Beer Forum

For my next brew, I want to try my first sour and brew a Flanders Red. I recently started BIAB, with a couple under my belt including a 'maxi'-BIAB that includes a dip/batch sparge to get the needed volume.

So, my plan is to follow Jamil's Recipe from the Jamil Show. I plan to ferment w/ 1056 glass then racking to a BetterBottle and add Roeselare & some oak. I know Jamil's recipe does not call for oak (although he mentions it in the podcast), but I was hopping to add a little to go with the breweries that age in oak and the "Raj" method that uses the oak to help oxygen.

So, I have a few questions:
1. Will the BetterBottle with a bug and airlock allow enough O2 to enter for the souring? Or should I use a dowel for the airlock
2. How much oak should I add if I do chips?
3. How could/should I store the oak if I want to reuse it? or is that not recommended?
4. Is MoreBeer's all grain based on Jamil's recipe as some of their others are very similar?

olafphysics wrote:For my next brew, I want to try my first sour and brew a Flanders Red. I recently started BIAB, with a couple under my belt including a 'maxi'-BIAB that includes a dip/batch sparge to get the needed volume.

So, my plan is to follow Jamil's Recipe from the Jamil Show. I plan to ferment w/ 1056 glass then racking to a BetterBottle and add Roeselare & some oak. I know Jamil's recipe does not call for oak (although he mentions it in the podcast), but I was hopping to add a little to go with the breweries that age in oak and the "Raj" method that uses the oak to help oxygen.

So, I have a few questions:
1. Will the BetterBottle with a bug and airlock allow enough O2 to enter for the souring? Or should I use a dowel for the airlock
2. How much oak should I add if I do chips?
3. How could/should I store the oak if I want to reuse it? or is that not recommended?
4. Is MoreBeer's all grain based on Jamil's recipe as some of their others are very similar?

If you like sour beers then I would not ferment in primary with 1056, rather pitch a smack pack of WY Roselare instead. Do not worry if the beer takes longer than usual to start fermenting, it will get going. If you pitch the ale yeast first the beer will not sour enough, at least in my experiences. I have even had a tough time getting a sour enough beer with Rosealre in primary. If you can get a hold of any East Coast Yeast Bugfarm blends then those are really the way to go. If not, then Roselare in the primary and when you rack to secondary for aging, pitch a couple bottles of commercial sour dregs along with it for complexity.

On to your questions-
1. A better bottle will be just fine for aging with an airlock. This will give you enough oxygen permeability for the long term aging. The dowel is not necessary and it is a PITA.
2. Oaking a sour beer is always a personal preference. I have oaked flanders reds and not oaked them. They both have turned out great. I would probably let the beer sit in secondary for at least 8 mos before taking a taste and seeing if you even need the oak. If so, then boil them in a few changes of water to reduce the harsh, tannic flavors in the oak chips. I would only add about 1/2 oz of oak as this can easily be over done. Give it about 1 mos on the oak, then have a taste. Package when you like the flavor.
3. You can easily reuse the oak. But your best bet is to brew another sour beer on the same day when you rack the first one to secondary. Use some of the yeast cake to ferment your newly brewed beer and this one will get even more sour, even faster than the first. With each successive generation of reusing the Roselare, the more sour it will get in a shorter period of time.
You could also just transfer the oak chips from one carboy to another when packaging your beer as well. I have taken also poured some maltier beers into a growler and added the chips to that for aging until I was ready to use them again for safe keeping with no problems.
4. Could not tell you about this one.

Good luck and have fun with your sour beers. The more you get going, the more you will get bit by the "bug" (so to speak). eventually when you have a few lying around and aging you can always use some for blending which I have found to be almost necessary to reach the flavor/body characteristics you are looking for.

Thanks Brewinhand. I thought about the primary because I have read some people doing that and The Pope suggested it. What do other successful sour & Flanders Red brewers recommend?
Should I ferment in the primary with a common ale like 1056 down to the low 1020's and then add Roeselare to the secondary and let sit for months and months?
Or, should I go right with the Roeselare and stay in one fermenter?

olafphysics wrote:Thanks Brewinhand. I thought about the primary because I have read some people doing that and The Pope suggested it. What do other successful sour & Flanders Red brewers recommend?
Should I ferment in the primary with a common ale like 1056 down to the low 1020's and then add Roeselare to the secondary and let sit for months and months?
Or, should I go right with the Roeselare and stay in one fermenter?

I brewed this La Roja clone yesterday, and pitched straight Roeselare.....will see how it turns out in a year or so I guess.

Everybody has a method that works for them. I tried to model my process as close to Rodenbach's as possible and practical. The take home message is that it takes two years to get real sourness from this type of beer.

Pitch bugs and oak into better bottle.
Micro oxygenation is with oak bung http://mountainhomebrew.com/oakbunglarge.aspx (not immersed in liquid, end grain)
Age for 2 years
Blend with 1 year old to taste

A lot of the information came from
http://hbd.org/brewery/library/Rodnbch.html
the masterclass from Palm brewery http://www.palm.be/en/pageflip/index.php page 46-47
http://www2.parc.com/emdl/members/apte/GingerBeer.pdf

olafphysics wrote:Thanks Brewinhand. I thought about the primary because I have read some people doing that and The Pope suggested it. What do other successful sour & Flanders Red brewers recommend?
Should I ferment in the primary with a common ale like 1056 down to the low 1020's and then add Roeselare to the secondary and let sit for months and months?
Or, should I go right with the Roeselare and stay in one fermenter?

If you truly enjoy sour beers I would most definitely pitch Roselare directly into the primary alone. Let that finish for about 3 weeks, then rack to a carboy for long term aging. There you can pitch commercial dregs, oak, or even fruit as time goes on. Either way, patience is a must with these beers. you are best to just simply forget about them for a while.

Would there be any draw back from pitching roselare directly into primary and not racking off? I have seen recommendations for both racking off and leaving the beer on the primary cake.

Leaving the beer on that much yeast will result in some off flavors from autolysis. The bugs can clean up some of that but i don't think they can handle such a large volume of dead yeast. If you are going to go through the year ++ long journey of making a sour beer you should probably spend the fifteen minutes to rack off of the primary yeast cake.