Alright so have a 10 gallon barrel that was first a bourbon barrel, then maple syrup, then my Imperial Stout...now my plan is to drop an Oud Bruin in there. So I've got a 16 gallon Speidel fermenter and several plastic buckets (typical 6.5 gal fermenters) as my workhorse primary fermenters. I wouldn't mind avoiding getting bugs in my fermenters...so I was contemplating doing a barrel fermentation. This means I can pitch the bugs (Gigayeast sour cherry funk) right into primary and co-ferment with the US-05. This would mean setting aside a few gallons of the oud bruin wort, either frozen or near freezing for topping off the barrel after primary fermentation dies down. This would also help feed the bugs. Thinking 2-3 months in the barrel would be good, then can transfer direct into keg. Could age longer in kegs or serve if happy with results. Anyone have feedback on this plan?
Brewing this tomorrow...just weighed out the grains, but think I've got my game plan. 8 gallons wort will go in the barrel with 05 & Sour Cherry Funk and will have a separate 5 gallons go into another fermenter, fermented with 05, then kegged. I can then use that as barrel topper and as blender if needed or left to serve as a simple low bitter brown ale. (maybe a heavy dry hop if bitterness/character is needed).
Your last post sounds like a great game plan although many would say you shouldn’t need to top off if only going 2-3 months in barrel. Don’t blame you for wanting to play it safe, but I don’t think a touch of O2 ingress is particularly bad for the style either. Btw, if I were you, I’d let 3 months in oak, keg, condition for another 6+ months before drinking. Prime and bottle too if you want to see how it develops over years. Best of luck, cheers!
Sounds like an excellent plan to me. Make sure to report back with details! Care to share the recipe?
Sure... 13 gallons in fermenter 22# Pils malt (80%) 2# Fawcett Amber (7%) 1# Perla Negra chocolate malt (3.6%) 1# Carared (3.6%) 1# Special B (3.6%) 8 oz crystal 75L (1.8%) 35 g Willamette hops @ 30 minutes left in the boil for 8 IBUs ~20 SRM OG~ 1.060 I have 6 lbs. of frozen cherries from last year I may drop into one of the kegs since I should get three kegs out of this. @hoptualBrew, definitely will be bottling a bunch of this to lay down.
Reminds me of something similar in my plan. My next batch of brown mild (Saturday?) will be split, with 2.5 gallons of wort devoted to the mild, and 2.5 gallons to be devoted to something kriek-like, with some lacto, cherries, and maybe some B. clausenii and B. lambicus bottle dregs. While I could blend the mild with the sour, I'll probably just drink it. I am anticipating different aging times, so if the sour wants a blender, I'll make a new batch (and split it again -- 2.5 gallons of mild!) The GigaYeast Sour Cherry Funk sounds like something I need to try sometime.
Please don't do this. Even if you're purging with CO2, you're going to get more oxygen ingress than is happy. Use the barrel as a 10 gallon bulk fermenter, then rack the entire volume to carboys for fruiting or other treatments, like blending. Clean the barrel with hot water (or steam, if you can) and then get fresh inoculated wort into it. There's a reason that lambic breweries and blenderies do it this way.
2-3 Months sounds pretty quick, although I am not familiar with that specific strain. My Bruin went into kegs 10 or 11 months after pitching..
According to Gigayeast: "Description Blend of 3 Brett strains and Lactic Acid Bacteria This blend creates an amazing complex, sour beer with fruity cherry esters. Fermenting in the presence of 7-10 IBUs will cause the fermentation to complete much more quickly but will slow the souring — expect to wait 3-4 months for significant souring. Fermenting with zero or less than 5 IBUs will allow souring to happen much faster (within two weeks) but will cause the fermentation to take up to 4 weeks to complete." According to my calculations, I've got about 5-6 IBUs, so figuring a middle of the road souring time. Also pitched the blend 24 hours prior to pitching the US-05. Haven't tested pH yet...but been meaning to...
If the Brett strains are not terribly tolerant to lower pHs, this could happen, but many species are tolerant up to a pH of 2.0.
Oh, I originally read it to mean that the low IBUs directly make the fermentation go slower, which didn't make sense. But I guess they did actually mean... Low IBUs -> Faster Souring -> Low pH -> Slow Fermentation
Correct...lacto hates iso alpha acids (and/or potentially other hop compounds) while Sacch hates the acidity. So increase the IBU and lacto has trouble. Increase the acidity and Sacch has trouble.
From the description that you posted in post 11, this blend doesn't seem to have any sacch., just brett.
maybe Brett is similar...all I know was that i was advised to co-inoculate with a brewers yeast, so took it as sacch, but agree that is sounds like they are talking about the Brett yeast.
