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Date: Sat, 5 Oct 1996 00:30:06 -0600
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Subject: Lambic Digest #956 (October 05, 1996)
Lambic Digest #956 Sat 05 October 1996
Forum on Lambic Beers (and other Belgian beer styles)
Mike Sharp, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Re: oak casks and other topics (Espourteille, Francois)
Oak Lampshades (Russell Mast)
Unsubscribe (trvl2u)
American Oak (Norman Dickenson)
Controlling them critters (Kinney Baughman)
Re: oak casks (Brian Bliss)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 96 09:40:29 EST
From: fespourteille at mmt.com (Espourteille, Francois)
Subject: Re: oak casks and other topics
Removing the oakiness from an American oak cask usually takes a few years
(2-3) when simply aging beer in one; at least from personal experience.
Al K. asks:
Did you treat the cask any way before use? Perhaps
a week is simply not enough to impart much character?
Comments?
From an analytical chemist's perspective, you have the right idea, but
the wrong liquid. To mimic how the beer will interact with the wood,
you need to add alcohol. Alcohol is a strong solvent and will help
extract things the water cannot; and it will speed things up. The first
time I tried this, I used water and cheap vodka (to about 4-5% v/v) and
waited one to two months. You need both the solvation power of the
water/alcohol mixture and time. A few days is definitely not enought.
Even with this technique, oakiness will come out if you leave liquid in
there more than a few months (4-6). I took me 3 years to get raid of
most of the oakiness in American oak. I tried soda ash to remove the
oakiness and it seemed to have removed some wood also; it appeared to
have exposed deeper layers of the cask. While the cask was very clean,
it did not do too much for the oakiness.
Let me know if you find a way to speed up the process.
On another topic, a question for Todd G. You seem to have tried
cultures from a variety of Belgian beers:
Here are some Belgian beers whose bottle cultures appear to do a pretty
good job (some are multi-strain, some are single):
Cantillon
Boon (not any more)
Hoegaarden (still?)
Blanche de Brugge
Blanche de Neige
Duvel (now pasturized)
Affligem Dubbel
Chimay Blue and Red (may be different now)
LaChouffe (for sure)
Straffe Hendrik
Dentergems
Lucifer
Orval (inconsistent)
LaBinchoise
Saison DuPont
DeDolle (variable)
Rochefort
And others
Do you have any first hand knowlege of the viability of the Oud
Beersel culture? I like the finished product and was thinking of
incorporating cultured dregs to my plambic cask (which already
comprises lots of other good Lambics).
Also, I just found Cantillon Kriek in Boston last weekend (finally!)
So far, I could get the Rose de Gambrinus; the kriek must be a new
addition. It was a 94 bottling, with little fruit remaining, nice but
a bit austere lambic aroma and flavor, with some spiciness. The
sourness was one of the most intense I have seen in a long time.
Carbonation was low. A good overall lambic that appeared to develop
in the glass over 15 minutes.
Sante
Francois.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 09:22:36 -0500
From: Russell Mast <rmast at fnbc.com>
Subject: Oak Lampshades
Al K. writes :
...
> them are "floating" on the starter wort and one is "hovering" above
> those two. No kidding. Of the two floaters, the bottom one
> is medium brown and maybe a millimeter thick. The second one up
...
That's definitely different than what I have, though I haven't brought
it out into a flask to check it. (I do have one around somewhere, but
I just moved and much of my stuff is still "packed".)
Looking at the fermenter (two glass, one plastic), it looks like one
very strong, tan colored layer floating, with a bunch of powdery, pale
(not quite white, but very light in color) stuff resting on top. I
almost expect to see a 1/2"-tall Clint Eastwood walking around with
tiny sixguns on it.
> I don't think that
> these are aerobic cultures because there's an airlock on the
> flask and I'm pretty sure it's been filled all the time.
Again, something different from mine. When the airlocks are full, my
pellicle won't grow. In fact, they almost seem to fall back in or
something. But when empty, it comes back in a day or two. (Like I
said, I recently moved, and that does disturb those pellicles.)
> Here's a question... I bought a 20gallon American Oak cask a few
...
> him, so I've filled it with plain water and have been changing
> the water every week. I have been smelling a glass of the water
Just off the cuff, I'd guess that plain water isn't as good at extracting
those tannins and other oak-flavor compounds as something a little more
acidic would be. Alcohol might help, too. Of course, then you have to
worry about adding flavors instead of just subtracting them. I'd probably
just brew a really sour batch of plambic in there, let it get oaky as heck,
give it to the neighbor's kids, and hope the next batch is better.
-R
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 1996 08:33:05 -0700
From: trvl2u <trvl2u at ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Unsubscribe
This is to apologize for inadvertently sending back the entire posting =
while trying to unsubscribe. Looking past the rude comments, I am =
reasonably sure that most of your readers have made their share of =
stupid mistakes, while trying to learn their way around when they were =
first playing on the net..Some of those same people seem to have =
forgotten that.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 1996 08:57:10 -0700
From: Norman Dickenson <norman.dickenson at sonoma.edu>
Subject: American Oak
Subject: Time: 8:28 AM
OFFICE MEMO American Oak Date: 10/4/96
In LD #955, Al korzonas questioned the oakiness of his newly
acquired American Oak 20 gal. cask.
