WILD BEERS and WOOD AGING
Wood Pieces: Chips, Cubes, and Honeycomb
American, Hungarian, and French Oak
RECIPE: HICKORY-WOOD AGED BROWN ALE
Variation: Take a Bigger Gamble
RECIPE: THE FISH AND THE RING BELGIAN ALE (WITH BRETTANOMYCES)
MICROBES AND WOOD
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION
The use of different kinds of microbes instead of brewing yeast and the aging of beer in barrels may seem like a new frontier in brewing. But the use of wild yeast, bacteria, and barrels is hardly revolutionary. For centuries, brewers in a region of Belgium near Brussels added no ale or lager yeast at all. Instead, their wort cooled in large, shallow containers called “coolships,” where it was exposed to the wild yeast and bacteria in the air of the region. The microflora took over the beer and started what’s known as spontaneous fermentation. Brewers in this area found that these yeasts and the bacteria in the air made a delicious sour beer. In order to develop the desired flavors, the process often took several years. The wooden barrels in which the beer was stored contributed their own plethora of micro-organisms to the beer as well. To achieve a consistent product, brewers blended multiple barrels together.
Note: Sour beers from this region of Belgium are called “lambics” collectively, which can refer to traditional, take-the-enamel-off-your-teeth sour beers (Cantillon), or to sweet/sour fruit beers (Chapeau). The traditional Belgian lambic is called “gueuze” (pronounced GUH-za) and is a blend of one-, two-, and three-year-old lambics. If you want to taste a true example of spontaneous fermentation and the art of blending, look for beers from the Boon, Cantillon, or Drie Fonteinen breweries.
Beer traditionally was stored in barrels in other countries as well. But wooden barrels (usually made of oak) often were lined with a tarlike substance called “pitch” that prevented the beer from coming in contact with the wood itself, so the beer had little, if any, wood flavor. Even without pitch, the barrels usually were made of a tight-grained oak from Eastern Europe treated with steam to remove most of the wood flavor and kill most of the microorganisms living in the wood. Only Belgian brewers made a great effort not to get rid of the wild yeast and bacteria that lived in the barrels, just giving the barrels a quick rinse before refilling them.
Today brewers play with wild yeasts and bacteria (often called “bugs”) in isolation and in tandem with wood. Some breweries take the more traditional approach with coolships and an extensive barrel program, while others add pure cultures of Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, and other bugs, in modern stainless fermentors.
For homebrewers, both advantages and disadvantages stem from batch size and space restrictions. Sour beers take a long time to develop, and it’s impractical for the average homebrewer to devote an entire wing of his or her house to the storage of multiple batches and barrels. However, homebrewers have an advantage when it comes to trying something new. A commercial brewery may shy away from using Brettanomyces and other assertive cultures, but homebrewers can play with much less risk. After all, if something infects a home system, it’s just a matter of buying a new bucket and replacing a few other plastic pieces.
There are excellent resources out there when it comes to sour beer and the sour tradition—and more and more research in this science comes out every year. (Read Wild Brews: Culture and Craftsmanship in the Belgian Tradition by Jeff Sparrow, as well as Michael Tonsmeire’s excellent book American Sour Beers and entertaining blog at themadfermentationist.com.) The goal of this chapter isn’t breadth, depth, or even breaking new ground. Rather, it’s all about taking some of the current knowledge and applying it practically to the average homebrew system. Now, let’s get wild!
TIMELINE OF A SOUR BEER
Before we get into a microbe overview and the brewing itself, let’s sprint through a typical open-air lambic beer fermentation.
With open-air fermentation, the first couple of weeks are full of activity. Of the many cultures that inoculate the wort, some of these are spoilage bacteria related to E. coli. Luckily, these are killed off quickly as the pH of the wort drops and alcohol is produced. No known pathogens can survive for long in beer, but to be safe, don’t sample the wort of a spontaneous fermentation during the first few weeks.
After a week or so, wild species of the genus Saccharomyces take over the ferment and quickly start to produce alcohol. This continues for a month or two until the majority of the sugar is consumed. Lactic acid bacteria then take over and start producing the sourness that we equate with sour beers. The two main microbes are from the genera Lactobacillus (Lacto) and Pediococcus (Pedio). Lambic brewers use high rates of hopping with aged hops to inhibit Lacto production in order to give other bugs a chance to do their work before too much acidity inhibits it. Pedio often produces large amounts of buttery diacetyl and can cause the beer to turn ropy or gelatinous. (Belgian brewers refer to this as “the beer getting sick.”) Luckily, it usually will go away on its own over the rest of the fermentation process.
After six months or so, a variety of wild yeasts known as Brettanomyces usually takes over the fermentation and starts to produce the classic horsey, barnyard, and cherry-pie character that’s associated with lambics. This part of the fermentation will continue over the next year with occasional guest appearances by the yeasts Candida, Pichia, and Hansenula. By the time the beer is ready to drink, it has been home to a myriad of microorganisms that have produced hundreds of complex flavors. This is why lambic is such a strange and wonderful type of beer—and one that’s hard to ferment the same way repeatedly!
MICROBES
During a traditional lambic fermentation, dozens of microorganisms are living in the beer. It’s impossible and impractical to discuss them all. However, it’s important to understand the major players—especially the cultures you’ll likely buy to do this at home. So let’s start with a short exploration of what exactly you’re pitching when you’re making sour beer.
Saccharomyces
As you probably know, Saccharomyces is the genus of yeast used for the majority of brewing and baking. The name means “sugar fungus,” and its ability to consume sugar and excrete alcohol is the main reason we all love it. (For more on Saccharomyces, see Chapter 4.) Why is it in the chapter on wild beer? Well, even the wildest beers typically start with a Saccharomyces fermentation.
The choice of Saccharomyces yeast for your sour beer is up to you. The flavor contribution overall will be minimal. A common Saccharomyces strain found in traditional lambics is Saccharomyces bayanus, also known as Champagne yeast. Today most brewers just use a generic ale yeast. You can experiment with a less attenuative yeast such as English Ale WLP002/London ESB Ale WY1968, which theoretically should leave more sugars for the bugs to feed on.
