I have definitely been on a funky/sour brewing kick lately.

• now that my lambic and funky saison are quietly chugging away in the basement, I figured one more sour in the pipeline couldn’t hurt.
• after debating a multitude of beers ranging from sour golden strongs to funky sessionable wild ales, I came across a general guideline in wild brews for a sour strong/quadrupel inspired by lost abbey’s cuvee de tomme, one of my favorite sour strongs.
• after tweaking the recipe for my setup and changing a few variables, here’s what I came up with:
  • cuvee de cabrillo

  • 22.00 lb	Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (2.0 SRM)	Grain	66.07 %
    2.00 lb	Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM)	Grain	6.01 %
    2.00 lb	Caramunich Malt (56.0 SRM)	Grain	6.01 %
    2.00 lb	Munich Malt – 10L (10.0 SRM)	Grain	6.01 %
    2.00 lb	White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)	Grain	6.01 %
    0.65 lb	Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM)	Grain	1.95 %
    0.65 lb	Special B Malt (180.0 SRM)	Grain	1.95 %
    2.00 oz	Northern Brewer, .3 oz Tradition (120 min)	Hops	? IBU
    1.00 oz	US Fuggle (2 min)	Hops	? IBU
    2.00 lb	Sugar, Table (Sucrose) (1.0 SRM)	Sugar	6.01 %

• I ended up with 11 gallons with an OG of 21 brix = 1.085.  I then split the batch into two 5 gallon corny kegs, fermented one with sour mix 1 and cascade apricot dregs, and hit the other with the roselare blend and ’09 drie fonteinen kriek dregs.
• I am planning on racking on top of sour cherries in about six months and then blending and bottling after six more.  first things first though – the yeast needs to get going!  it has been almost three days and I have yet to see activity in the blowoff tubes.  I know these yeast blends take their time though, so I guess it’s time to RDWHAHB…

Tags: cabrillo, cuvee de tomme, lost abbey, sour quadrupel, wild brews

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 at 12:13 pm and is filed under beers, brewing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.