Beagle's Brewing Blog: Lilac Street Flemish Sour Ale (sort of)

UPDATE: After starting the process at 11am, I pitched the yeast and set the fermenter to do its namesake at about 5:15pm. This is be the final version of this post. In about 18 months, I hope to have a Flemish Sour Ale - or something close to it.

This is going to be frequently updated and revised as I am going to try and keep a running commentary on the process of attempting to brew a Flemish Sour Ale without access to the sour bugs that are required to give the beer it's sour overtones.

So far, here is what I am experiencing with the actual brew process (I will get into the recipe construction in a while). I need a bigger brew pot - managing two kettles for the mash is complicated and potentially not going to work out... for example, I just overheated the smaller pot - bummer.

But the Gatorade cooler is excellent for keeping hot liquor on tap to help speed up the step mash process.

The step mash rest.

The step mash in process - bringing up the temp.

I am on to the third step of the mash now - only 5 degrees C to raise so it should go quicker than the 15 min it took last time...

That was the case - only 10 min for the 5 gallon kettle and 5 min for the 4 gallon. I have about 25 minutes until the mash is finished and I journey on to the next step - sparging - where I will try out the new false bottom. In the meantime, I will share the information about how the recipe came to be.

For starters, I am a huge fan of Flemish sour ales. I was first introduced through a coworker who graciously shared a Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Ale with me about 5 years ago. I was hooked instantaneously - but like any good fix, these beers are expensive. So my thought here is to try and recreate as close I can this style. In 18 months or so, I will let you know if I was able to do so. It won't be exact because these sour ales (to my knowledge) come from a specific region of Belgium where a unique concoction of mico-organisms live and do their magic. For this beer, the helpful folks at E.J. Wren helped me decipher and adapt the recipe I found online to come up with what I hope is a sour ale. The basic thought is to brew a Belgian Ale and then add a lambic-style yeast to the secondary fermenter with the hope that they impart some sourness. Ingredients for this all-grain brew are:

14.5 lbs of pale malt (in this case Muntons)
2.2 lbs of crystal malt (45L)
2.2 lbs bulger wheat
1 oz Kent Goldings hop pellets (5.0% AA)
Wyeast 1214 Belgian Abbey yeast (for primary fermentation)
Wyeast 3278 Lambic Blend yeast (for secondary fermentation)

I just finished the last step in the mash and transfered the mash to the lauter tun. I am a bit concerned because there is a slight smokey smell coming from the mash, leading me to wonder if I scorched some of the grains on the bottoms of the kettles. This would be bad because it releases some of the bitter flavors from the grain husks... I stirred when raising the temps but maybe not enough.

The lauter tun with the mash settling before starting the run off.

Starting the run off.

The grains/mash left overs - I hear you can make bread from this but I am going to compost it.

Let mash stand for approximately 30 minutes before running off the first gallon. Poured this back into the lauter tun and let stand another 10 minutes while bringing 4 gallons of water to 170 degrees for sparging. Used all 4 gallons to run off about 6 gallons of wort.

Starting to boil the wort.

The floor is getting very sticky now from when I spilled some of the wort while transferring it from bucket to kettle. Started the hour boil with addition of the hops at the beginning.

Adding the hops at the beginning of the boil. Now it's starting to smell like beer inside 141 Lilac. Excellent.

A rolling boil with the timer and a KEXP podcast in the background.

The wort chiller chillin'.

Upon completing the boil, the wort chiller is used to bring the wort down from boiling to yeast pitching temperature (about 70 degrees F). I used to do this with an ice bath - the chiller, although it uses a ton of water, cuts the time down significantly. Once the wort is about 70, I put it in the fermenter (a 6.5 gallon glass carboy), pitch the yeast, and set the airlock. I don't have the airlock I like to use - not sure where it is - but there should be enough space to allow the fermentation to occur without plugging the holes on this one. I put the beer in a dark room where the temp should be consistently about 68 degrees. In a week, it will be time to transfer from the primary into the secondary and pitch the lambic blend yeast.