In the last year, every new beer that we have brewed at Blue Pants has had a "New Beer Brewday" blog post written about it. The exception to that is one batch of beer that I tried to keep secret for a while. Normally, I am very open about our recipes and beers in planning, but in this case, I really didn't want to tell too many people about it until the beer was closer to ready. This is a beer nearly two years in the works... Our first long term sour. Unlike our summer seasonal Wheat with Peach, these beers received extensive aging for secondary fermentation with bacteria to sour it.
The idea to brew this beer came from an idea to brew a series of local beers, which would feature local ingredients. The Apple Ale we brewed was the first one released, but this was actually the first one brewed.
The base beer was a very low IBU Amber Ale fermented with American Ale Yeast. After primary fermentation, we used Brettanomyces Lambicus and Pediococcus in oak barrels for aging. The use of American Ale yeast could be seen as a strange choice because typically, brewers would use a more flavorful, estery fermentation profile. However, my thought was that with less esters for the Brettanomyces to re-esterficate, we would keep the barnyard funk (flavors such as leather, horse stable, etc.) to a minimum, while still getting cherry pie flavors from the Brettanomyces. This was an experiment without being able to rely on other brewer's experience, and it seems to have worked. There is still a pleasant funkiness, but it is not over the top the way a lot of Brett beers tend to be.
The Pediococcus was the scary thing for me to experiment with. I have used lactobacillus in the past with success, but Pediococcus is more prone to converting alcohol into acetic acid (vinegar). Great care has to be taken to eliminate any oxygen from dissolving into solution any time a barrel is sampled, moved, or has beer transferred from it. Pediococcus also can produce diacetyl and, unlike yeast, can not reduce the diacetyl content once it has been produced. It also requires that the beer is sampled regularly when aging in the barrel because the oak does allow some oxygen to pass through. Some acetic acid will be produced as a result and a small amount can be seen as desirable and is an important part of the flavor profile of a sour beer, but it needs to be kept to a low level. Once the beer is getting close to displaying acetic acid, it is time to add the fruit.
The fruit... I could go off on a multi-page rant about how much of a pain in the ass it is to deal with fresh fruit. We used peaches, grapes, and cantaloupes from Isom's, in these beers. For the peaches we had 800 lbs of peaches that had to be pitted (25% of the pits did get added to the barrels), and chopped into cubes small enough to fit through the barrel bung hole (about 1.5" diameter). That took 5 of us an entire day to chop up, and then it took Kara and I almost a whole other day to stuff the barrels and transfer beer on top of. The grapes had to be de-stemmed and smashed and the cantaloupe had to be skinned, chopped, and stuffed into the barrel. I think the last day, we worked for about 16 hours getting the grapes and cantaloupe stuffed into the barrels. The bright side, was that the work was mindless enough that Kara and I got to watch about a season's worth of Friends episodes while at work.
The amount of fruit used was approximately 3 lbs per gallon of beer. The beer then fermented the fruit for another 3 months, and is being bottled this week. One common complaint I have with fruited sours is that they are frequently carbonated to medium or high volumes of co2. In my opinion, the carbonic acid enhances the harsher acidic flavors from acetic acid and ethyl acetate and covers up the nice fruity flavors. As a result, I decided to leave the carbonation at a medium low level and the lactic acid tickles the palate in a similar manner to carbon dioxide. As a result, the carbonic acid is not able to diminish any of the fruit, or Brett flavors, and the beer is slightly easier drinking. These beers are very limited in supply, so if you see bottles on the shelves and you want to try them, I suggest not passing them up. They won't last long. Cheers!
A few fun facts:
-The Brett and Pediococcus were grown up from Wyeast homebrew packs. It was going to take too long to get them from Wyeast, so I propagated the cultures in my office at home.
-The cantaloupe was probably the 5th or 6th fallback plan since the fruits we wanted were not available. It is also my favorite version
-After the 16 hour day, I was at the brewery until 2:00 a.m. I woke up at 6:00 a.m. that morning and set off on a 2,400 mile motorcycle trip. The first day, I rode 600 miles in 12 hours. I suppose adrenaline got me through it,