Brettanomyces
The most popular of the funky bugs come from the genus Brettanomyces (just Brett, for short). The strains can give your beer a huge range of aromas and tastes, from pineapple to barnyard. Hundreds of Brett strains exist in the wild, but yeast labs offer only a small handful. If you decide to experiment with different strains, keep in mind that it can take up to a year for the flavors to develop and mature fully, so have patience.
Traditionally, Brett wasn’t added to beer on purpose. It just existed in the wood of the barrels or in the air around the brewery. When adding Brett intentionally, you have a couple of options. It can be the only yeast you add to your beer, since it will convert sugars into alcohol just fine on its own for primary fermentation. You might think this would create a very Brett-y beer, but strangely enough Brett tends to produce a fairly clean-tasting beer when used as the primary yeast.
To coax stronger aromas from Brett, many brewers use it as they would for sour beer—pitching it after primary fermentation completes. You can do this in the fermentor when primary fermentation is about finished. You also can add Brett at bottling (a technique made famous by the Trappist brewery Orval), which will give you a slowly evolving aroma. You can get a slight tartness over time with Brett, but it alone won’t make a sour beer.
The main concern with using Brettanomyces is the continuing slow fermentation as it consumes virtually everything. Many of my Brett beers have fermented down to 0.998 over the course of a year. This can be problematic when bottling because it will lead to overcarbonation and even bottle bombs. There’s no real solution to this problem other than taking a hydrometer reading when you think the beer finishes, waiting three weeks, and taking another reading. If they’re the same and below 1.005, then hopefully you’re okay to bottle.
Since each Brett strain has its own characteristic flavors, let’s run briefly through the four main varieties you can buy.
Brettanomyces claussenii (also known as B. anamolous): This Brett originates on the skins of fruit and can be found in the air. It was found commonly in British beer aged in barrels as well. It often contributes a tartness and a slight earthiness, without the notable barnyard funk of other Brett strains.
Brettanomyces lambicus: My favorite Brett of the bunch exhibits the classic cherry-pie flavor without the sweaty, barnyard notes of other Brett strains (notably B. brux, below).
Brettanomyces bruxellensis: If you’re looking for the classic, wild, funky Brett flavor that elicits strong reactions, B. brux is your strain. Think sweaty horse or an old barn, and you’re getting close! That’s not to say it tastes bad, though. The Belgian Trappist brewery Orval uses Brux as an addition at bottling, so grab a bottle and see if you fall in the love-it or hate-it camp. It can be cultured easily from a fresh bottle of Orval as well (page 142).
Brettanomyces bruxellensis trois: Recently this strain has been shown not to be a Brettanomyces strain at all but a weird Saccharomyces. It produces some funk that you’d expect from a Brett, but technically it isn’t Brett.
Other new Bretts: Quite a bit of debate is taking place as to the taxonomy of the different Brett cultures, so expect a few name changes and new strains to hit the market over the next decade. The Yeast Bay and East Coast Yeast, both boutique yeast labs, specialize in new Brett strains and blends. If you’re interested in this topic, subscribe to their mailing lists.
BRETT LOVES HOPS
The funky overripe fruit character that Brett adds to beer blends amazingly well with the citrus and tropical fruit aromas and tastes from modern hop varieties. Brett also will keep absorbing oxygen in the packaged beer, which keeps the hop aroma popping for months longer than a typical IPA.
Use a Brett blend such as Amalgamation from the Yeast Bay rather than a single strain, but, if you have to choose a strain, I recommend Brett brux. My hop recommendations include Citra, Galaxy, and any of the New Zealand varieties. Add the Brett after primary fermentation and wait a month or two until the FG is stable. Then dry hop heavily (4–6 ounces in a 5-gallon batch).
Lactobacillus
If you have had the pleasure of drinking a Berliner weisse or a gose, you’ve had a beer featuring lactic acid created by the Lactobaccilus bacterium. It’s also what makes sauerkraut and pickles sour. Brewers use it as their primary souring bacteria because it can sour a beer in 24 hours, compared to months with Pediococcus (below.)
Brewers use a handful of Lacto strains, and your choice primarily comes down to whether you’re going to do a kettle sour (page 143) or a mixed-culture fermentation (page 151). The most popular Lacto strain for quick kettle sours is Lactobaccilus plantarum. It’s sourced easily from probiotic pills or drinks such as Goodbelly. The appeal of this strain is that it’s inhibited by as little as 1 IBU of hops, which keeps it from infecting regular beer. It’s also a homofermentative strain, which means it won’t eat the sugar from the wort while it’s souring. This is important if you’ll be boiling the soured wort to kill the Lacto when it’s done (more on that later).
Pediococcus
I don’t know of any breweries that have produced a beer featuring Pediococcus alone. Pedio, like Lacto, creates lactic acid, but Pedio on its own can create major off-flavors in your wort, notably loads of buttery diacetyl. It also can give your beer the consistency of slime. Luckily, if you’re co-pitching Brett along with the Pedio, the Brett will help clean up the diacetyl and slime, given enough time. The main appeal of Pedio is that it isn’t hop sensitive like Lacto is. Belgian lambic brewers have been adding large amounts of aged hops to their sour beers for ages specifically because they want to inhibit the Lacto and give the other bugs a chance to grow. The slow-growing Pedio eventually will sour the lambic but only after everything else gets its turn at the table.
Since it’s a team player, Pedio isn’t as readily available from a lab or as easy to culture on its own as Lacto. But you never really want it working on its own anyway, so that’s not a big deal. Just buy one of the commercial sour blends such as White Labs’ Flemish Ale Blend WLP655, Wyeast’s Roeselare Ale Blend WY3763, or culture some dregs from a brewery that has a nice sour program (such as Jolly Pumpkin). Chances are they have some active Pedio in their cultures.
Blended Cultures
Buying separate cultures of individual bugs can get expensive quickly, and the addition of specific individual cultures at specific times isn’t well studied. So why not go with a blend?
The two most popular mixed cultures available for homebrewers are Wyeast’s Roeselare Ale Blend WY3763 and White Labs’ Belgian Sour Mix 1 WLP655, both of which are a proprietary blend of Brett, Lacto, Pedio, and some type of Saccharomyces. Other mixes exist and, as long as brewers are interested, these labs will release more and more every year. Read their descriptions and try something new if it sounds like it will work for the type of beer you want to make.
