kriek blend

last year i decided to do a kriek. i brewed up a base beer (flanders pale ale-- pils, munich and wheat... very low hopping) and fermented it with Wyeast's Roeselare blend and planned on adding sour cherries at some point, but kind of forgot about it. the pellicle had fallen and the taste hasn't changed much in the last 2-3 months. fast forward to this summer and i saw some sour cherries at the local farmers market. sadly i could only get 4.5lb sour cherries. picked up 3.5lb sweet cherries to supplement. my kriek would live after all!

as i was planning to add cherries i got another bright idea: i would blend in some of my 'lambic' (pils, flaked wheat, dextrinous mash, Wyeast Lambic Blend + various bottle dregs) which is around 15 months old now. and to give this kriek a bit more fuel for funkification some fresh wort would be added. final recipe of the kriek would be 1 gallon lambic, 2 gallons flanders pale ale and 1 gallon fresh wort (%50 wheat, %50 pils-- rather dextrinous mash) with . and for good measure i added bottle dregs of Cantillon Kriek and 3Fonteinen Oude Gueuze as well as some Roeselare slurry that had been built up with some Rye Saison wort.

here is a picture of the final blend. you can't quite see it, but the color is pretty awesome. cherries are starting to lose some color and in the last few days a pellicle of sorts has begun to form. will give this at least 6 months before bottling... probably more lie 9.

brew day : rye saison

saison is one of my favorite styles of beer and types of yeast to use. its also the only beer i can brew during the summer because it requires high fermentation temperatures (~75-90F). if you're not familiar with saisons, try saison dupont, it's the benchmark of this dry, refreshing, hoppy farmhouse ale.for this beer im going in a slightly different direction than the guidelines describe. a large portion of my grain bill is going to be rye to give some interesting complimentary flavors. ive had good luck using wyeast's french saison (3711), belgian saison (3724) and my favorite: farmhouse ale (3724). unfortunately the farmhouse ale strain isn't available this year so i am using french saison which was re-released as a seasonal (and soon to be year round from what i hear).

i made a rye saison last year, and while it was good, i didn't get a lot of rye character, which is common for probably %90 of beers with 'rye' in their names). soooo... this time i upped the percentage of rye and dropped the late kettle hops.

rye saison - 5.5g
5lb Pilsner
1lb Vienna
5lb Rye Malt
1oz EK Goldings (60min addition)
wyeast 3711 slurry, 2 minutes of pure o2

this is about %45 rye. this past winter i made a roggenbier that scored ~38-41 of 50 in two competitions and was made of about the same amount of rye. other experiments with rye utilized grists of lower rye percentages just didn't do it for me. the hefeweizen yeast didn't over power the rye character so i don't think the saison yeast will either.

sparge went fine until the last gallon, then it stuck. unstuck it and got boiling. overall a pretty uneventful brew day. i did however collect some last runnings, boiled them down for an hour and fed a few jars of various brettanomyces slurries.

at 1.048, i came up a few points short of target original gravity @ 1.051 but i'm not too concerned.

review : russian river temptation

russian river brewing company isn't one of the biggest in the country, but it's one of the best. they make great belgian inspired beers, hoppy beers and wild/sour/experimental beers. i had the chance to visit the brewpub last year just as the off-site production brewery was getting off the ground. the pub itself was cool: good food, entertaining band, great atmosphere and very fresh beers. at the time they had like 4 ipa on draft. a bit odd. they were all really good but would have liked some more diversity. same with the belgians. anyway... onto the review of one of their experimental/sour beers.
temptation is a belgian blonde / golden ale that spends 18 months in white wine barrels with brettanomyces (a wild yeast) and some lactic acid bacteria after primary fermentation. i actually bought this while at the pub a year ago. a nice pop as i uncorked it, and it poured a hazy gold that cleared up rather fast as the summer air is quite warm in here. a nice white rocky head forms and shrinks quite slowly.
aroma: big sourness, fruit (peaches, some lemon) and brett.
taste: taste is quite similar (big sourness) though more flavors from the wine barrel become apparent and grow as it warms: big fruity brettness, chardonnay, oak (giving it a nice mouthfeel to counter some of the sourness), slight vanilla and it finishes a little bubblegumy. low bitterness.
overall, a really tasty beer... easy drinking, complex, pleasantly sour. good balance of flavor. would love to try it fresh.

hi

so this is my blog. it is about beer. everything from creating beer to drinking beer. lots and lots of beer. here is a picture: