lambic prep and some housekeeping
Wednesday, October 6th, 2010last friday I finally took some time to develop a lambic mash schedule.
- lambics/lambic-based beers rate as some of my all-time favorites. ever since AP and I visited jean van roy over at cantillon, I have been fascinated by these traditional beers and their methods of production.
- creating these beers at home seemed daunting however, and I put the idea on the back burner until I was better equipped to handle such a task. with the advent of my new brew setup and the completion of some successful brew sessions, I feel that I am ready to tackle my first (p)lambic.
- after reviewing wild brews and some great lambic resources, and checking the mad fermentationist’s site to double-check some figures, I came up with this schedule based on a scaled-down version of mike sharp’s description of cantillon’s turbid mash:
- LAMBIC TURBID MASH SCHEDULE (12-13 gal)
- 15lb belgian pils (60%)
- 10lb unmalted white wheat (40%)
- 1. 12lb/gal = (25lb total grist)/(2.1 gal. @143F) = 113F mash
- 2. hold 113F mash for 10 min
- 3. add boiling water to get to 136.4F
- 4. remove 0.57 gal. to kettle 2, heat to 176F at most
- 5. add boiling water to get to 149F, hold for 15 min
- 6. remove 2.27 gal. to kettle 2, keep at 176F at most
- 7. add boiling water to get to 161.6F, hold for 20 min
- 8. first runnings (2.83 gal) to boil kettle
- 9. kettle 2 back into mash tun @ 176F = mash @~167F
- 10. hold mash @167F for 20 min
- 11. vorlauf and sparge with 185F water
- 12. ~end up with 18.5 gal wort~
- 13. divide wort into keggle (13.5 gal) and turkey fryer (5 gal)
- 14. add 5.17 oz old/low AA hops to keggle @ start of boil
- 15. boil down to ~12-13 gals*
- 16. blend keggle and fryer and cool overnight
- *take reading @ ~15 gals, see if near desired 1.05 OG (shouldn’t be), then boil down to 12-13 (should be around 1.05). originally had 12,8lbs of grain, but would have to boil off 8 gallons to get near desired OG (not factoring in lower efficiency here either).
- I plan on aging the beer for a year, then kegging 5 gallons and bottling the rest. if all goes well, after doing this for 3 years I will have a 3 year flight of bottles and enough 1, 2, and 3 year lambic in kegs to blend up a tasty geuze.
I also managed to tie up some loose ends around the home brewery.
- I kegged the amber on saturday, enjoyed a glass of my rapidly diminishing house IPA (well balanced, pleasantly bitter, near sessionable), picked up a couple sankey kegs for use as fermenters, met with jason over at san pedro brew co. to discuss some upcoming projects, and rolled over to stein fillers to get more grain and some bugs for the lambic. phew!