One more bug can turn beer sour—but not in a good way. Acetobacter creates a familiar flavor when it gets a hold of your beer: It turns the alcohol into acetic acid, which, as you may already know, is vinegar. It quickly can turn a batch of beer into a salad condiment, but it’s fairly easy to keep it from thriving. Acetobacter needs oxygen, so, if your airlock is topped off and you don’t keep cracking the lid to take samples, you should have no problem keeping it from your beer. If you want to add a hit of acetic acid to your beer (small amounts in Flanders red ales, for example), try adding a small amount of vinegar when you bottle.
Small yeast companies also have unique blends of mixed cultures that often are preferable to those from larger yeast companies. East Coast Yeast has a blend called BugFarm, and the Yeast Bay has a blend called Melange. These blends emulate traditional lambic cultures and take up to a year to complete fermentation. If you want a quick-turnaround sour beer, check out kettle souring (page 143).
Your final option is to follow the lead of Belgian brewers. When they find a barrel that’s been working for them, they inoculate wort in that barrel and try to spread the culture mix to other barrels. How to do that without a barrel? Well, for homebrewers, the closest you can come is using cultures from breweries you like that make sours. One or two breweries pasteurize their sours (notably New Belgium), but most don’t. That means you can buy beers from many Belgian brewers as well as domestic sour brewers, such as Jolly Pumpkin, and start your culture right from theirs. See page 140 for more on this method.
FORMS OF WOOD
Your choice of delivery method for wood flavor depends both on the type of beer and on how long you plan on aging it. If you plan to age a huge imperial stout for 6–8 months, then a spiral is perfect. But if you’re looking for a hint of oak in a hoppy West Coast red ale, then medium-toast chips in the secondary fermentation with the dry hops are best.
Don’t forget to sanitize any wood product before you use it. The preferred method is to place the product in a pot with a small amount of water and bring it to a boil. Steam it for 10 to 15 minutes, then wrap it in foil or put it in a plastic freezer bag until you’re ready to use it. (For more on sanitizing a barrel, see below.) If you want a whiskey, rum, or other alcohol flavor in your beer, sanitize the chips, cubes, or spirals by soaking them in the alcohol of your choice for a few weeks instead.
Barrels
When you age beer in a used spirits barrel, the results can vary wildly. Barrel size, age, condition, and the original distillate all play a role. Barrel size is perhaps the most important variable. The difference in surface-area ratio of a 5-gallon barrel compared with a 60-gallon barrel is huge. The small barrel has about five times the ratio of the large barrel. For this reason, many brewers advise against aging any beer in a small barrel. The risk of rapid oxidation is just too large. However, if you do use a small 5- or 10-gallon barrel, the contact time needed to impart flavor could be as little as a few days or weeks.
When it comes to barrel age, new barrels aren’t necessarily better. The first use of the barrel may yield over-the-top flavors in as little as a week, while the second fill may have to sit for months to achieve the same level of flavor. If you get your hands on a fresh, recently used spirits barrel, it should be self-sanitizing with 120- to 150-proof liquor oozing from its pores. If it’s been sitting around for a few months, it needs to be filled with water for a few days so that the wood can swell up and seal it. Using really hot water (180–190°F) will kill any worrisome bugs as well. Whiskey barrels shouldn’t have anything growing in them, but wine barrels most likely will, so soaking with very hot water is essential—unless the barrel was just emptied. Don’t use any kind of sanitizer because it will soak into the wood, and you don’t want that taste in your beer. Below you’ll find a few more tips on working with barrels.
The best advice I have on barrel-aging beer is to keep tasting. Take a sample after a week and then every week thereafter. When the beer has picked up enough flavor, rack it into a keg or bottles. (This is for clean beers only; sour beers aging in barrels should be tasted only every few months, if that.)
Watch your oxygen pickup when using a barrel. The barrel naturally will let in small amounts of oxygen over time, so purge the barrel with a CO2 tank, transfer without splashing, seal it with a good stopper and airlock, and check the airlock every couple of weeks to make sure it doesn’t dry out.
Once you have the beer from the barrel, you need to refill it quickly or it will turn vinegary on you. The optimal situation is to have another batch ready to go as soon as you rack from the barrel. If you can’t manage that, fill the barrel with 180°F water, and bung it up. Use the barrel within a week, or cut it in half and use it as a planter.
It’s much easier for a commercial brewery that has beer around every day to manage a barrel program than it is for homebrewers. It can be an expensive and sometimes disappointing experiment, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying if you’re interested. It can be a fun big brew for a homebrew club as well.
Wood Pieces: Chips, Cubes, and Honeycomb
Chips are a more reliable, if slightly less impressive sounding, way to get wood flavor into your beer. The fragments go into the finished beer, just like dry hops, and start to contribute their taste in just a few weeks. In general, 1 ounce of chips in a 5-gallon batch gives a subtle woodsy note within two weeks; 2 ounces provide a more pronounced taste. Longer contact time will extract a little bit more taste, but most of it will be extracted from chips within two to three weeks.
Oak cubes are similar to chips but have less surface area, so it takes more time or more oak to get the same taste. Purists think that the thicker size means a variation of toasting throughout, which can add complexity. Honeycomb wood pieces theoretically fall somewhere between chips and cubes. Their main advantage is that they’re available in many wood types besides oak.
Spirals
Oak spirals are long batons of wood that can be inserted into a keg or carboy. They aren’t very popular with homebrewers at the moment because they can take a long time to contribute their oaky goodness. Expect at least a month of contact time to get a subtle taste, and up to six months for full extraction. Spirals are good candidates for big beers that will see extended aging, such as imperial stouts and barleywines.
TYPES OF WOOD
American, Hungarian, and French Oak
There isn’t a huge difference in the various nationalities of oak, but I would choose French or Hungarian over American, which can have a sort of lumber-yard note to it. Hungarian oak is tight grained, which means it will take longer to release its taste. French oak is thought to be sweeter and more delicate. The more important attribute is the level of toast.
Light toast provides a brighter, more fresh-cut log character than the darker toasts.
Medium toast lends more warm, toasty aromas and tastes and is the most popular among brewers.
Dark toast can give roasty, smoky notes but is designed mainly for aging liquors. It should be used with a very light hand in beers.
