Of course, as soon as I post about getting back to beer blogging, I get a ton of work dumped on me. Ugh…an article on various forms of beer haze will have to wait, but homebrewing can’t. No fermentation makes me a sad panda, so I knocked out a ménage à trois of Saisons this weekend.
The first fermenter is a yeast/brett blend that’s getting kegged on copious amounts of dry hops for what should be a funky/hop fruity kick when it’s done.
The small one in the middle is a half gallon of an experimental beta White Labs saison/brett blend, which only doles out 15 billion cells (i.e. barely enough for a half gallon of low gravity wort). It’s not a good idea to yeast start brett blends, so I’ll have to live with the 5-6 bottles I get. The aroma out of the bubbler is already tantalizing.
The last is also yeast/brett fermented, but going to get a cheaty sour treatment. It’s cheaty due to the half ounce of 88% lactic acid I’m going to add during the back end of fermentation. The base beer is 80 IBU, far higher than a souring bacteria can handle, so traditional methods are out. This will at least give me an idea if I can adapt this recipe or blend in a separate soured wort with any kind of positive results.
These should be ready to taste test in a couple months along with some bottles of brett saison I did a year ago, one of which was on apricots. If you’re interested in trying these, I’ll let you know when and where in the near future.
Drews Brews Reviews 