Flemish Red

The weekend was planned to be this: brew a beer that would eventually be the first sour beer to age for ~6 months, or until flavor profile developed. Additionally, Brett and I talked about making another Mead (this time adding mulberries). In some future posts there will be detail of what this weekend turned into.

Grain
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4.00 lbs. Belgian Pilsener
3.5 lbs. American Vienna Malt
3.00 lbs. Belgian Munich Malt
1.00 lbs. Wheat Malt
0.5 lbs. CaraMunich Malt
0.5 lbs. Aromatic Malt
0.5 lbs. Special B Malt

Hops
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1 oz Czech Saaz (60 minute addition)

Yeast
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Wheat Yeast harvested from Barney's Back primary fermenter

Mash Schedule
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Sacch Rest 40 min @ 147°F.
Sacch Rest 30 min @ 162°F.

Notes
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3/6/2015
Preboil gravity reading was only ~1.035 so we added 3 cups of sugar to the boil. We are not happy with our mash efficiency! Boiled down to a little over 5 gallons. OG was 1.048. Yeast pitched from washed wheat yeast -- harvested from the primary fermentation of the Barney’s Back (no berries were exposed to this yeast because berries were only added into secondary). This was a lot of yeast! Put carboy in the ~60°F pantry overnight with an ‘S’ airlock.

3/7/2015 - It was raging in the morning with visible movement/current in the beer. Came home around 5:30pm to find a blown out airlock and a still raging beer -- converted to blowoff tube and put carboy in the 40°F basement to slow down.

3/8/2015 - Moved carboy and blowoff tube back up to the 60°F pantry

Plan to move this into secondary on 3/13/2015 but the date might change dependent on the activity of the primary. Going to add White Labs Sour Mix 655 to the secondary and let alone for 6 months!

OG 1.048
FG 1.007 (estimated)
ABV 5.43 %
IBU 19.7





The $8 dollar oak barrel trick was used for the first ~4 months, but then I had freshly picked sour cherries I wanted to add. So I removed the oak dowel rod and filled the headspace with the cherries you can see in the above photo.