Morning all, I have been reading extensively through all the literature I can get my hands on. I find plenty on brewing, aging, fruiting, etc. But no specifics on blending lambic into Gueuze. Sure it is a blend of young (1 year) with old (2+ years), but I cannot find anything about the blending process. I see a small blurb about how blends often contain 15-70% old lambic. Very vague. I am intrigued though. Of course a lot is to taste, but it must be like jazz. Rules with improvisation. Rules meaning not too much young lambic or you will over carbonate. Not too much old lambic or your bottles will be too still. Is here any information out there solely on blending? Or does anyone have any personal experience? Thanks -Tyler
That's exactly it - to taste, and rules with improve. I'm sure there is plenty of info out there, just have to find it. I just did a quick search on Amazon for "lambic" and found a bunch of books about lambics and other wild beers. One that I have heard good things about, but haven't gotten around to reading yet is "Wild Brews," by Jeff Sparrow.
Yeah, I own and have read all of the books that show up on Amazon. None give any info on the "rules" of blending. Under/over carbonation are my big concerns.
Anyone who has opened a lot of commercial lambic can tell you that carbonation is far from an exact science even for the pros. You can always cheat and use standard priming sugar. Pretty sure that's the route I'll take next batch. Having all these potentially dangerous/disappointing bottles no longer seems worth the "purity".
I'm not sure if there are actual "rules" to blending. I think its all a matter of taste. In order to be called gueuze it has to be some portion of 1 year old and 3 year old lambic I believe but there are not specific proportions. The young lambic just balances the old lambic and gives it some fresh yeast and some fresh unfermented sugars to referment in the bottle.
Once you have multiple threads for blending, you have arrived at the fun part. I am very much looking forward to 2016 for this reason. My guess is that blending ratios are among the truly secret/proprietary aspects to producing gueuze that they won't reveal on the nickel tour.
Yes, agreed. But- there must be a loose ratio for carbonation to develop nicely. If you bottle 95% young and 5% old, your Gueuze will certainly contain more fermentable sugars than if you bottle 5% young and 95% old; resulting in a much more highly carbonated beer.
when blending do it in small amounts, adding an acidic beer to a softer beer can and will totally change the flavor profile as acid can really open up flavors I did a write up a long time ago about blending and fruiting lambics here, I need to update it as my preference for dealing with the acidity of a sour has changed (I now prefer to limit the acid production to an extent with ferm temps/etc). The approach I outlined was good at the time because I hadnt done it for nearly as long and the approach limited some of the variables that can be overwhelming when you dont really have a feel for what your doing the best approach is to try blending you beer over and over. Dont be afraid to do multiple blending sessions over a couple week period, trying to forget what you did last time. This lets you gain experience, and make sure you end up with a mix that you truly like (compare all blending notes at end) my preference now is to have a very old (3+yr old) extremely sour beer (ferm cool when young, after 2yrs keep warmer) younger ~1yr beer, one sour one bretty, then have a taste of each. Note the sourness, the general flavor profile (earthy/funky, citrusy/bright, softer acid + mix of other profiles - for WY/WL cultures), then decide what you want. Do you want a citrusy bright character, or a funky/earthy flavor. Adding an highly acidic beer to a funky/earthy beer can bring out the phenolics and make the bretty flavors/fruitiness more dominant, adding a small portion of earthy/funky beer to a bright/citrusy beer can dull the bright flavor and make it less flavorful, but each blend is different. 10ml:100mL might be bad, but 30:100 might be great, so try lots of mixes, and when you decide on one test it on someone else Also one thing to note is that in all of my sours theres a grainy strange flavor in them pre-bottling that goes away with 2-4mos in the bottle, this flavor is generally present in all beers so that if you notice a common flavor between all you beers that might be the one Im talking about and is likely to fade (IMO its not a good flavor and youll probably notice what Im talking about) hopefully thats coherent, Ive had lots of coffee this morning and Im kind of in a tunnel
You'd think that, but the consumption of sugar isn't done at a linear rate and depends on the blend of flora you have in the mix. Saccharomyces will burn through the sugars in a 1.015OG inside 3 days. After that you're waiting on the bugs to wake up and break down the remaining starches. So once again you hit the "it depends" -- what was the makeup of your wort? Exactly what blend of bugs in what ratios do you have going? Welcome to the "art" part of brewing!
as far as using young to carb I would probably suggest against going this route and using sugar to get the level right if your worried about bottle bombs (i never do) you can cold crash, rack, hit it with campden and then bottle. The campden will take out the bacteria and knock the brett down, though with time the brett will alter the flavor profile a bit. Ive done this approach with sours blended with malty clean beer and never had bombs
In August I cork/caged 50 liters of 4 year "solera" sours. I brewed another batch of the base wort (Belgian Pils, Wheat) to prime with. None of my bottles has exploded... (Yay?) but I'm 100% convinced that they are all completely still. If my fears are justified, that's 65 bottles of effort... Corn sugar is in my future!
Knowing the two different gravities you can get a rough estimation of how much you will have after blending and then you can guess that the Brett will continue to attenuate a certain percentage. I think it only takes 0.003 points to carbonate a beer.
Oh geez, I just bottled a blend this Saturday. I blended 1 gallon - 12 month sour @1.010 and 2.5 gallons - 25 month funky, bretty beer @1.004. I also added the appropriate amount of sugar to carb to about 2.8 vol. I did not take into the effect that the old bretty one could continue to eat away at the young 1.010 ale. Does anyone know if there is a bottle bomb risk here?
Your new FG* of the blend should be 1.006, so unless you added enough sugars to get to 4 vols of CO2 by itself, you should be fine. *2.5gals @ 4GU + 1gals @ 10GU. (2.5*4)+(1*10)=(10)+(10)=20GU/3.5gals=5.7GU, roughly 1.006FG
