Introducing Council Brewing's Barrel Program

It's finally time to share some information about Council Brewing. I've been waiting to release information as I wanted to ensure everything was going to happen (unlike a previous attempt with another brewery). It is now official. I can say this because there is an article in a real publication (San Diego Reader) and it even has my picture and name in it.





I have known Liz and Curtis Chism for a couple years through our homebrew club, QUAFF. They were always interested in sampling my sour beers and it was good to get feedback from them since they both have great palettes. When they heard I was no longer going to help with Urban Jungle Brewing, they asked if I was interested in doing a similar program at Council Brewing. This was an easy decision, but I didn't want to get too excited until the opportunity was more "real".

Well, it's "real". Council Brewing is fully licensed (we could sell beer now!) and permitted. Liz and Curtis are  finishing construction and assembling the 3 BBL system from Stout Tanks. The plan is to ferment in plastic conicals on bases with wheels that can be moved in and out of the partitioned cold room. We actually received the old fermenters from Mike Hess of Hess Brewing and will be adding a few more to have a nice variety of beer on tap. The Chism's have been brewing for quite a while and have done well to understand a lot of different styles. The flagship beer or even "core beers" will be determined by the customers. The goal for the barrel program is to always keep at least one sour or Brett beer on tap. I'm not sure of the demand we'll have for it, but we should find out quickly. 

Here are some of the highlights of the sour and barrel program:

Sour Table Saison Solera - This will be my work horse beer and the one project I'm the most excited about. I have currently been experimenting with 3 different blends:

• ECY 029 - Sam at Eureka Brewing sent me this blend and it is isolated from Alvinne. So far it has a very nice clean citrus character with a nice mild tartness after about a week. It is not attenuating well so a Sach or Brett strain will probably be needed.
• Cascade Blend - Bryan at Slow Beer and Wild Yeast sent me this blend. Currently, this is my least favorite of the strains. It is pretty mild with only a slight tartness.
• Master Blend - Robert Masterson, this is a blend of dregs from Hill Farmstead and Sante Adairius Saison Bernice and some additional White Labs Dupont strain. This blend is very nice, it has just enough Saison character and develops some acidity quite quickly.

The idea behind the solera is that I can keep the lactic acid bacteria culture happy by feeding it often. The wort will come from brewing extra Saison wort and running it off as soon as it comes to a boil, then diluting it down to ~1.036. (We are even toying with the idea of using second runnings from some of our big beers). I'm not sure of the frequency of pulls and the volume yet as that will be determined by my results. This base beer will be served as is and with different flavorings (seasonal fruit, dry hopped, Brett finished). I'm obviously very excited about this project and it will be neat to see how it progresses.

Draft Faro (or pFaro or pharo): This will be the Sour Table Saison with Belgian candi sugar and served on cask. 

White Wine Barrel Fermented Saison: We will be brewing this next week and it will be strongly based on the success of the Chardonnay Barrel Saison. We sourced the barrels from a local winery and should be ready be late summer.

Red Wine Barrel Fermented Flanders Red - More barrels from a local winery with my most recent Flanders Red recipe and using my 4th generation Roeselare strain. It should be ready by Council Brewing's First Anniversary.

A few other styles I want to work into the pipeline:

Biere de Mars - Here's a good write-up on the style
Cognac Barrel Aged 100% Brett Belgian Quad
Barrel Aged Oud Bruin with sour cherries

To keep up to date on the progress - check out the Facebook Page or Instagram

The Great EBY Brett Experiment: Round 1 Tasting Notes

A group of 12 of us met on December 19th in the back room of KnB Wine Cellars to taste the first round of bottles for the Great Brettanomyces Experiment. We had a very ambitious goal of trying all 20 strains in one sitting. It wasn't the optimal way of doing the tasting, but really the only practical way when trying to get 12 tasters together at one time (the free beer helped). Our palettes were definitely fatigued by the end and I think the ideal situation would be 2 sessions on back to back days if you want to taste all 20 strains. We had a nice mix of craft beer enthusiasts, BJCP judges, and sour/wild beer homebrewers. Well enough about the tasting lets get to the results.


Results:
These tasting notes and rankings were summarized from all the tasting participants.