Other Woods
Oak has been used for centuries for storing beer, but there’s no reason you can’t use other woods to flavor your beer. You can find a wide variety of wood chips suitable for brewing in the barbecue section of a home-supply store. You also can find apple, cherry, mesquite, and hickory chips in the grilling section of some supermarkets. A few dollars will buy you more wood chips than you’ll ever need in a lifetime of brewing.
For the tasting notes that follow, I put a handful of each wood variety in a 375°F oven for 30 minutes to sanitize them and add a nice warm, toasty character. I then added 5 grams of each type of wood to separate half-gallon growlers of an ESB (the equivalent of almost 2 ounces in a 5-gallon batch). After two weeks of aging, I conducted a blind tasting among BJCP judges and fellow brewers. Here are the results.
Mesquite had a tannic aftertaste and was very subtle. Some tasters swore that their barbecue synapses were being tickled. It would be safe to double the amount (4 ounces for 5 gallons).
Apple also had a tannic though not unpleasant edge to it. There was a delicate sweetness and fruitiness. It might be nice in a saison, and it’s a no-brainer for adding complexity to ciders.
French oak was the ringer in the flight and was picked out immediately by all tasters. The toasty, woody aroma was stronger in this sample than it was in the others. It added a buttery, vanilla taste that blended nicely with the beer. The amount used seemed just right.
Cherrywood was very subtle—almost undetectable.
Hickory was the surprise favorite. It gave the beer a nutty, pecan-like aroma and taste that worked really well with an ESB. We added toasted hickory chips to several firkins of ESB at the brewery, and tasting-room customers liked it.
HICKORY-WOOD AGED BROWN ALE
Tyler Downey brewed this recipe over and over until he got it just right. It’s an American-style brown ale with a decent amount of hops and alcohol. It has no crystal malt—just lots of toasty roasted malts that give it a complex backbone. We served this beer on cask with toasted hickory chips, but it’s a good recipe for experimenting with the wood of your choice.
YOU NEED
basic brewing equipment (page 3)
9 gallons filtered brewing water (page 12)
10 pounds British pale-ale malt (90.5%)
6.4 ounces brown malt (3.6%)
6.4 ounces British chocolate malt (3.6%)
4 ounces Weyermann CaraAmber malt (2.3%)
Note: Despite the Cara in the name, this is actually more in the vein of a biscuit malt, which can be substituted
17 alpha acid units Columbus hops at 30 minutes (45 IBU)
1 Whirlfloc tablet
¾ ounce Columbus hops at end of boil
2 vials or packages California Ale WLP001/American Ale WY1056 yeast (or a 2-liter starter made from 1 pack, page 110)
1 ounce hickory (or other wood), toasted in a 350°F oven for 15 minutes
3¾ ounces dextrose/corn sugar (optional, use only for bottling)
TARGETS
Yield: 5 gallons
OG: 1.056–1.058
FG: 1.011–1.013
IBU: 45
1. Mix the malt with 4 gallons of water at 169°F or the appropriate temperature to mash at 154°F. Mash for 60 minutes.
2. Recirculate the wort until it’s fairly clear. Run off the wort into the kettle.
3. Sparge with 5 more gallons of water at 165°F. Run off the wort into the kettle.
4. Bring the wort to a boil. Boil it for 45 minutes. Add the hops and the Whirlfloc tablet and continue to boil for 30 minutes. Put your wort chiller into the wort at least 15 minutes before the end of the boil.
5. At the end of the boil, add the knockout hop addition, but don’t start chilling yet. Cover with a lid or clean trash bag and let the wort sit hot for 30 minutes, then chill to 65°F.
6. Siphon the wort into your sanitized fermentor and pitch two packs of liquid yeast or a 2-liter starter.
7. Ferment at 65°F for two weeks, adding the wood chips after primary fermentation slows down (usually after five to seven days).
8. Keg or bottle the beer. (If you’re bottling, I recommend 3¾ ounces of dextrose/corn sugar for this beer.)
BREWING WILD AT HOME
When making wild beer at home, you need to have an open mind. You give control of fermentation to the microbes you choose and the ones that choose you. Whether you buy a commercial culture, culture one of your own, or pitch bottle dregs, chances are that the resulting beer will taste unlike anything you can buy at the store. When it turns out to be fantastic, your friends will be impressed that you brewed one of the most difficult beers in all of brewing.
Remember that any plastic equipment (siphon tubing, airlocks, buckets, and so on) that comes in contact with wild beer should be labeled as such and used only for wild beers thereafter. Also, make sure you have plenty of patience!
CAPTURING YOUR OWN CULTURE
If you really want to get in touch with your inner localvore, try a spontaneous fermentation with your own town’s bugs. You’re getting into uncharted territory here. More than likely, you’re going to make some really funky stuff. But you’re also going to be one of the elite group of homebrewers who is blazing a trail.
YOU NEED
1½ gallons wort at 1.030 (can be made from pale dry extract)
3 (2-liter) soda bottles, emptied and cleaned
sanitizer
funnel
cheesecloth
rubber bands
The Basics
You can capture wild yeast and other microbes almost anywhere in the world. There’s no way to get consistent, repeatable results from just the air, but you can try to stack the deck in your favor.
First, time it right. Most lambic breweries take the summer off. American brewers with coolships, such as Allagash, tend to do the same. Whether it’s due to a higher percentage of undesirable microbes or a longer danger zone while the wort cools slowly in the higher ambient temperature, avoid brewing wild in summer. Throughout much of the world winter also isn’t the best time to capture wild microbes. Many brewers say it’s due to the opposite effect of summer: Temperatures below or near freezing aren’t ideal for the microbes we want in beer. Stick to fall and spring for these experiments.
You can control the season in which you capture microbes, but you can’t control what you capture. Make up for this by increasing your experiment size. Try at least three locations around your house to see what happens.
Start Small
Start by sanitizing your three 2-liter bottles. Then pour the 1.030 wort through a funnel to distribute it equally among the bottles, leaving 4 to 5 inches of headspace at the top of each. Wrap the cheesecloth around the top and use a rubber band to keep the cheesecloth in place.
