Reading/Listening Suggestions

Brewing Network Cambridge Brewing Session 11/22/09

I'm going to try and make a regular thing of posting some book, article or podcast suggestions along with some quick comments on why I find the selection interesting. I'm thinking I'll try to post my suggestions around the middle of the week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdayish). You'll notice a lot of my podcast suggestions will come from the Brewing Network This is mostly because, well, I listen to them a lot. I'm trying to expand my beer podcast listening, but I haven't really found any that I like as well (suggestions?). I know the BN's brand of humor isn't for everyone and their shows can be on the long side, so I'll probably make a habit of posting the exact time that the interview I'm talking about starts in the recording.

This weeks suggestion is from the Brewing Network's interview with Will Meyer from the Cambridge Brewing Co. The entire interview is pretty good, Will talks about their seasonal pumpkin ale and some of his and the brewpub's history, but the section that I found most interesting was about Cerise Cassée. Cerise Cassée is a sour mashed beer blended with tart cherries and aged in a solera system. Will talks about his unique anerobic sour mash technique and barrel cellar. To hear only this section of the interview, download the podcast and fast forward to 01:28:00

Bug Farm Solera

A friend of mine, Jay, received a mixed culture of yeast and bacteria from a fellow known as Al B on the Burgundian Babble Belt. Al is a microbiologist and has put together a few of these mixed culture trades over the past couple years. He calls them Bug Farms. I believe he's also working on starting a commercial yeast company called East Coast Yeast. This particular Bug Farm contained the following:

Brettanomyces Drie Fontenein Oude Gueuze
Brettanomyces Fantome Black Ghost
Brettanomyces Russian River Beatification
Brettanomyces Vinnie's oak chips (RR)
B. anomulus WY
Brettanomyces Allagash Confluence
Brettanomyces (2) Cantillon St. Lamvinus
Pediococcus Cantillon St. Lamvinus
Pediococcus Rodenbach Foederbier
Saccharomyces fermentati Flor Sherry Yeast
S. cerevisae Saison Dupont
LF1 / LF2 New Belgium La Folie
Lactobacilli Sourdough / WL / WY
Kombucha yeast

Jay pitched and repitched this culture several times before giving some to me. I decided I wanted to do a sort of single vessel solera with the culture. A Solera is a series of vessels (often barrels) containing wines or sherries of different ages which are used to create a blended final product. When the blender removes wine from the oldest barrel he replaces it with wine from the next oldest barrel and so on until the youngest barrel receives only fresh wine (See wildBrews by Jeff Sparrow p.212). Some sour beer producers have recently started to employ this method.

In my system I will only have one vessel - a 3 gallon carboy. I plan to remove and blend a portion every 6 to 12 months and then top-up the carboy with fresh wort. Since the beer is destined to be part of a blend eventually, I decided to do a brew of 100% pale malt. This way I can decide whether I want the final beer to be light or dark and include any necessary specialty malts in the fresh brew.

Since the culture was being harvested from a high gravity, dark beer, I rinsed it with water that I boiled and then let cool. I then pitched it on a half gallon starter. I left the starter ferment for a couple days and in the mean time pitched a packet of 71B wine yeast (a susceptible white wine strain - read more about using wine yeast in beer here) on the wort I had brewed for the solera. I decided I wanted there to be some fresh yeast in the mix since this was about the 4th or 5th generation of the culture. I have heard that repitched mixed cultures may start to favor the lactic bacteria over time and become increasingly sour with each generation. A nice thick pellicle formed only a few days after pitching the starter into the full batch.

So my Bug Farm Solera is resting comfortably in the basement and I look forward to the first tasting and hopefully blending some time around December or January.

Here, There & Everywhere

I never know where or when an idea for a recipe or experiment or adjustment to my brewing process will strike me. So as a result, I always have a bunch of small scraps of paper with quick notes jotted on them - difficult to keep track of. They end up in pockets and books, on the kitchen table, nightstand, living room, office, etc. It drives my wife nuts. So this blog is an effort to organize my ideas, recipes, and notes on beers in process. Beyond that I hope someone finds my ramblings interesting and maybe gets some ideas for a beer or two. Actually, I encourage anyone to take any of my ideas and put them to the test and let me know about the results, I have more ideas for beers than I have time to brew them. I caution though, most of the recipes I post here will have never seen tun, kettle, bottle or glass. They should not be viewed as "tried and true", but as experimental (for the most part - I'll let ya know if I post something I've brewed multiple times and had success with).