Crash Cool Flanders Red

[derfburg]

Doing my first Flanders using WLP655 in the primary. I pitched and boy did it take off, was shooting for a FG of 1.015 but it was down to 1.012 in 14 days. Do I let it finish out then transfer or crash cool it and then transfer now.

Also, frozen sour cherries & oak when transfer or wait a tad bit?

Thanks in advance

[Ozwald]

Mmmm, Flanders Red, my favorite

First off in order for the bacteria to do their thing & get the sourness to develop it's going to take some time & you're going to drop further in gravity. Any data on the mash? I stick with Roselaire which goes a lot slower than that in my experience, but I've never played around with the WLP strain. Maybe that's normal, but something seems a little odd. My first thought is a low mash temp, but with the limited details given I don't want to jump to any conclusions.

The process you're using is much different than my own for the style, but I would advise against crashing it. Let the bacteria do their thing. I don't do fruit in mine, I'd wonder about the differences between racking on top now & likely kicking your ferment back into gear vs. racking over later after the bacteria have soured it a bit more. If you like it sweet, I'd guess the latter would be preferred, personally I like mine a little extra sour & much drier than Rodenbach's. Probably slightly out of style or at least walking that edge, but I don't brew for comps, I brew what I like to drink. If I suddenly inherited it at this point in your process, I'd rack it over warm to get it on the oak asap. If I was required to add cherries, those would go along with the oak to ferment the extra sugars down a bit & give those bacteria something to munch on.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help but that's my $0.02.

[derfburg]

Thanks for the reply, I feel crashing now will stop the main ferment and will keep enough bugs to make it sour. I plan on adding some dreggs of various sour beers I have. Do I need to back sweeten with something? Here is my brew sheet:

Flanders Red- RIMS
17-B Flanders Red Ale
Date: 4/27/2013

Size: 12.0 gal
Efficiency: 71.95%
Attenuation: 79.3%

Original Gravity: 1.058 (1.048 - 1.057)
Terminal Gravity: 1.012 (1.002 - 1.012)
Color: 16.66 (10.0 - 16.0)
Alcohol: 6.04% (4.6% - 6.5%)
Bitterness: 13.1 (10.0 - 25.0)

Ingredients:
8.0 lb (28.6%) Pilsner Malt - added during mash
10.0 lb (35.7%) Vienna Malt - added during mash
6.0 lb (21.4%) Munich Malt - added during mash
1.0 lb (3.6%) Aromatic Malt - added during mash
1.0 lb (3.6%) Belgian Caramunich - added during mash
1.0 lb (3.6%) White Wheat - added during mash
1.0 lb (3.6%) Special B - Caramel malt - added during mash
1.4 oz (100.0%) East Kent Goldings (5.0%) - added during boil, boiled 60 m

Schedule:
Ambient Air: 70.0 °F
Source Water: 50.0 °F
Elevation: 0.0 m

00:05:00 Mash In - Liquor: 9.1 gal; Strike: 169.72 °F; Target: 154.0 °F
01:05:00 Sach Rest - Rest: 60 m; Final: 150.2 °F
01:20:00 New Batch Sparge - 1st Running: 0.0 gal sparge @ 168.0 °F, 5 m; Sparge #2: 7.61 gal sparge @ 168.0 °F, 10.0 m; Total Runoff: 13.72 gal

[Ozwald]

Excellent notes.

My first thought is if you're losing 4 degrees over the sacc rest, I would've aimed for 156 instead of 154. It's a bit of a difference, but not huge. My inexperience with the WLP strain doesn't help much either. I'm holding my temp solid but I'm right in that same area. Everything else looks very solid.

When I add dregs (it's been a long time) I grow them up with a starter & use them as my primary yeast. The Roselaire blend doesn't need the help so I don't bother. If 655 is fairly similar, you probably won't need them, but if you were to use them I would've leaned towards blending the dreg starter & 655 for the initial pitch. Note that there's no one right way to do it, but that's my preferred method. It's unlikely that it'll make it sour any faster, but it could lend a different balance to the bugs. In my opinion, since this is your first one, skip them.

Another reason not to cold crash, there's not a lot left for the saccharomyces to eat. I'd suggest letting them do their own thing - they'll stop very soon if they haven't already. From that info, I'd stick with my original idea. Rack it over to your cherries/oak & monitor it. Definitely take a taste when you rack, the next time I would suggest tasting (depending on what it's doing of course) would be in the 4-6 month range. If you're looking for additional sweetness, I'd recommend letting it sour up to where you want it, crash it as cold as you can & age it on some more cherries (split your initial charge, maybe 60/40 & add just a touch more to the final 40). The bugs will have plenty of stuff to work on with those 12 points with the extra sugars from the cherries.

Sour beers in general are an art & there's plenty of right ways to do them. The only majorly wrong thing you could do at this point is not monitor it & take notes. And maybe freak out over the pellicle. My Flander's always have the funkiest looking pellicle of anything sour I've done. Brett's fun

[derfburg]

Wow, thanks for the info. That 152 is misleading. I am now doing a Direct fire RIMS and hold the 154 for the entire mash. I need to update my profile in that way to reflect that.

At this point I think i will just let it roll, and rack this weekend. Do you use buckets, glass carboys or better bottles? I was going to get a BB and use that. Once again thanks for the great replies.

[Ozwald]

Wow, thanks for the info. That 152 is misleading. I am now doing a Direct fire RIMS and hold the 154 for the entire mash. I need to update my profile in that way to reflect that.

