Gonna Try A Lambic
brewskinewbski wrote:
I will attempt to atrificially age my hops in the oven. Then boil them in 1g of water for an hour before hand. Mash the grains in a seperate 2g's and then combine them and add my DME. Hopefully this will mute the hops character.
Do you age your hops just to lower their alpha %? Couldn't you just use another hop with a lower alpha % or are you using Target and Perle to go for a specific flavor/aroma and need to lower the alpha % to cut back on bittering?
You age the hops to get NO taste or aroma. Hops are used for thier preservative properties only.
If you want a easy cheap lambic just throw a dirty sock into the 2ndary for a few days, then bottle.
DC
Nahhh... I'll just cut up one of my old horse blankets.
brewskinewbski wrote:
You age the hops to get NO taste or aroma. Hops are used for thier preservative properties only.
Actually, a good 4 hour boil will get you to no aroma or taste too.
I'll keep that in mind for next time. Baking them in the oven made the house reak of hops. I loved it, but the wife and kids and dog and cat hated it. I get out voted all the time.
another question... should I bother racking off the trub in the primary or just add the raspberries and lambic culture right to the primary after a month????
I would rack off the primary yeast cake after it has fermented out. Yes, lambics have some weird flavors, but you don't want any nasty flavors cause by yeast autolysis in the yeast cake.
1n1m3g wrote:
I would rack off the primary yeast cake after it has fermented out. Yes, lambics have some weird flavors, but you don't want any nasty flavors cause by yeast autolysis in the yeast cake.
I'm not positive, but I'm guessing it's not as big a deal as most might think. Most lambics go directly into barrels and stay in the same barrel on the same yeast and bacteria for years. Either that means any nasty flavors will age out or possibly the yeast end up being nutrients for the bacteria. Now with a non funky beer, I'd completely agree with you, just not sure it applies here.
If it was me, I'd only rack it to secondary if I did a neutral yeast first and was adding the funky yeast/bacteria later. If it was all added in primary, no need for a secondary. But that's just me.
DT
The base beer is fermenting right now with a belgian wit yeast only. Fruit puree and Lambic blend won't go in until I rack to secondary. I wount be doing a real careful rack. In fact I am just planing on pouring it onto the puree and yeast. Will try to avoid the majority of the trub.