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Gonna Try A Lambic
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.
Gravities have been steady for 5 days so i went ahead and racked to secondary today.
One key aspect of using Brett, Pedeo, or lacto cultures is oxygen. They do better when they have a little oxygen available. I do my primary for 7 to 14 days in glass with my main yeast and then rack into a plastic bucket and let age with cultures for about 3 months. Plastic is more permeable then a wooden barrel so I wouldn't recommend letting your lambic age past three months in plastic. After that you could either bulk age in glass or age individually in bottles.
As for the dead yeast and trub, as the yeast die they release some amino acids and proteins that the cultures can use so you shouldn't get off flavors from some settled yeast in secondary, just don't go crazy with the amount of yeast and trub carried over and you'll be fine.
Hope that helps!
Chris
Thanks.
Down the drain it went. I cracked the lid to find a 1 inch layer of mold................
Aw, man. That sucks. This thread made me excited about lambics and I'm thinking of brewing one myself. I've never actually tasted one so I'll have to include that in my research. Can you pinpoint where it went wrong?
It had to have come in on the fruit.
that is a pissah, brewski. all that time just to have it mold on you.
I don't want to sound like I am being retarded or condescending because that is not my intent, but are you aware that when brewing a lambic you do "infect" it with bacteria/wild yeast, and that these "bugs" cause what most would see as an infection? The bugs create a variety of stuff from slime, to ropes, to even mold looking stuff. I am wondering if what you saw as mold was really the bugs doing their work....
The method I use when brewing a lambic, or any sour ale, is to ferment it for 7 or so days in glass, then add in bugs/fruit/wood/whatever and secondary in plastic and just let it sit for 3 months (without peeking), then back to glass for another 3 to 18 months. That way I don't see the "sick" beer and worry about an infection (cause worrying is one thing I do well).
For fruit, I steep in 155 degree for 20 or so min. but if you don't mind cloudy beer you can boil it for about 5 min.
I really don't have a lot of experience brewing sour ales, I've done one cherry lambic and one flanders red ale, but I spent about a year researching the hows, whats, and whys 'cause 6 to 18 months of waiting had best be worth it!
Anyways, don't let this stop you from trying again, brewing and fermenting a lambic is a blast!
It was mold. White mold w/ black spore bullseyes. The kind you can get from curing meat at too high a temp, but not high enough to dry it. I don't mind infecting beer but when it grows legs and ask for a smoke I draw the line.
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