Conclusions:
I think this experiment was a success (and we will continue to see how it goes). The base recipe really let the yeast strains shine (or not) while still providing enough substance to make the drinking experience enjoyable. I plan to use these results not as a these are good strains and these are useless, but as guidance to what beer styles or situations they may work well in.

Next Steps:
I'm going to follow-up in a couple different ways:
1. All the strains are going to get a second chance as a bottle conditioning yeast in a recently brewed Beire de Garde.
2. I'm going to create some custom recipes based on the flavor profiles of my favorite strains. I'll probably end up blending most of the strains together based on their flavor profiles.
3. I will also be compiling the results others are logging on the Google Form to compare and get a better idea of each of the strains

As always let me know if you have feedback or questions. We will be holding another tasting in a couple months, so let me know if you are interested.

The Great EBY Brett Experiment: Brew Process and Bottling

This post was months in the making, so I'll do my best to keep it edited (Background info here). I tend to lean towards pictures for most of my explanation as I work better that way. And most of the focus for this post will be about the organization/logistics of a complex fermentation experiment. The brewing of the beer was uneventful.






I received the Brettanomyces strains from Sam at Eureka Brewing on August 29. They came in 1.5 ml vials that were all sealed with wax tape. All of the vials, but one were completely full. The one vial that leaked still had some starter liquid left in it (and eventually took off).

09/13/13 - The first step was to get a starter going to build these yeast up to pitchable quantities. I came up with an idea to do this very inexpensively. I used plastic water bottles. The bottles are probably already sanitized, if not sterile (I still soaked them in sanitizer) and the screw tops can be manually loosened to release CO2. I labeled the bottle and each cap with the EBY #. I filled each bottle with 2 oz of 1.020 wort, sanitized the outside of the 1.5 ml vial and then poured the vial into the bottle. I closed the cap and gave each a good shake.

09/24/13 - There was already obvious yeast growth that could be seen on the bottle of each bottle. No krausen that I can remember. Each bottle got 4 more oz. of 1.030 wort. The caps were burped each morning and I never had any issues with too much pressure.

09/30/13 Brewday -

Belgian Brett Single

IBU: 25       SRM: 4.5      Batch Size: 10 gal  (20 - .5 gal) 

O.G.:1.050              FG: Varied

Fermentables 

Name                            Amount 

Pilsner                          11.000 lb 

Munich Malt                    2.000 lb

Wheat Malt                     4.000 lb

Acid Malt                      12.000 oz

Hops 

Name                 Alpha      Amount      Use      Time

Styrian Golding   4.5%        2 oz       Boil     60 min

Saaz                   4.5%        2 oz       Boil     10 min

Yeast

20 strains of Brettanomyces from Eureka Brewing!!!

Brewing Process 

Mash at 152 grain for 60 min

I decided to stay with my plastic water bottle method and purchased 1 gal water bottles with a screw cap. They cost me $0.89 each and I was able to use the water for this batch (I prefer soft water for my Saisons/Pale Sours - see profile below). This also worked very well as it was cheap and I can just recycle the plastic bottles and not worry about cleaning them or future contamination. (I don't need 20 stoppers dedicated to sours - and yes they become contaminated). The bottles were also burped everyday for the first week and every 2-3 (couple of two-tree) days after that. I definitely noticed a difference in lag time, fermentation vigor and pellicle formation between the strains. (One bottle got destroyed so I used a 1 gal glass container, which I then forgot to put on an airlock, sorry EBY 048 you got acetobacter bombed.)

11/7/13 - Bottling Day(s) (close to a month later) - Well, this sucked. Once I got my system laid out (see below) it wasn't too awful. I decided to only bottle 3 - 12oz bottles of each strain. I probably could have squeaked out 4, but it was pushing it. I poured myself a taster of each while bottling and then I have a bottle to taste 1 month after bottling, 6 months and 1 year. Since I was bottling I took brief notes and compiled them in the table below. I will note that a majority of these except a few tasted pretty similar.

And the first official tasting is scheduled for this Thursday night (12/19/13). So expect a follow-up post in the not too distant future.And I'll be filling out this form:
Brettanomyces Score Sheet - Google Doc Version