He didn't mention whether it was a new or used cask. I will
assume it was new, since used casks smaller than 60 gal.
are almost impossible to find.
Having brewed plambic a couple of years ago in a brand new
5 gal. American Oak cask, it acquired the most tremendus
and overwhelming oak flavor after just 2 weeks, that I thought
the plambic was totally ruined (it was removed at that point).
In fact, while it took almost
two years, most of the oak flavor did drop out. The remaining
oakiness, while still BiG, is acceptable and the plambic is
quite good. I don't recommend using a new barrel regardless
of where it came from. There are some barrel makers in
the California wine country who use specific varieties of
American White Oak (from the right coast) which some
experts claim are just as good as French Limosine Oak. The
story of barrels can get as complex as you wish.
New oak can be "broken in" , so to speak, with an aggresive
cleaning regimine of soda ash solution for a week, acid
solution for a week, soda ash again for a week, acid again,
and then a boiling water rinse. While I'm sure this treatment
will not extract all of the oakiness from a new barrel,
it will make serious inroads. Brewing a couple of throw-a-
way batches should help extract a good deal of oakiness. I
don't think plain water will extract the oak tannins and
flavors as will base and acidic (beer :>) solutions.
I know that new barrels cost an arm and a leg regardless
of size. Did you
know that used 60 gal wine barrels are sold off cheap by
wineries as trash after they are 5 years old? Depending
on condition, the prices range from $40-50 dollars for
a barrel the wineries may have paid between $400-800 ea.
Add freight to that and it's still much cheaper than new
barrels which need to be broken in. If anyone is interested,
I can provide phone numbers of used barrel brokers in
California.
-norman-
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 04 Oct 1996 12:44:53 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kinney Baughman <BAUGHMANKR at conrad.appstate.edu>
Subject: Controlling them critters
Hey ya'll,
There's been some discussion of late about keeping lambics under control in
the brewery environment. Here's me .02 garnered from the school of hard
knocks.
And the .02 answer is: peracetic acid
A .2 percent solution and a contact time of 2 minutes keeps pediococcus
under control. I'm pretty sure that's the bug that is the foundation to
the sour beers I've been brewing at Cottonwood the last couple of years.
Since we started bathing everything in peracetic that touches those beers
we've been able to brew sour beers at will with no worry (well, almost no
worry. You're always going to worry some!) of turning your brewery into
Rodenbach, USA.
It's great stuff. We get it from Loeffler Chemical, a brewery chemical
supplier. I'm sure all of the brewery chemical companies carry it.
I, too, have heard the story of Pediococcus surviving an autoclaving and,
like Jim, find it difficult to believe. But that kind of story is a
testament to the tenaciousness of those little buggers. Of that, there is
no denial.
A final point, since I post so little here, has to do with the manner in
which the Belgian brewer's innoculate their beers.
I'm going to go out on a limb and (for the sake of provoking a discussion)
make the claim that this whole business of innoculating the wort by opening
up the louvres onto the coolship is nothing more than marketing hype and
some of the Belgian brewers attempting to wrap their procedures in the
cloak of mystery, a red herring to throw off people trying to duplicate their
efforts.
In saying this I don't mean to denigrate their beer or their efforts
because I hold these guys in the highest of regard.
But after touring Cantillon, it is clear to me the most important means for
innoculating the wort has to do with the casks in which the beers are fermented
than anything else. Let's face it. Cantillon is located in downtown
Brussels. About the only bacteria you're going to get from the outside air
are the diesel fumes from all the busses and cars!
But those casks! Wow! They have kreusen head caked all over them. The
floors, the walls, everything in the place reeks of souring bacteria. The
Cantillon character has been developed from years of brewing in the same
place and the brewery itself is the reason Cantillon is what it is. I
can't see how the air outside the brewery can be nearly as responsible as
we are led to believe.
The Belgians are marvelous people and they love mystery. Consider the
manner in which Pierre Celis has managed to engage us all in the elusive
search for the "mystery ingredient" in the marvelous wits he brews! I
suggest that Cantillon has done the same thing.
And more power to them. But there's a small, mischievous glint in their
eye when they start talking about the mystery and secret behind their beers
that makes me wonder whether they're just trying to "play with our feet",
as they say in Wallonie.
Food for thought.
Cheers!
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kinney Baughman | Beer is my business and
baughmankr at conrad.appstate.edu | I'm late for work.
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 4 Oct 96 13:36:49 CDT
From: Brian Bliss <brianb at microware.com>
Subject: Re: oak casks
> I believe that I want to get most of the oakiness out of the
> cask before I start making pLambic/pLambiek in it.
>
> Comments?
I'd try making up a batch or two of mead in it first, and if the
mead turns out oak-less, then try some lambic. Mead is easy & quick,
so you shouldn't shed any tears whislt pouring it down the drain
if it was over-oakey. Alcohol helps leach out the oak taste, so
I would not rely on the fact that water doesn't abosrb much of the
oak as an indicator of the casks' readiness for lambic brewing.
As for me, the things are expensive, they leak, you've got to keep
topping them up, and even if everything else goes right, you stand
a good chance to ruin your lambic with too much oak. I'll stick with
plastic (unless, of course, I happen to run across a *real* lambic cask
that has already been used for lambic brewing, and the beer was good).
Excuse me while I perform a reality check :-)
bb
------------------------------
End of Lambic Digest
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