Holiday Sour Tasting

I broke open the beer vault for Christmas. I had my friends surrounding me and we split some bottles that I had been holding for a while waiting for an opportunity to open them. We sampled a bottle of Bio Gueuze from Cantillon, LambicKX from Vanburg & Dewolf, and finished it off with Armand'4 Oude Geuze Lente. We mixed in a few other sour beers and some not so sour beets just to keep our palates interested.

(please read my experiences after the break.)

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Thanks,
Don

The Grind - MM3 - 2.0

The MM3 has three rollers. Two rollers are fixed in place and the third roller is adjustable. The roller sits in a cam that is firmly in place inside the housing. The cams have a slightly off center bushing approximately three one-hundredths off center. This gives the roller some adjustment within the given range. The cams can then be set with set screws.

(read more after the break.)

Flanders Red, The Sequel

It's that time of year again, around 14 months after my first Flanders Red went into primary it's time to go again. I'll be sampling my sours as soon as I can get a friend in spring lake to help. (hint: Derek or Kyle time to help), but before then I'll need to brew another Flanders Red before it get's really cold. Looking back at a blog post from a year ago I realize how naive I was. I honestly thought I would be drinking a Flanders Red aged on cherries by now....hahaha DOH!

To make superior sour beers blending is a must. It's not hard to see why, souring organisms are fickle and two batches pitched at the same time, from the same vial can have differing results. The following factors can have a varrying effects on your sour beer: dissolved oxygen, ambient temperature, wort PH, and Fermentor size/shape/type. A plastic bucket and a better bottle will turn out two different beers. A glass carboy with a wooden stopper could produce radically different results than with a rubber bung.

(read more after the break.)