Brew Report #6 – 26th Brew Follow Up – Lambic (part Deux)

Another great brew is behind us and thankfully finished fairly smoothly even though it started a bit slow. The snow crept up on us around 12:00 pm and kept coming down harder and faster until we finished around 3:45 pm. The snow certainly made it difficult but I had four people out there with me in the snow making things easier.

Things started a bit slow with me and John forgetting how to light the main burner. The thermocouple was not opening the valve even when heated with a blow torch, but I completely forgot how to engage the pilot. Not a good way to start. Once we got that rolling, we moved over to milling the wheat and grain. The wheat gave us a bit of a problem because its un-malted and therefore a very hard kernel. To make matters worse my references suggested a very small milling setting. When I went to start milling using my drill the initial force required to get the rollers started was too much, resulting in the whole mill rotating and wheat spilling out onto the floor. No one was holding it of course, but we were not expecting that. We salvaged what we could form the ground, but luckily I had some extra. Once John was holding on tight and I hand primed the rollers, it seemed to grind fine. We ran it through twice to be sure.

The first infusion did a good job at raising the temperature from 113-136, but the second infusion was not as successful. Presumably this was because the mass of water in the kettle was much greater that the previous. For the second and 3rd infusions, we added the prescribed amount of water then used HERMS to get the temperature up, but we stopped it afterwards to prevent clarifying the wort. The Reflectix wrap I used to insulate the mash tun did an awesome job. I’m not sure I saw it drop more then 1 degree once it was stabilized the whole time. IT provided excellent insulation. I’ll post about the Reflectix wrap later.

The highlight of the day was all of the Lambics that we tasted throughout the event. Highlights were the Lambic De Hill, Cuvee De Ranke, and Hansens Kriek. I enjoyed them all really, but they started to run together after we finished a few of them, so its hard to be objective. We even pulled out a Wild Levitation and Berliner Weisse towards the end of the day. The Wild Levitation tasted even better than before, but it was late in the day.

We finished with about 11 gallons of wort in 2 carboys with a gravity of 1.070 sg. This is 14 points higher than planned. I was planning for 12 gallons which means we boiled off a gallon more than expected. I was also expecting 69% efficiency due to the turbid nature of the mash, but if you adjust for the lost gallon the efficiency goes up to 80% assuming the extract data is correct. So, more sugar for the bugs to eat and maybe a stronger lambic, but I am ok with that. I pitched 1 1/2 vials of WLP655 Sour Blend into each carboy and set the temperature to 70.

It was a cold (like 19 degrees) and really messy towards the end, but in the end a great day. Now I have 11 gallons of lambic ready to grow.