[BikeGeek]

This may not be of interest to anyone but the brewers out there, sorry.

The 6 Beers thread got me wondering how my sour beer was coming along. I brewed a Flanders Red that I'm calling "Zuur" (Flemish for "sour") back in August. After a brief primary fermentation with a very bland yeast, I racked it to my secondary, inoculated it with the several types of bacteria and another type of yeast, and stopped it with a toasted oak stopper that dips at least 4 inches into the beer. It's supposed to sit like this until February, before the oak is removed and it's left for another 6 months to condition, but I couldn't help pulling a sample to see what was going on. It's just starting to develop the sour taste, but everything else is great. The oak is doing it's part at simulating aging in a barrel and the brettanomyces is giving up its characteristic flavors. It's way too early to tell for sure, but I think this is going to be good.

Mmmmm, bacteria at work...

 

[Smelly]

Sounds and looks delish.
I too would steal a taste every now and then. I'm not sure I'd have the patience to wait a year to try my beer. A friend is currently fermenting a kriek lambic and I'm anxious just waiting for that.

 

[Secret Squirrel]

Had the Duchesse de Bourgogne recently...

It's definitely something to be tried.

Hope yours turns out well!!

 

[BadDNA]

Awesome! Good luck.

 

[BikeGeek]

Had the Duchesse de Bourgogne recently...

The Duchesse is pretty good but I've always noticed a kind of "weird" flavor. Only recently I discovered that they sweeten it with saccharin. These beers typically finish conditioning really dry because of the yeasts and bacteria both consuming the sugars. They're usually sweetened up for consumption by blending the aged beer with younger beer. I guess they use saccharin because it's an unfermentable sweetener.

Awesome! Good luck.

Thanks. That funk that you see floating in there is actually the brettanomyces. I noticed this morning the first wisps of a forming bacteria pellicle.

 

[Secret Squirrel]

The Duchesse is pretty good but I've always noticed a kind of "weird" flavor. Only recently I discovered that they sweeten it with saccharin. These beers typically finish conditioning really dry because of the yeasts and bacteria both consuming the sugars. They're usually sweetened up for consumption by blending the aged beer with younger beer. I guess they use saccharin because it's an unfermentable sweetener.

Ah...A few years ago I had a different brewerys' Flanders Red...the Duchesse was different but I couldn't put my finger on it...At the time I chalked it up to a few years and about 35 kegs worth of beer tasting later....

interesting factoid. thx!

 

[BikeGeek]

The pellicle has really taken off in the last couple of weeks.

 

[ito]

That looks amazing!