American Sour Red

Last summer, I brewed a mixed fermentation blonde beer with a collection of propped-up bottle dregs. This year, I continued that tradition with a red beer.

While the rough outline of the recipe follows the Rare Barrel's base red beer, I used Best Mälz's RedX malt for the base to (hopefully) achieve a truly saturated red color. Flaked oats as well as wheat and rye malts joined the party for added malt complexity and mouthfeel. The barest sliver of Galena brings just over 5 IBUs to the batch.

Prior to boiling, I soured the wort with a lacto starter grown up from malt. I've followed this process with great success in the past, but this time around, it failed to produce any noticeable sourness. It may have been the short contact time: having found this method to make a big impact in previous batches, I only gave the starter 8 hours to work before boiling. At this point, however, my dregs culture has produced plenty of acidity, so no harm, no foul. I started this year's batch with Wyeast's French Saison yeast to consume some of the simpler sugars and produce some spicy esters before the Brett and bugs took hold and continued shaping the beer. At transfer, I didn't get any bold saison characteristics, which was in line with my expectations for this yeast's addition: subtle underlying complexity.

Since my 6-gallon carboy was otherwise occupied by mead, this batch spent its two months of primary fermentation in a plastic bucket. At transfer to secondary, the flavor was developing nicely, but might be more acetic than I'd prefer. It has since developed a nice pellicle and is aging happily. While I really enjoyed fruiting much of last year's blonde, most of the fruit I have on hand right now--farmer's market-procured pluots, peaches, and nectarines, all sliced, frozen, and vacuum packed in the freezer--don't strike me as a great pairing for a red beer. I do have some cherries from a year and a half ago, but they haven't been properly sealed and smell suspiciously like the smoked cheese we bought around the same time. This beer might be a good candidate for oaking.

I've planned a dark beer for next year's iteration. I'll still probably go with that, but may brew another blonde in the meantime to use all of the stone fruit I have hanging around right now. I may also start a new dregs culture; in my zeal to start this project, my existing culture received dregs from a few bottles that I'd prefer not to have in the mix. This spring I had a new culture going from a bottle each of Logsdon Farmhouse Cerasus (October 2014) and Cascade Blackcap Raspberry (2015) that was producing a fantastic strawberry character. I ended up adding it to the mix that went into the red, but I'd like to start over with that blend for future mixed fermentation beers. As far as the project overall, though, I don't regret a moment of it.

American Sour Red

Batch size: 5.25 gallons
Projected OG: 1.063
Projected SRM: 15.3
Projected IBU: 5.2
Boil time: 60 minutes
Brewhouse efficiency: 62%

Grains
67.2% - 10 lb Best Mälz RedX
13.4% - 2 lb Weyermann Wheat
9.2% - 1 lb 6 oz Flaked oats
6.7% - 1 lb Rye malt
3.4% - 8 oz Aromatic

Hops
.1 oz Galena (16.0%) (60 min)

Yeast
250 ml Lacto starter (sour wort 8 hours)
Sour Cultures No. 1 (1/4 cup), 2, 3
WY3711 French Saison - 1 l starter

Extras
1 tsp Yeast nutrient (5 min)

Water (mash)
Profile: Reno (brewersfriend.com)
Target profile: Balanced (brewersfriend.com)
65.2 Ca, 8.5 Mg, 20.9 Na, 76.5 Cl, 86.7 SO4
Alkalinity 34.0, RA -17.5

Lacto starter: 28 May 2016
25 g DME with 250 ml water & pinch of yeast nutrient, with handful of malt
Kept in bucket with hot tap water & aquarium heater set to max (93F).

Brewday: 16 June 2016
Mash: 18 qts @ 156F for 60 minutes
Sparge: 20 qts @ 190F
Pre-boil volume: 7.2 gallons
Pre-boil SG: 13.2P (1.052)

Water additions (mash): 4 g Gypsum, 2 g Epsom salts, 1 g Salt, 4 g CaCl

Pre-acidified with 7 ml Lactic acid (88%), brought to quick boil, chilled to 115F, pitched Lacto starter. Covered in plastic wrap, kept warm for 8 hours; no noticeable souring took place. Boiled as usual.

Transferred 5.9 gallons at 15.8P to fermenter.
Chilled to 72F (warm ground water), put in swamp cooler at 62F to chill. Fermented in swamp cooler at 68F ambient, ramped to ambient (~75F) after 1 day active fermentation.

Secondary: 17 August 2016
SG: 1.012

Bottled: 1 May 2017
FG: 1.010
ABV: 7.0%
Bottled 4 gallons with 3.8 oz table sugar.
Bottling yeast (US-05) acclimated to the beer’s high gravity 24 hours ahead of time by adding finished beer to the priming solution at a ~1:1 ratio with water.
Moved 1 gallon onto 9.7 oz dried blueberries (rinsed in boiled water, sprayed with Star San) & .5 oz boiled oak cubes.