Place each bottle in a different location in your house or on your porch. I recommend areas with good circulation but different atmospheres. You might leave one in the basement, one upstairs by a window, and one on the porch (where animals can’t get it). If you live in an apartment, try one at your place and recruit a couple of friends who live nearby and leave bottles at their places. Again, access to open air is usually good, so leaving a bottle by a window is ideal. Leave the bottles out overnight.
The next morning, loosely cap them—but not to the point that they seal—and place them in a cool (60–70°F), dark spot. After a few days, you may see some activity, but leave them for two to three weeks to see what happens. At that point, you can give each one a smell and see what’s going on. Do not taste them! As fermentation continues and the wort ages, anything really nasty will die off. But at this point, you just have something growing in rich, sugary water. Drinking it could prove dangerous.
If you smell rancid or garbage-like aromas, the beer can go right down the drain. If you smell fruity or spicy aromas, it could be a keeper and worth developing. You have two options: Tighten the cap, checking periodically on the pressure and off-gassing it yourself, or attach an airlock.
In three to six months, the beer should have a more distinctive aroma one way or the other. If you take a gravity sample and have reached a significantly lower gravity (say, 1.015 or below), go ahead and taste it as well. If you like what you smell and taste, you now have a house culture to pitch in your next beer! Pour off most of the clear wort and make a starter with the dregs (page 110).
Variation: Take a Bigger Gamble
If you want to roll like the Belgian lambic brewers, you need to coolship your beer. Coolshipping entails cooling your beer, open to the chilly night air, overnight. Take your wort after boiling and set it outside, covered with some cheesecloth to keep out bugs and leaves. Time of year is important: Late fall to early spring is best. Summer is bad, and, depending on your location, the middle of winter is probably too cold. By the next morning, your wort should be chilled to 50–70°F. At that point, rack into a carboy, attach an airlock, and forget about it for a year. The only thing you can do wrong is letting the airlock dry out during aging. Other than that, it’s up to the wild bugs in the air to do their jobs. (See page 130 for more info.)
This technique, while completely authentic, is unfortunately fraught with failure. I usually have to dump 4 of 5 batches before I get one that tastes great. Once I have a good one, though, I can repitch that yeast and have my own native wild culture unlike what any other brewer has. The majority of barrels at my brewery contain 100 percent native wild cultures with no cultured yeast added.
Variation: Try It with Fruit
You know that white film on the outside of wild grapes and figs? That’s yeast! Putting a handful of grapes into a small jar of wort usually will start fermentation pretty quickly. Again, if the starter smells good, then you can grow it into a bigger batch. From a tree in my front yard, I recently picked six plums covered in yeast and put them into a jar of wort. Within a few hours, it was fermenting away. Imagine my surprise when, sampling the wort after a week, it tasted exactly like a German hefeweizen! It had mild clove notes in its aroma and taste, with just a hint of tartness. It was otherwise very clean. Now I have a tasty yeast to use that nobody else can order from a lab. The lesson: It may not be sour, but it will be unique.
CULTURING MICROBES FROM SOURS
One of the easiest ways to kick-start your sours program is to get some bugs from the best. That’s right: If you like a commercial sour beer, there’s a good chance you can use their cultures in your own beer.
Jolly Pumpkin is a great source for fresh bugs, but I’ve also gotten healthy starters going from several of the Belgian lambics. In general, the more bottle dregs you add, the better. Also, recently packaged beer will have more active cultures—cultures that are alive and at work in the beer itself. Lower alcohol content is usually good, too. You do need to make sure there are active bugs, though. A few breweries that make tasty sours, such as New Belgium, pasteurize their beers, which means there’s nothing alive in the bottle.
YOU NEED
several bottles sour beer
small jar (2–3 ounces)
medium jar (6–12 ounces)
growler or other 2-liter container
aluminum foil (if the jars don’t have lids)
sanitizer
1 gallon filtered brewing water (page 12)
⅔ pound light dry malt extract
¼ teaspoon yeast nutrient
large pot
large glass
A FEW RECOMMENDED BREWERIES FOR DREGS
The Bruery
Jolly Pumpkin
Lost Abbey
Russian River
Almost any Belgian brewer of fresh bottled lambic or gueuze (except Lindemans)
Note: The amount of yeast in a single bottle of beer is very small, and you shouldn’t stress it by starting it off in a large starter. We’ll start it off in a small jar with about ¼ cup of wort. After a week, step it up to 2 cups. Finally, after another week, step it up to 2 liters.
1. A few days ahead of time, make sure the bottles of beer from which you’re going to culture the yeast are stored upright. Anything that drops from suspension will be located conveniently at the bottom of the bottle.
2. In the meantime, sanitize your jars by soaking them in sanitizing solution or by boiling them for 15 minutes.
3. Boil the dechlorinated water, dry malt extract, and yeast nutrient in a pot for 30 minutes. Pour the boiling wort into the jars, leaving a decent headspace, screw on lids or wrap foil over the tops, and allow the jars to cool.
4. Crack the bottle open and pour the beer into a large glass, reserving the last ½ inch or so of beer. Leave more or less if you can see the sediment, but err on the side of more. Pour slowly to minimize sloshing. Now swirl the yeast into solution and sanitize the lip of the bottle.
5. Crack the lid on the smallest jar of starter wort, quickly pour the sediment into it, and replace the lid. If you have multiple bottles, repeat the process.
6. You won’t see much activity in the first jar, perhaps just a thicker layer of sediment on the bottom than what you started with. After one week, swirl any sediment into solution and pour it into the next size jar of starter wort. This time, you should see some activity, such as some krauesen (foam) on top and a growing layer of sediment on the bottom.
7. After another week, step up the starter to the largest jar. This should be ready to pitch into your 5-gallon batch within a few days, but I prefer to let it ferment to completion over another week and then sample the wort before I brew up a 5-gallon batch. It should smell and taste similar to the beers that you harvested the yeast from, but more subdued.
USING BRETT
Although some brewers think of Brett as a bacteria or a contaminant, it’s merely another yeast. It originally was isolated from British ales and probably was present in a large amount of beer until the 1900s. It’s a quirky yeast compared to Saccharomyces. It ferments fairly cleanly when pitched like a primary yeast, but it produces the flavors we want only when treated badly.
