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.