most of the contents into three glasses, I then cover the top with a paper towel soaked in StarSan and swirled the bottle to free the yeast.  I then poured the liquid into the beaker of starter wort via a sanitized funnel.

Aerating the Additional Wort

I ended up pouring a little bit more beer then I had planned on so I whipped up another pint starter to add to the flask.

After several days of no activity, swirling the flask when I walked by, I was worried I'd have to go with option 3 but fortunately after 5 days I started to notice positive pressure and bubble formation.  After letting it continue to ferment the starter with additional swirling activity started to slow after a few days.  I'm heading to Canada for a few days this week and before I leave I will cold crash the starter.  One I return I'll decant it and pitch it into the beer and set it aside to age for a few months before I add fruit to it.

Cheers

-SNB

Halvtreds - Soured Red Lager

Halvtreds aka Batch 50

The day after Thanksgiving I set up my system early in the morning (6:30) and set to working brewing my 50th beer.  It was coded named Batch 50 for so long that when it came time to write this post I knew it by nothing else so in a last ditch effort to not call it Batch 50 I translated fifty into Danish and got the name Halvtreds.  I think Halvtreds is a pretty suiting name for a red colored beer. 

When I set out to craft a recipe for my 50th batch of beer I had a few critria for myself: 

1. It should have the ability to be aged
2. It could be an ale or a lager but should be brewed with the house yeast (WLP007 for Ales and WLP840 for Lagers)
3. The hops used should be northwest hops
4. It should include ingredients that are indicative to me

I made a 3 pint starter with
some amber DME

I decided along the way that Halvtreds should be a mile stone in another way and decided to make it my first full on sour beer. I've been playing with funk in BeanyTink Farmstead Ale, SNB can be CynicAle and DG' Peach Farm but had yet to venture into anything over the top sour.

Venturing back to my list of criterion here's how Halvtreds fits the bill.

1. A 6.8 sour will not only take over a year to develop but should last well beyond
2. I decided to make it a lager and pitched a lager starter made with second pitch of WLP840
3. Cascade for the bittering plus some Citra and Cascade for flavor with an ounce of  Columbus at knockout. 
4. It's a partial mash that incorporated some of my favorite malts (Victory and Carared) and a lb of Rice extract a la Scott's BIG IPL.  The grain bill itself is almost identical by percentages to StarRaptor

A few things I learned while researching sours that I figure I would pass on;  1) IBUs are keep light for a reason, too much above 20 IBUs will hamper the bugs as hops are a preservative.  2) Some styles of sours are initially brewed clean then soured with bugs after primary while others are given an overnight souring mash at 120 degrees.  For Halvtreds I kept the IBUs minimal (20.5) and scheduled a clean lager fermentation.

Transferring to the fermentor

For the bugs I'm going to try to get my hands one of the sour strains from East Coast Yeast.  I missed the last round while out shopping over the weekend but with a month or more of clean fermentation I have time to try again.  Worst case I'll pitch a White Labs sour blend with some bottle dregs.

Brewday itself was pretty smooth, I had to go into work at 4:00 AM then hit up some Black Friday sales so I was able to get an early start.  

I mashed high at 156 because I wanted to give the bugs some extra food to chew on.  I initially missed my mash temperature so I drained some of the liquid and heated it up in a small pot allowing me to nail the 156 temp I was looking for.  I'd been trying to shorten my mash time to 20-30 minutes but for this round I set it initially at 40 so I could keg up Scott's BIG IPL w/ Citra.  It took me a little longer and by the time I heated my sparge water the mash ended up being around 55 minutes.  Oh well next time.

Cheers

-SNB

Updates
Transferring Halvtreds to Secondary
Souring Halvtreds
Souring Halvtreds Part 2

The Bruery Batch 50 GFAR aka Grand Funk Ale Road

The Bruery Batch 50 GFAR aka Grand Funk Ale Road started 2 years ago as the winning homebrew recipe from the Bruery's batch 50 homebrew contest.  Not only did the winning homebrewer Al Buck fly out twice to help them brew it (It's a blend of 1 & 2 yr barrels), but as the founder of East Coast Yeast, he also supplied them with all the bugs.  For those interested he used his ECY04 BRETT blend #1.

ECY04 BRETT blend #1: Three individual Brettanomyces isolates from lambic producers combined to give an aggressive brett presence in any beer. Vigorous, funky and acid-tolerant, the blend can be added at any stage of fermentation and is excellent for priming or re-yeasting.

750 bottle poured into brewery tulip glass.

Appearance: Pours a beautiful golden yellow color. There is absoluly no head and a very low appearance of carbonation. It is very hazy and appears to be filled with small particles. Swirling the glass does nothing to rouse a head. 

Aroma: Smells of wet leather and cat piss.  It's somewhat horsey with lemons and acid. I get a lot of funk on this one. 

Mouthfeel: Very little carbonation detected. Definitely posses the sour slickness I've come to expect from the style. It's slightly prickly as I move it around my mouth.

Taste: Fantastic extraordinarily sour but not to the point of being overpowering.  Pairs really nicely with the aroma. Some citrus like quality to it probably the acid  very reminiscent of most gueuzes is that I've had 

Overall: A great beer make that a good beer as I feel the lack of carbonation is really holding this one back.   It needs that extra dimension as it's far too still.  I'll hold on to my remaining bottles and keep them warm hopefully that'll increase levels carbonation over time.  I also might try to harvest the yeast from the bottle dregs of this one.