When fermenting with Brett under ideal conditions, it’s very neutral and clean—it would be hard to know that the beer was fermented with anything other than a traditional ale yeast. There’s no tang or funk, just a slightly estery beer similar to an aggressive British ale strain such as Yorkshire.
If you want Brett character, the best time to add it is when the beer has few to no simple sugars left, the pH is low, and alcohol is present. Then Brett will thrive and produce the flavors we appreciate. It’s also best under pressure (literally) and frequently will produce the flavors you want when added at bottling. So, while it’s interesting to make a big starter using Brett as your primary yeast, it’s better to use it at bottling and to give it several months to develop complexity.
KETTLE SOURING
In the previous edition of this book, I recommended sour mashing to make a quick sour. I wasn’t a big fan of the technique, but it was the best way at the time. Since then, a revolution has taken place in the way that homebrewers and commercial brewers make quick sour beers—called “kettle souring.”
Kettle souring is the process of taking boiling wort with no added hops and chilling it to around 90–100°F. Then you add some Lacto, normally in the form of probiotic pills (see below), probiotic drinks such as Goodbelly, or a commercially produced pitch. After 24–48 hours, the wort is nicely sour, and you bring it to a boil to kill the Lacto. This method prevents the Lacto from infecting your equipment and locks in the level of sourness. At this point, you can add hops if you want, chill it to 65°F, pitch a healthy ale yeast, and ferment as normal. When the fermentation finishes, you can add fruit or dry hops if desired or just keg and bottle. You will have a two-week-turnaround sour beer that will impress your friends.
This technique has a much higher success rate than the old sour-mash technique, and you have a few ways to ensure success. Oxygen is the enemy of sour beer, and once your wort cools you should minimize any oxygen intake while the Lacto is working. The best way to do this is to purge a corny keg with CO2 (page 20), then siphon your wort into it and add the Lacto. If you don’t keg, placing a layer of plastic wrap over the top of the wort will keep oxygen out. The secret pro technique is to lower the pH of the wort to 4.5 with lactic or phosphoric acid before adding the Lacto. This requires a pH meter and isn’t essential, but it does help with foam stability and keeping undesirable bugs from growing.
Sources of Lactobaccilus
With the popularity of probiotics, there’s a plethora of sources for Lacto as close as your local grocery store. Look in the yogurt section of your local supermarket for Goodbelly probiotic drink. Loaded with Lactobaccilus plantarum, it comes in different flavors and also in “shots.” One quart of the flavored drink is plenty for a 5-gallon batch. (The added fruit flavors don’t come through in the final beer, but, if you’re worried about that, find the unflavored shots and use 4–5 in a 5-gallon batch.)
Probiotic pills are another cheap and easy source of Lacto and usually are available at your local supermarket. If you need an online source, check out swansonvitamins.com and search for “plantarum.” A jar of 30 capsules costs less than $10 and is plenty for a 5-gallon batch. Overpitching isn’t a problem when kettle souring, so I usually open all 30 pills and toss the powder into the fermenter, but you could use 10 pills and be fine.
Yogurt is another easily available source of Lacto. Look for a nonfat, unpasteurized variety. Most fat-free Greek yogurts will work fine. Add around ½ cup of yogurt directly to the fermenter.
Most yeast labs sell Lacto, but for the price you’re better off with one of the above choices.
Lactobacillus plantarum is the most popular strain for kettle souring because it works best at 80–90°F, whereas other strains (such as in yogurt) work best at 120°F, which can prove difficult for homebrewers to maintain for 48 hours. L. plantarum also is extremely hop sensitive. As little as 1 IBU can keep it from working, so don’t add any hops until you’re done souring.
THE FISH AND THE RING BELGIAN ALE
(WITH BRETTANOMYCES)
The brewers at Orval add a mixed culture containing mostly Brettanomyces yeast
at bottling. The beer is dry hopped with Styrian Goldings so that it can have a bright hop aroma with a little Brett character when it’s fresh from the brewery. Over the course of a year, the hop aroma fades and the perfumey wild character of the Brett starts to prevail. This beer isn’t that difficult to brew compared to many “wild” styles, and tasting the evolution of this beer over the course of a year is enlightening.
YOU NEED
basic brewing equipment (page 3)
9 gallons filtered brewing water (page 12)
9 pounds German pilsner malt (81.8%)
1¼ pounds CaraMunich II (11.4%)
¾ pound dextrose or corn sugar (6.8%)
10 alpha acid units Hallertau hops at 60 minutes (39.6 IBU)
1 Whirlfloc tablet
3¾ ounces dextrose/corn sugar
2 vials or packages Bastogne Belgian Ale WLP510 yeast (or a 2-liter starter made from one pack; page 110)
1½ ounces Styrian Goldings hops (dry hops)
1 vial or pack Brettanomyces bruxellensis WLP650/WY5112 or the dregs from 3 bottles Orval (freshest you can find)
TARGETS
Yield: 5 gallons
OG: 1.058–1.061
FG: 1.010–1.012 (will go lower in the bottle)
IBU: 39.6
1. Mix the malt with 4 gallons of water at 165°F or the appropriate temperature to mash at 150°F. Mash for 60 minutes.
2. Recirculate the wort until it’s fairly clear. Run off the wort into the kettle.
3. Sparge with 5 more gallons of water at 165°F. Run off the wort into the kettle.
4. Bring the wort to a boil. Boil it for 30 minutes. Add the Hallertau hops and continue to boil for 60 minutes. Add the Whirlfloc tablet and the dextrose or corn sugar at 30 minutes. Put your wort chiller into the wort at least 15 minutes before the end of the boil.
5. When the boil finishes, cover the pot with a lid or a new trash bag and chill to 68°F. Siphon the wort into your sanitized fermentor and pitch two packs of liquid yeast or a 2-liter starter.
6. Ferment at 65°F for two days, then let the temperature rise on its own to 72–75°F. Add the dry hops after primary fermentation slows down (within six to seven days).
7. Bottle the beer with 3¾ ounces of dextrose/corn sugar. Add the Brettanomyces culture (or the dregs of the bottles of Orval) at the same time as the priming sugar. After bottle conditioning, leave the bottles at cellar temperatures (50–60°F) so that the wild yeasts can continue to produce interesting aromas and tastes over the coming year.
