The Mixed Fermentation Thread

[Sadfield]

Phew...So you've mashed and soured, with no boil or hops with this beer. Any plans post fermentation or are you leaving it as is?

 

[strange-steve]

No boil, but I did chuck in some aged hops during the 82° rest. Post fermentation I'm going to dry hop with sorachi ace and add lemon and lime zest. Could be terrible but I think it could be good.

 

[Sadfield]

Sounds nice.

 

[BeerCat]

Don't know about the krausen, but for the water I would go for low sulphate, moderate alkalinity. As for the hops, how well aged are they? JZ's lambic recipe calls for 80g, but they'd need to be well aged at that amount.

Aged hops from MM. £2 a 100g. No idea what type but just opened the pack and they smell of nothing and look like straw. Thanks though i will err on the side of caution and go a bit below.

 

[BeerCat]

18 hours and there's a slight drop and some definite visible activity, quite a lot of foam forming on the surface.

Sounds like your having more success than me. Last time i soured it was stinking of sick within a few hours!

 

[strange-steve]

Yeah it seems to be going well, even some krausen this morning. I expected a longer lag time.

Hmm, sick smell sounds like butyric acid, did you pre-sour the wort?

 

[BeerCat]

Yeah it seems to be going well, even some krausen this morning. I expected a longer lag time.

Hmm, sick smell sounds like butyric acid, did you pre-sour the wort?

No i forgot.

 

[Sadfield]

Brewing a Porter today, that I'll initially ferment with Saccharomyces then aged for 6-12 months on a few oak chunks that have been in a beer part fermented with Brettanomyces Claussenii.

 

[BeerCat]

Finally made the Flanders Red. I added some spraymalt to hit my OG of 1048. Smack pack is swollen and ready to go. Next thing is to wait 18 months

2kg red x
500g bohemian pilsner
500g rye
500g munich
500g
300g carared
300g special w
300g un malted wheat
300g flaked wheat
200g extra light spraymalt

 

[BeerCat]

The Roselare is going nuts. Will swap the lid over in a few days as the airlock is full of yeast. A good sign I think.

 

[strange-steve]

Finally made the Flanders Red. I added some spraymalt to hit my OG of 1048. Smack pack is swollen and ready to go. Next thing is to wait 18 months

2kg red x
500g bohemian pilsner
500g rye
500g munich
500g
300g carared
300g special w
300g un malted wheat
300g flaked wheat
200g extra light spraymalt

There's a lot going on there, looks great :thumba:

 

[strange-steve]

Today I added the sorachi ace dry hops plus the lemon and lime zest to my Berliner and the combo smells great, although there is a possibility the beer will end up tasting like toilet cleaner with all that lemon

Took a little sample and SG is 1.009 meaning a very sessionable 3.8%. Flavours are very clean at this stage, sharp and refreshing with a nice soft bready malt background. I'm hoping this could be a good one.

 

[Zephyr259]

There are tiny bubbles slowly rising through my golden sour now that the new boiler has returned the house to double digit temperatures. The oude bruin may be trying to develop a pelicle, or it's got mold in it somehow, might have just been some floating yeast as it broke up when I jiggled the carboy a bit. Finally I need to test my old ale as it's managed to reach 7 months with the brett C without me noticing, had a pelicle for months now but it's in a pretty cold cupboard so might have to warm it up a bit to make sure the brett isn't going to wake up in the bottles once it's summer.

 

[BeerCat]

I changed the lid and airlock of my flanders red twice already and checked again this morning and it's done it again. I will leave it a few days this time before changing it. Fermentation started about 8 days ago.

 

[Zephyr259]

In a surprise turn of events the kids let both me and the wife potter about at our hobbies today, so all 3 of my mixed fermentations got sampled. Brett old ale is still at 1.020 after 7 months but has a definite funk which is verging on the blue cheese that brett sometimes does... Hope it changes as I hate that particular flavour in a beer which is why I dislike Hassens geueze.

The oude bruin which was a bock with a mass of cultured dregs is souring nicely and the brett is more dry and earth and complex so that's showing promise. Finally is the golden sour with Roeselare and a touch of Opshaug kveik, my notes say that it was 1.018 3 months ago and 7.4 brix, when I checked those numbers the brix reading comes out to 1.015 and I don't recall using a hydrometer so not sure what I did to mess up the maths. Nevertheless, it's 7.3 brix today so 1.015 from 1.048, so only 69% attenuation thus far and 4.3% abv. It is slowly fermenting as I mentioned above so fingers crossed. Oh, it also tastes brilliant, first sip has a good sourness which mellows on the following sips as my palate adjusted, brett is dry and earthy like i enjoy. Got my hopes up for this one.

 

[stz]

This isn't much mixed culture, but I got a berliner brett off the milk the funk group and have done three beers with it so far. It isn't a single isolate brett, it can't be, it is a very rapid fermenter and behaves similar to sacc. It is supposed to have come from a 1970's bottle of wilner brewery (berlin) berliner weisse. I believe it to be a sacc strain with at least one brett strain. When culturing it up it had that kind of rough hot plastic spice brett smell, but otherwise performed quite like a sacc.

First was rye/spelt lacto kviek berliner brett with coconut and kiwi, yet to taste. Second was same grist, orange blossom, yet to taste. Third was azacca, simcoe, centennial, mosaic, cascade all brett NEIPA.

Holy heck this is the best IPA I've ever made. Like bruised over riped peach, apricot, hint of floral grapefruit and orange notes, but mainly just sweet stewed jammy apricot and mystery fruits.

 

[Sadfield]

@stz I've recently read Wild Brews (Jeff Sparrow) it says that Brett on its own in aerated wort will ferment with similar, and often, faster performance as Saccharomyces.
This echos my experience of fermenting with yeast cultured up from a back garden yeast wrangling. Although I have no way of knowing if it was Brett or wild Saccharomyces, or both.

I keep meaning to do an all Brett IPA, ridiculous amounts of fruits seems to be the common outcome.

 

[Sadfield]

Finally got round to doing some bottling at the weekend. So have a Chevallier Malt IPA that has been sat on oak and Brettanomyces Claussenii for thirteen months. The Brett inhabited oak chunks went straight into a Porter for ageing.

I also bottled the second draw off my mixed fermentation Solera project, after the last addition eight months ago.

 

[Leon103]

As anyone used the imperial sour batch kids yeast before?

 

[Zephyr259]

As anyone used the imperial sour batch kids yeast before?

Someone has, kinda want to say it was @IainM ?