The basic idea behind the NYD brew is to make a beer that needs aging and so can be enjoyed the following New Year. Last year was the Russian Imperial Stout, this year we've gone with a funky/wild yeast theme but a much wider range of styles. Inspired by the excellent "Wild Brews" by Jeff Sparrow I decided I'd have a go at a pseudo-lambic.
Grist:
Dingemans Pilsen Malt 3300g 66%
Unmalted Wheat 1700g 34%
(Plus 350g of oat husks to aid the run-off)
Hops:
Aged hops ?%AA 100g Start of boil.
Yeast:
WLP655 Belgian Sour Mix 1
Pretty simple eh? Not exactly. I decided to go with a traditional turbid mash following this basic schedule, volumes increased to account for my slightly bigger brewlength of 23 litres. This is a fairly lengthy process so I did the mash yesterday and I'm boiling today. It's the first time I've attempted such a complex mash (decoctions are staightforward in comparison!) and I'm glad I split the brewing process over two days as it ended up taking the best part of 6 hours with my missing rest temperatures and all the sparging. The first bit is definitely the worst - doughing in 5 kilos of grain with 3.5 litres of water is exhausting, and then there's about half an hour of madness while you heat this, add that, drain off a portion, heat that, scald yourself, stir constantly - you get the picture. Anyway, it calms down a bit after that and you do a fairly standard 2-stage sacc rest, mash-out and run-off and then start the sparging. I batch sparge, normally a single 12 litre sparge to avoid extracting tannins and other unpleasant compounds. With this method you want to extract as many dextrins and starches as possible to give the bacteria and Brett something to munch on when all the simple sugars have been devoured by the brewers yeast. You need to sparge with really hot water (88C) until the gravity goes below 1.008, which means you collect a huge volume of wort. I did 3 sparges of about 10 litres each, the final one coming out at 1.007, and collected a total of 44 litres
. I'm really pleased I included the oat husks, they made the run-off and sparging so much easier. It's the first time I've used them but they'll now be a staple of my wheat beers.This has been boiling now for about 3 1/2 hours and I think I'm nearly there, maybe another 1 1/2 hours left to go. Then the brew gets even weirder. After cooling I'll be using "kitchen inoculation" to get a good dose of enterobacter in there for added authenticity - these are endemic in most kitchens and include such bugs as E.coli (although I'm assured that when the yeast and other goodies in the sour mix take hold the pH drop and the rise in alcohol content is enough to kill them off). I'll leave it overnight for the enterobacter to do their bit and then pitch the sour mix in the morning straight from the vial, which is about 4 weeks old so should do the job nicely. I hope
It does worry me a bit the volume of yeast I'll be pitching, there's only about half an inch of solid material in the bottom of the vial, a lot less than you get with standard Sacc. strains. I know this is to allow the bacteria to get a good foothold before the yeast takes over but it goes against everything I'm comfortable with as a brewer, as does so much else with this brew - it's definitely new ground for me.As far as drinkability goes, I'm not holding out much hope for it as a stand-alone beer. I plan on doing one of these each year and then blending them, adding fruit to part batches, all the usual things for lambics. This looks like it'll be the start of quite an adventure
nice one mate!
Look forward to updates on this. So far I've been reluctant to go down the turbid mash route but you've fired me up to give it a go.