At this point I think i will just let it roll, and rack this weekend. Do you use buckets, glass carboys or better bottles? I was going to get a BB and use that. Once again thanks for the great replies.

No worries. I'm kegging both conicals right now, so I've got a few minutes of downtime between kegs. Takes a little while for 30g's.

I loved my buckets when I first started out, I never got into carboys but I have 6 of them. I just hate those brushes & trying to get them clean. I'm pretty OCD about cleaning them & feel I've never got them clean enough to my standards. Never had an interest in Better Bottles, I always saw them as the worst of both worlds... plastic & a bitch to clean? No thanks. Plastic's not bad if you can clean it properly, but I don't think I'd stand a chance feeling comfortable with them.

If you're going plastic, the conicals are the way to go. The secret is the type of plastic they're made of. Not very porous, the inside is treated to be even less porous & they can take boiling water without a problem, where a bucket or BB would melt or warp. You can clean them without ever touching the insides with anything but liquid. My procedure is to do a hot tap water rinse to get the majority of the gunk out. A hotter rinse to loosen up what's left, recirc PBW @ 50C (122F) for 20 minutes, hot rinse, (if they are retaining any color I spray them down with bleach water at this point, rinse that cold then hot, but that only happens very rarely), then recirc 90C (194F) water for 45 minutes which will kill anything left. I leave the bottom port open while they dry & during the mash for the next brew they get sprayed with StarSan 2-3 times. It's a procedure, but for the money you save over stainless, they're an extremely good option. When I have the extra cash I'm going with a pair of the temp controlled B3's, but 5 grand for a pair of fermenters is a bit down the road. These work perfectly for now.

My coni's are 15g & 25g & get all my regular brews, I didn't replace the buckets so the sours go in the carboys. They're not so bad when you only have to clean them once a year or 2.

Edit:
Most of my system is Blichmann gear but I'm not going with their conicals for 2 reasons. Their quality control isn't very good; I've had to return almost every single Blichmann item I've bought to be replaced... & I've got about $1600 in Blichmann stuff alone. It's just frustrating. The products are 2nd to none when you finally get one that is done correctly. 2nd reason is space. You can put them in a fridge for temp control, but that takes up a lot more room than the integrated systems that B3 makes.

[brewinhard]

Something to consider....

If you rack the beer over now on top of the cherries then the most active current fermenters (ie sachharomyces and possibly some brett) will quickly work to consume those sugars from the cherries leaving not much behind for the bacteria. I would recommend racking to secondary or even a keg for several mos (4-6) to allow the various populations of brett and bacteria to take hold of the beer BEFORE adding the cherries. Then you can rack over to another carboy on top of the cherries and maybe some boiled/chilled maltodextrin to assist the long term fermentation hopefully favoring the brett and lacto/pedio bacteria in the WL culture. This will allow for more complexity in the finished product instead of just alcohol production from the saccharomyces.

As far as oak is concerned, this style does not NEED a lot of it. Just a touch is nice. So I would consider adding your sanitized oak (cubes preferably) maybe 3 mos before final packaging so the beer doesn't get too oaky per style.

On the first racking day, you might also want to brew up another sour beer and repitch some of that WL blend from the cake into another batch of wort. If WL 655 is like the WY Roselare blend, then successive pitches will get more sour, faster as the populations shift more towards brett and bacteria vs. saccharomyces.

[Ozwald]

If you rack the beer over now on top of the cherries then the most active current fermenters (ie sachharomyces and possibly some brett) will quickly work to consume those sugars from the cherries

The sacc might if it hasn't already gone dormant, hence the suggested split, saving almost half the cherries for later. The brett, unlikely. At that pH in the presence of alcohol, it'll act more like a chugger, fermenting away fairly slowly. Remember there will be acids from the lacto/pedio by that point. It'll slow down the brett considerably. (Edit: at least with Roselaire. A different blend might be completely different. I'm not even sure if it's the same substrain of brett)

maybe some boiled/chilled maltodextrin to assist the long term fermentation

Excellent point that I glossed over. Extremely good suggestion. I'm going to think about this for my next one. Unfortuanately that's a ways out. I've gotten in the habit of brewing my F.Red for the 21st Amendment's anniversary in early December.

As far as oak is concerned, this style does not NEED a lot of it. Just a touch is nice. So I would consider adding your sanitized oak (cubes preferably) maybe 3 mos before final packaging so the beer doesn't get too oaky per style.

My remedy is to use medium toast French oak. Very mild as far as oak goes. I also boil the snot out of the chips before adding them which helps reduce the more aggressive oak flavors. Without checking my recipe, I think I'm using about (scaled down to this recipe) 4oz of large chips. I also add my chips before the initial pitch. I tried adding them later & they were too aggressive. Adding them during primary has given a slightly more noticeable oaky-ness, but extremely less aggressive. Makes all the difference in the world.

successive pitches will get more sour, faster as the populations shift more towards brett and bacteria vs. saccharomyces.

This is something I definitely need to try. Every one of mine have gotten a fresh smack pack per carboy sans starter. I've never repitched it. The most recent batch is looking to be the best, I was just planning on saving the oak, adding a touch of new oak & letting it go to see what happens. Maybe even a 2-3 gallon trial w/o the new oak. I agree with JP's opinion on the Rodenbach/'to style' F.Reds. Most are just too damned sweet. Consecration is about the closest I can think of commercially & even though I'd give that a 10, it's still a touch on the sweet side. Just a touch. A touch to the That's gentle.