barrel-o-trouble
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- Sep 30, 2021
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Hi folks, been reading these forums but not much of a contributor.
I've actually been making beer for a long time but only in the last couple years have I tried my hand at using brett, lacto and pedio, aging in a couple oak barrels. Okay so here's what my problem, and what I've tried. Frankly I try commercial sour funky beers and they blow me away, so full of flavor but rarely over 6.0%.
The problem:
All of my finished beers share a common characteristic - they are thin, somewhat watery, and lack yeast expression. I can put them on heaps of fruit, and while they'll taste great out of the fermenter the first couple weeks, and some of that fruit sticks round, it just tastes like some lightly fermented sour fruity water after a couple months. Same with the unfruited ones, they end up thin and weak, tasting more like the barrel toast or acidity present than any real brett character, and they are too damned thin!
What has not worked:
There must be a flaw in my process somewhere, or is there some infection that could be endemic and ruining these beers? I just want my beers to have some "UMPH!" and not be something you can only drink in July when it's 95 degrees out.
I've actually been making beer for a long time but only in the last couple years have I tried my hand at using brett, lacto and pedio, aging in a couple oak barrels. Okay so here's what my problem, and what I've tried. Frankly I try commercial sour funky beers and they blow me away, so full of flavor but rarely over 6.0%.
The problem:
All of my finished beers share a common characteristic - they are thin, somewhat watery, and lack yeast expression. I can put them on heaps of fruit, and while they'll taste great out of the fermenter the first couple weeks, and some of that fruit sticks round, it just tastes like some lightly fermented sour fruity water after a couple months. Same with the unfruited ones, they end up thin and weak, tasting more like the barrel toast or acidity present than any real brett character, and they are too damned thin!
What has not worked:
- Adding more protein rich adjuncts like higher % of wheat, rye, oats, spelt. In both flaked and malt... beers come out weak no matter what.
- Mashing higher. I have mashed at 148, upped to 155, upped to 165 for only 45 minutes to get more starchy stuff. While the beer might initially finish higher (say 1.012) it ends up thin and watery after its aging.
- Brewing a bigger beer - I went from around 1.044 all the way up to 1.058, which is a pretty big step up. Still the beer ends up pretty weak, only now it starts to get more alcohol so it's just harsh and weak!
- Limiting oxygen - I have purged everything after initial fermentation, any secondaries and such. This means running 30-60 seconds of CO2 at 2 PSI from one inlet and pushing out another, same with the transfer tubes. Closed transfers, even sometimes adding fresh wort and yeast to encourage scrubbing oxygen.
- Not sampling at all... keeping those barrels full of their own co2.
- Adding more salts to the recipe, e.g. from low digit ca/so2/cl to around 50 of each.
- Aging only in Stainless, no wood. These still lack a lot of brett character and now there's no oak to assist.
- Starting in stainless, then moving off lees into wood (or other stainless) through a purged, closed transfer.
- Just giving them more time to age - generally brings out more of the wood, or you can still get acidity, but missing any body or brett character.
- Trying different brett and bacteria strains - just in case, but a lot of them end up in the same place.
- Adding more hops - both pellets near flame out, and early boil aged hops - this helped keep some flavor, but there's still a thin/weak beer that has some hop bitterness, frankly just less drinkable. At least the thin beers are quenching.
- Adding maltodextrin, just made it sweeter and grosser but no real body/yeast experession.
- Open fermenting - not that it would... but hey why not try.
- Using different malts, different hops, you name it.
- Trying kegs vs bottles, corks vs caps vs cages
There must be a flaw in my process somewhere, or is there some infection that could be endemic and ruining these beers? I just want my beers to have some "UMPH!" and not be something you can only drink in July when it's 95 degrees out.