Belgian Pale Ale

Are you using Lambicu or Orval dregs? or Both?

No need for champagne yeast, plenty of yeast in suspension, and you can rouse the cake a bit if your worried

 

why not use both orval dregs and B Lamb?

check your primary. make sure the gravity is below 1.01 before adding brett or else you'll be waiting more than 3 months.
100 day rule is what most brett people use for secondaries.

 

Citra and Brett sounds soooooooo tasty

 

I do not understand your beer and recipe at all... Did you boil? Did you mash (and with what you have no enzymatic potential, except maybe the Vienna)

Why Citra at 35?

 

I thought you were supposed to boil oats to gelatinize the starch.

 

I am still pretty unclear about what you did. So it sounds like you heated your DME to just under boiling, held it at just under boiling for 60 minutes with your hop additions and then turned off the flame and added your mini-mash grains? If so, that is not a great way to do it. At that temperature you are going to denature your enzymes before they are useful. And as mentioned your enzyme potential was low for your grain bill to begin with. Also, you will want to boil the liquor you collect from the mash.

What do the numbers after your grains/extract/sugar mean? Thanks.

 

Im not really sure what your doing either....

To mash grains you take them and add water to get them to ~150-160F, let them sit for ~60min, then drain the sweet wort from them and rinse with hot water. Using what you have rinsed from the grains you begin the boil, you then boil for ~60min with your hops. Grains should not go into the boil, especially barley because it has husks which will leach tannins

Im also unsure why you decided to add lemon juice to your brett starter, you dont need to lower the pH for brett, it does just fine on its own, AND the pH of wort is slightly acidic to begin with. A brett starter made Friday is not going to be ready for brewing on Sunday, the packs have very low cell counts, and should be built up to lager rates

 

May I suggest that you Google "how to partial mash"?
Then let us know if you have questions.

 

So we can better follow your process and suggest improvements for the future, would you mind breaking down step by step what you did. Something like: Brought ___volume of water to ____temperature with ____ extracts and/or grains. Held for ___time. Next added _____ and brought to ___ temp... you get the idea. Thanks.

I'm happy to try to give advice but I'm still having trouble understanding your process.

 

You got your wort to 220 & 225 degrees? So you mini mashed your grains in your water and light ME at 170 degrees for 10 minutes? You boiled the oats for the last 10 minutes?

 

I would recommend procuring a better thermometer. (And not boiling oats.)

 

Have you read "How to Brew" yet? Here is the link to the pertinent pages, but it is all a good read, and free online, and a little outdated on some subjects I understand.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter13-2.html

Far be it from me to critique a process that makes drinkable beer, but it just seems that your procedures are more complicated and awkwardly crossed up/mixed up/misunderstood than they need to be.

You can't boil wort at 225 degrees on a gas stove with 100 burners. Water boils at 212 and no more at sea level and less the higher in altitude you go.

 

you realize you didnt get up to 225F right?

While boiling oats may not be totally advisable there are a number of breweries that do this to get thick low gravity beers, so I doubt it will negatively impact your beer

 

Honestly -- I don't think boiling oats (a.k.a. making oatmeal) is the biggest cause for concern here.

 

Agreed. Though the biggest issue is the general lack of understanding of how to make a beer.