Sunday, May 6, 2010
Oud Bruin
Brewed on 06-May-2010 with another stuck mash half way through lautering
This has happened when mashing the last two brews, with grains milled by an online homebrew source I've been using lately. The post-mash / pre-boil O.G. was high 1.070. This is almost the anticipated POST-BOIL O.G.! Two in a row from this supplier, so I am pretty sure they mill the grains too fine.
I ordered from this online supplier because they were a bit cheaper for the ingredients and the shipping was a dollar less. I could use less grain instead and hit the target O.G., but I'm still too inexperienced at all-grain to figure this out without missing the mark a few times. My question, to myself, is... What does it matter if the O.G. and final ABV are too high? I'm the one doing the drinking of the final product and I'm not too interested in entering the beers in any contests where they would have to be within style guidelines.
I've never tasted a Flanders Brown Ale / Oud Bruin, so I can't say whether my previous version is good or not. I like the taste of my first Oud Bruin (OB d'Table from a Northern Brewer extract kit offered over a year ago), and now I'm doing all grain brews and I've got some very interesting sour bugs to inoculate it with. (I'm a microbiologist by trade, so I use 'inoculate' instead of 'pitch'. They're the same thing). I've got: an old Wyeast smackpack of Roeselare blend (nearly a year old), a White Labs sour blend, WYP...I'll have to look this up later, and some of the older, but occasionally fed, starter that was inoculated with Al's bugfarm III (need reference).
I aerated the chilled wort for less than 60 seconds with pure oxygen because it foamed up to the top before this time was up. According the Mike Tonsmiere, The Mad Fermentationist, "more oxygen dissolved in the wort at the start of the fermentation is supposed to cause the Brett to produce more acid". This sounds good to me. I hope I still get enough acid even though aeration was incomplete.
Annual Oud Bruin
I like this post by The Mad Fermentationist on culturing sour beer bottle dregs
I've made text replacement down to here.
Recipe Specifics
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Batch Size (Gal): 4.75
Total Grain (Lbs): 11.50
Anticipated OG: 1.061
Anticipated SRM: 4.9
Anticipated IBU: 10.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 125 Minutes
Grain
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8.50 lbs. Belgian Pilsener
1.00 lbs. Belgian Munich Malt
0.75 lbs. CaraFoam
0.75 lbs. Flaked Oats
0.50 lbs. Sauer(acid) Malt
Hops
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6 grams (.2 oz) Magnum Pellets @ 50 minutes
Extras
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1 Servomyces @ 10 min
.5 Wirlfloc @ 10 min
Yeast
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White Labs WLP645 Brettanomyces Claussenii (yeast cake)
Water Profile
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Profile: Pale, Low Hop
Calcium(Ca): 65.0 ppm
Magnesium(Mg): 7.5 ppm
Sodium(Na): 15.0 ppm
Sulfate(SO4): 50.0 ppm
Chloride(Cl): 96.0 ppm
biCarbonate(HCO3): 23.0 ppm
Mash
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Single Infusion for 60 minutes at 151
Notes
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Brewed 1/31/06
Oatmeal boiled for 10 minutes with 1/2 gallon water to gelatinize before mashing.
The Sauer Malt was added at the start of the sparge so it wouldn't interfere with the mash pH.
Cooled to 63 degrees and oxygenated for 60 seconds while racking onto the yeast cake from the first Brett brew.
2/8/06 1.014 Not much funkier than the first brett brew, but it does have a little more sourness. Still pretty cloudy, not sure if that is just the oats or if it is the Brett.
2/11/07 Transferred 2 gallons to 1 gallon jugs for secondary, and 2 gallons on top of cherry puree (1 lb dried Montmorency cherries heated with Luigi Bosca Resera Pinot Noir to cover to 160 and steeped for 15 min, drained and then pureed with about 1 cup fresh wine.) The beer with the cherries quickly turned bright red.
2/12/06 Decided that it was a waste to leave the 1/4 gallon of SebastianP's Brett C in a fermenter alone, so I poured it into the Cherry fermenter. Gravity of the straight batch is down to 1.010 if the residual liquid in the yeast cake is any indication.
2/17/07 Sample of Cherry carboy gravity at 1.010, looks like any sugar the cherries added is gone. Light pink color with a mild cherry/funk nose, should smooth out as time goes by.
2/18/07 Added some US-56 to one of the plain jugs, looking to see how it effects carbonation and flavor in the finished beer.
2/28/07 Transferred off the cherries, still 1.010. Plain batch is tasting great and is down another point to 1.009.
3/10/07 Bottled, 2 oz of sugar for the 2 gallons of plain. The plain had 4 bottles "bottle hopped" centennial, mt hood, sterling, and simcoe. The cherry got about 2.25 oz of sugar for 2 gallons, the sugar colored slightly because some got caramelized on the sides of the pan.
4/17/07 Tasting of the cherry/wine half
7/21/07 Tasting of the plain half
8/21/09 Final tasting of the plain half, still very tasty.
Kegged: 15-May-2010.
Carbonated at ~1.7 volumes, meaning 9 lbs CO2 tank pressure and 53 oF in the conditioning and dispensing temperature controlled 'chest freezer'.
Began drinking: 22-May-2010.
Pretty good, could be better but I really don't know what to do to make it better. I'll probably brew it again as I like commercial best bitters and ESBs. There are still quite a few more other beer styles I'm going to try first. Including quite a few other session beers. Actually, I'm drinking one now as I write the post.
