Blabaer information?

This guy seems to know something that we don't...
http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/post-a-picture-of-your-latest-haul.136/page-5

 

Released at Ølbutikken (http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/11122) in Denmark once a year in the summer (May/June) in limited quantities. Last year it was 2 bottles per person, and not sure on price. Probably around $30.

 

I just looked at that pic. GOD DAMN, that is some Blabaer.

 

That is actually a cellar pic, not a haul. He is a nice guy, just one of the 1% of the beer world.

 

The two bottle limit last summer was a 750 and a 375...not sold separately

 

2011 Vintage (batch 7) - 400 litre barrel with 100kg blueberries added, released at Ølbutikken around May/June 2011, around $50 for 750ml and $25 for 375 ml ( need more accurate ino?). Two bottles limit per person: 1 big bottle 750 ml + 1 small bottle 375 ml.

 

Does anybody know any other recipe info besides how many blueberries were used? What type of barrels or anything else added besides blueberries?

 

Maybe you can email Jean Van Roy directly to see if he's willing to share his recipe. Someone in the homebrew forum successfully isolated the wild yeast strain. Maybe you can start brewing some lambic, aged in red wine barrels for one and a half year, add blueberries in, blend barrels together, add young lambic for second fermentation , then have a Blabaer clone? I think Jean Van Roy uses pretty similar base lambic for most of his fruit lambic: Kriek, Framboise, Rose, St Lam, Fou Foune.... except the Lou Pepe series where he added sweet liquor to the second fermentation instead of young lambic.

 

i'm thinking that just isolating the (living) yeast and bacteria strains won't be enough. there are myriad processes that occur in the production of lambic. i've read that initial fermentation also includes pathogenic bacteria like strep and staph, but which eventually get pushed out as the various strains of lacto, pedio and brett take over.

 

Well that is one home brew I would definitely be willing to try.

 

Thanks for the not so blatant and somewhat unnecessary sarcasm. I know there's no way I could ever clone a true lambic, even if I wanted to. I just couldn't find any information on the beer itself and was curious if Jean kept all his beers like that or if there was some slightly more detailed information out there on the beer. I suppose asking about the recipe confused you about my intentions...

 

Straight from Cantillon's website:

Traditional Lambic is made according to the following rules:

1. Ingredients:
   • raw wheat 35%
   • malted barley 65%
   • dried hops (three years old) : 5 g per liter of beer
2. Process:
   • brewing (from 45°c up to 72°c)
   • collecting the wort by filtering
   • boiling and hopping in the boilers
   • cooling down in the cooling tun, in contact with the open air
   • natural infection of the wort by wild ferments (bacteria and yeasts)
   • pumping the wort at a temperature of 18°c into oakwood or chestnutwood barrels
   • spontaneous fermentation, visible in the beginning, slow afterwards
   • transformation of all the sugars within three years
3. Looks of Lambic:
   • Still beer, cereals wine. During the fermentation, the carbon dioxide escapes through the wood and as a result does not saturate the beer.

This is about as close as you will get I think. Add some fruit in there somewhere and your good to go.

For example with the Cantillon Kriek, it says: The brewery staff will then put about 150 kgs of fruits in oakwood or chestnutwood barrels which can contain 650 litres of lambic and which have been cleaned some days before.

For the Rose de Gambrinus: The process to make this beer is identical to the one to make Kriek. When young, the Rosé de Gambrinus will still present its full fruity taste. Later on, the lambic taste will become dominant at the expense of the fruit taste.

For Fou Foune: Due to the success of our provençal beer, 1200 kgs of apricots are delivered now every year to the Cantillon brewery. The fruits are stoned by hand before being soaked in 2 years old lambic. The beer extracts the taste and the aromas very quickly and the Fou'Foune is bottled after two months. The beer is rather sour, slightly turbid and has a pale gold colour. Its production is limited to 3000 liters a year. A large part of the bottles go back to the region where these apricots come from. People there consider the Fou'Foune Cantillon as a local beer.

There just isn't a listing for Blabaer and most of the rare ones.

 

Because I'm heading to Denmark in May, I asked them when they're releasing it. Sadly, this year it'll be June. So keep an eye out then if you're ISO and interested in an international trade.

 

Last year it was 360DKK for both (120DKK and 240DKK individually? I can't remember), though they were sold separately. The 375ml bottles sold out before the 750ml if I recall correctly. So that was approximately $22 for the 375 and $43.50 for the 750.

edit: It was released June 25

 

does anybody know if it's released ONLY at Ølbutikken, or if some of it is released directly from Cantillon's brewery in Brussels? (I'm wondering because I know people who might be in Brussels in June, but not in Copenhagen).

 

No wonder why its so FN hard to land one of these FN things.

Cheers!

 

Haha, I was just about to send this to you.