BERLINER WEISSE
This is the basic process for making a quick kettle-soured beer, and variations follow at the end for making fruited sours or goses.
YOU NEED
basic brewing equipment (page 3)
8 gallons filtered brewing water (page 12)
4½ pounds pilsner malt
3 pounds wheat malt
1¾ alpha acid units Hallertau hops at 30 minutes (4 IBUs)
1 quart Goodbelly probiotic drink, 4–6 shots, 10–30 probiotic pills, or ½ cup fat-free, unpasteurized yogurt
2-liter starter California Ale WLP001/American Ale WY1056 or 2 packs US-05 dry yeast rehydrated
7 ounces dextrose/corn sugar (optional, use only for bottling)
TARGETS
Yield: 5 gallons
OG: 1.035–1.037
FG: 1.005–1.007
IBU: 4
1. Mix the malt with 3 gallons of water at 165°F or the appropriate temperature to mash at 150°F. Mash for 60 minutes.
2. Recirculate the wort until it’s fairly clear. Run off the wort into the kettle.
3. Sparge with 5 more gallons of water at 165°F. Run off the wort into the kettle.
4. Bring the wort to a boil, then turn the heat off. Add your wort chiller and let it sit in the hot wort for 15 minutes. Cover the wort with a lid or clean trash bag and chill to 90°F if using Lacto plantarum or to 120°F if using yogurt.
5. Rack into your fermenter, preferably a CO2-purged keg or at least gently siphoned into a carboy or bucket, and add your Lacto. If fermenting in a bucket, place a layer of plastic wrap over the top of the wort to prevent oxygen uptake.
6. After 24 hours, take a small sample and taste it, keeping in mind that the sugar in the wort will offset some of the acidity. If it’s in the range of sourness that you like, proceed to the next step. If not, give it another 24 hours.
7. Bring the soured beer to a boil, add the hops, and boil for 30 minutes. Put your wort chiller in the wort at least 15 minutes before the end of the boil.
8. When the boil finishes, cover the pot with a lid or a new trash bag and chill to 65°F. Siphon the wort into your sanitized fermenter and pitch the rehydrated dry yeast or the 2-liter starter.
9. Ferment at 65–70°F for 2 weeks.
10. Keg or bottle the beer. (If bottling, use 7 ounces of dextrose/corn sugar for this beer.)
VARIATIONS
Gose: Add 20 grams of freshly ground coriander and 20 grams of salt to the kettle at the end of the boil and proceed as indicated.
Fruited sours: After fermentation completes, add 5–10 pounds of the fruit of your choice (page 177), and wait 3 weeks before packaging.
DIY LAMBIC
Brewing a traditional lambic requires cooling wort, while open to the chilly night air, overnight (aka coolshipping), then aging it for at least a year while the wild yeasts and bacteria slowly work their magic. Nothing is stopping homebrewers from attempting this spontaneous style of fermentation, but it does have a high rate of failure. Most of my attempts have a strong aroma and taste of rubber bands, but a few batches have come out fantastic. In the next chapter, we’ll discuss the best ways to make lambic-style beers, both with the traditional method as well as simpler and more successful methods. If you lack the patience or space to let these beers age for a year or more, try a quick sour such as the Berliner Weisse (page 147) or American Wild Ale (page 152).
A FEW NOTES:
The traditional lambic recipe consists of 35 percent raw wheat and 65 percent pilsner malt. Using raw wheat requires cereal mashing (page 161), so unless you’re comfortable doing a cereal mash, just substitute malted wheat or flaked wheat. The flavor difference in a sour beer will be minimal. Remember to add an extra pound or two of malt to hit your OG when using raw or flaked products (page 160).
Aim for a gravity of 1.050 with just a pinch of hops (around 5 IBU). I don’t use smelly old whole hops like the traditionalists do because it can take hours of boiling to drive off the stinky-foot aroma. As long as you use a mild, neutral, low-alpha hop (such as Willamette), you’ll be fine. Whatever you do, don’t increase the IBU above 10 because that can inhibit some wild cultures.
Mash higher than usual, shooting for as high as 159°F. Brett and other cultures will bring the gravity down lower than typical brewing yeast, and the bugs will feed off the long-chain sugars produced by a high-temperature mash. Try to get a lot of cloudy runoff from your mash into the boil, too, because the bugs will feed on these starches while the beer ages.
Invest in duplicates of all equipment that touches the beer after pitching (bucket, racking equipment, bottling equipment, and tubing) unless you’re willing to dedicate your current equipment to sours only.
YOU NEED
basic brewing equipment (page 3)
8½ gallons filtered brewing water (page 12)
3½ pounds pilsner malt (31.8%)
3½ pounds North American 2-row malt (for extra enzymes and husks) (31.8%)
4 pounds raw wheat or flaked wheat (if using raw wheat, page 160) (36.4%)
1.25 alpha acid units Willamette hops at 60 minutes (4 IBU)
If you’re attempting a spontaneous fermentation, you won’t need any yeast. Otherwise, you’ll need . . .
bottle dregs from a couple of your favorite sour beers grown into a healthy 2-liter starter (page 110). Alternatively, you can make a starter from a commercial culture that includes a blend of Saccharomyces, Brettanomyces, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus, such as Sour Mix 1 WLP655 or Belgian Lambic Blend WY3278.
7 ounces dextrose/corn sugar (optional, use only for bottling)
TARGETS
Yield: 5 gallons
OG: 1.050–1.053
FG: 1.003–1.007
IBU: 4
1. Mix the malt with 3½ gallons of water at 175°F or the appropriate temperature to mash at 158–160°F. Mash for 60 minutes.
2. Sparge with 5 more gallons of water at 190°F. Run off the wort into the kettle. Don’t recirculate until clear before running off.
3. Bring the wort to a boil, boil for 30 minutes, add the hops, and continue to boil for 60 minutes. Put your wort chiller into the wort at least 15 minutes before the end of the boil.
4. When the boil finishes, you have two choices. If you want a traditional spontaneous fermentation, put the hot wort outside, cover it with a layer of cheesecloth, and let it cool overnight. The next morning, siphon it into a sanitized fermenter. If you’re pitching yeast, chill the wort to 65°F, siphon it into your sanitized fermenter, and pitch the starter of mixed cultures.
5. The choice of fermenters is up to you. Plastic buckets are nice because they’re disposable, but, when it comes to oxygen intake over the course of a year, they suck. The more oxygen you take in over the year or two of aging, the more it can cause your beer to turn slowly to vinegar. I recommend a glass carboy or one of the new plastic carboys. Aging in a keg seems like a good idea, but you want a small amount of oxygen to enter the beer, so stainless isn’t the best choice for wild ales. The worst thing you can do is let the airlock dry out. Check it monthly at least.
6. After six months, taste it. You may see a layer of what looks like white mold on the top of the beer. Don’t fret—it’s only the pellicle, a layer of wild yeasts that keeps oxygen out. (See photo below.) Remove a small sample and give it a smell and a taste. The aroma should be pleasantly funky and may or may not taste sour. Sourness often develops last and can take as long as 12–16 months. If you’re fermenting a spontaneous beer, this can be a make-or-break moment. If it smells horrible or like plastic, dump it and try again.
Using a mixed culture is even easier than kettle souring because you don’t reboil the wort after souring. You simply pitch all your bugs into the fermenter and let them fight it out. The only problem with this method, unlike kettle souring, is that it can infect all your equipment, but this is more of a worry for commercial brewers. As long as you have separate hoses and any other plastic items, you should be fine.
This technique starts with a quick fermentation with ale yeast and then adding Lacto and/or Brett. This method can create a nice and fairly complex sour beer in as few as 3–4 weeks. Just remember that Brett will eat complex sugars slowly over time, so make sure the OG is below 1.005 if bottling.
Another cool trick is to halt the Lacto when it gets to your desired level of sourness by dry hopping. An ounce or two of dry hops will stop Lactobacillus plantarum dead in its tracks. I highly recommend any New Zealand variety for this style of beer, especially Nelson Sauvin.
BASIC TECHNIQUE
Brew a simple wheat beer with no hops, OG 1.050, 70 percent pilsner and 30 percent wheat.
Chill to 65–70°F and siphon into your sanitized fermenter
Pitch the Saccharomyces strain of your choice.
After 3 days, pitch Lactobacillus in the form of 1 quart of Goodbelly probiotic drink, 4–6 Goodbelly shots, or 10–20 opened probiotic pills. Also add Brettanomyces at this time if desired.
Add dry hops, if desired, when acidity reaches the level you want.
Wait until the FG falls at least below 1.005 if using Brettanomyces or below 1.010 if using just Lacto.
Package as desired, aiming for 3.2 volumes if bottling (6.3 ounces of dextrose or corn sugar).
Note: If you keep the fermentor warm (70–85°F), you should have a nice funky beer with decent sourness within 6 months. You can accentuate the sourness with a teaspoon or two of lactic acid or acid blend at bottling, too. It probably won’t be quite up to the quality of a sour that had more time to develop, but you can weigh the risk and the reward and decide what’s right for you.
7. Check it again after a year. If the beer isn’t sour enough for your liking, let it sit for another 3–4 months and sample it again, or adjust the sourness with food-grade lactic acid or a winemaker’s acid blend—a teaspoon or two should do the trick. If it’s nice and tart, you’re ready to bottle. (This really isn’t a beer you want to keg.)
8. Rehydrate some dry white wine or Champagne yeast, add it to your beer along with your priming sugar solution, and bottle the beer. I recommend using 7 ounces of dextrose/corn sugar for this beer. It’s traditional to carbonate this type of beer at even higher volumes, but increase the priming sugar at your own risk—and using only Champagne-style bottles. Brett easily can consume too much sugar, especially if the beer wasn’t totally finished fermenting. (It should be 1.007 or lower.) Bottle bombs are a real danger.
9. Even after bottling, the bugs may continue to work very slowly over the years, so sample a bottle every month or two to make sure the bottles aren’t over-carbonating. If they are, store them in the fridge or drink them.
AMERICAN WILD ALE
This wild beer has a healthy dose of American craft-brewing attitude.
The funky Brett blends well with the complex caramel and hop tastes. It doesn’t take as long to brew as a lambic, since strong sourness isn’t the goal. You’ll be able to drink it within two to three months, but it’ll continue to evolve for several years if you let it sit.
YOU NEED
basic brewing equipment (page 3)
10 gallons filtered water (page 12)
15 pounds North American 2-row malt (96.8%)
½ pound Weyermann CaraAroma (3.2%)
5 alpha acid units Amarillo hops at 60 minutes (17 IBU)
1 ounce Amarillo hops (dry hop)
1 Whirlfloc tablet
1 vial or package California Ale WLP001/American Ale WY1056 yeast and a small starter (500 milliliters) the dregs from a bottle of sour beer (page 110)
1 ounce Citra hops (dry hop)
2 ounces medium-toast French oak cubes or chips, steamed for 10 minutes, then added to the fermentor after 1 week
5 ounces dextrose/corn sugar (optional, use only for bottling)
TARGETS
Yield: 5 gallons
OG: 1.066–1.068
FG: 1.010
IBU: 17
1. Mix the malt with 5 gallons of water at 165°F or the appropriate temperature to mash at 150°F. Mash for 60 minutes.
2. Recirculate the wort until it’s fairly clear. Run off the wort into the kettle.
3. Sparge with 5 more gallons of water at 165°F. Run off the wort into the kettle.
4. Bring the wort to a boil. Boil it for 15 minutes. Add the Amarillo hops and continue to boil for 60 minutes. Add the Whirlfloc tablet at 30 minutes. Put your wort chiller into the wort at least 15 minutes before the end of the boil.
5. When the boil finishes, cover the pot with a lid or a new trash bag and chill to 70°F. Siphon the wort into your sanitized fermentor and pitch the yeast and the starter of the sour beer dregs.
6. Ferment at 70–75°F for three weeks, adding the dry hops and oak chips or cubes after primary fermentation slows down (usually within five to seven days).
7. Keg or bottle the beer. (If you’re bottling, I recommend 4 ounces of dextrose/corn sugar for this beer.) After a month in the bottle or keg, the resulting beer should be a light to medium funky, with dank hops, a complex caramel taste, and just a hint of warm, toasty oak.
