Dubbel with Brett Lambicus
This is a beer I've been thinking about for quite a while. I've heard that Wyeast's Brett Lambicus throws off some cherry pie flavors after giving it enough age and time in the bottle, so I figured that would play well with one of my favorite styles, Belgian Dubbel.
While working from home I interleaved a brew day quite skillfully with some coding and brewed a Belgian dubbel. I transferred a bit more than half of the funkelweiss (as I shall now refer to it) into a 3 gallon fermentor, and the other half into a keg. Originally I planned to store it in a 5 gallon carboy BUT I had forgotten I got a bung stuck in it. Whoops! Good thing I impulsively bought 4 kegs on a deal a few months ago!
Hops
Towards the end of this brew I of course decided I didn't have enough beers in the pipeline, so I ended up adding 2 gallons of water to the grain in the mash tun for 15 minutes and ran off 2 more gallons of wort to make a patersbier of sorts.
I boiled this for an hour and a half on my kitchen stove top with an ounce of aged hops I bought from hopsdirect.com on Black Friday as well, which made the whole apartment smell like stinky cheesy hops and sickly sweet wort. Lindsay was not amused, but we went out for a great happy hour/dinner at Bar Crudo so it was all good!
The wort ended around 1.025 OG after the boil. I pitched a pack of Bootleg Biology MTF Funkapolis into this wort along with the dregs of a Boon Oude Gueuze Mariage Parfait I drank while brewing. Like my Golden Sour made with their Sour Solera blend, this beer also hasn't shown visible signs of fermenting yet. It's only been a day so far, so I'm not too worried. It will either work or it won't.
Anyways, I'm currently planning to add the Brett Lambicus into the dubbel after it ferments for a couple days. I don't want to wait until the dubbel has completely fermented out, I'm curious to see what would happen in a semi-mixed pitch. I want the Brett to have some sugars still to consume and grow with it.
While working from home I interleaved a brew day quite skillfully with some coding and brewed a Belgian dubbel. I transferred a bit more than half of the funkelweiss (as I shall now refer to it) into a 3 gallon fermentor, and the other half into a keg. Originally I planned to store it in a 5 gallon carboy BUT I had forgotten I got a bung stuck in it. Whoops! Good thing I impulsively bought 4 kegs on a deal a few months ago!
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| Dubbel, Funkelweiss, Keg aging funkel |
The brew day went pretty well other than not noticing a boil over happen while eating a salad in the hatchback of my car. I cooled the wort down, transferred it, then ran upstairs to do some more work.
Grain
8lbs Belgian Pilsner
3lbs Vienna
0.75lbs Special B
0.75lbs Belgian Aromatic
1lb D-180 Belgian Candi Syrup
Hops
1oz Saaz @ 60min
Yeast
White Labs WLP530 Abbey Ale
Wyeast Brett Lambicus (after a few days of fermenting)
Expected OG: 1.059
Actual OG: 1.052 :(
Expected IBU: 11 - Could have gone higher here in retrospect.
Actual OG: 1.052 :(
Expected IBU: 11 - Could have gone higher here in retrospect.
I boiled this for an hour and a half on my kitchen stove top with an ounce of aged hops I bought from hopsdirect.com on Black Friday as well, which made the whole apartment smell like stinky cheesy hops and sickly sweet wort. Lindsay was not amused, but we went out for a great happy hour/dinner at Bar Crudo so it was all good!
The wort ended around 1.025 OG after the boil. I pitched a pack of Bootleg Biology MTF Funkapolis into this wort along with the dregs of a Boon Oude Gueuze Mariage Parfait I drank while brewing. Like my Golden Sour made with their Sour Solera blend, this beer also hasn't shown visible signs of fermenting yet. It's only been a day so far, so I'm not too worried. It will either work or it won't.
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| Bonus crazy pellicle pic while transferring Funkelweiss |
After that, I'll probably let the dubbel sit for at least a month before splitting it up into the keg (at which point I'll add some dregs from a couple bottles) and a small 3 gallon carboy I bought for it to age for a few months. If all goes well it should be ready to drink in bottles and getting funky this time next year!
Update (12/9/16): The dubbel completely exploded over! Two days post-pitch it had a slight krausen, nothing too crazy but 4 after I walked into my storage unit and noticed a strong wort-y smell. I looked under the blanket shielding the beers and lo and behold there was gross yeast gunk everywhere! It completely overfilled the airlock and spilled out onto the storage rack holding my beers, surrounding the dubbel and the 3 gallon funkel.
After I cleaned it up, I pitched the Wyeast Brett Lambicus to give it a chance to start working while there was some sugar left. When I checked a day later (5 days post-brew) the beer was still bubbling away quite happily. I'm excited to see how this beer develops!
1/6/2018: Tasted a small amount, very nice dubbel. The brett isn't showing up yet so I'm going to let it be for at least 3 more months. I think instead of doing #3 in my list above I'm instead going to put half this dubbel into a keg and the other half I'm going to age in a carboy with various souring dregs (or an inoculation from my sour solera which I tasted today and is tasting good). That way I can try a dubbel with Wyeast Brett L which I've been curious about, and then also get a tasty sour dubbel out of the other half.
3/10/2018: Bottled 3.5 gallons of the dubbel, transferred the other 2 or so gallons blended with 1.5 gallons of the golden sour and sweet cherry puree into another carboy
4/8/2018: Tried a bottle of the dubbel. Pretty good! It's not as funky (yet) as I was hoping. The bottle is still a little undercarbonated, I'm worried that I put in priming sugar for 3 gallons but really I had 3.5 gallons in the carboy. There's little to no head, but the flavor is nice for this beer.
Ultimately I'm going to try a bottle every other month and just sit on these for a while. Interested to see how the actively fermenting sour/dubbel/cherry beer will be, I'll likely wait another month or two before bottling that.
7/12/2018: The dubbel is getting really nice now, it reminds me of some generic "cola". I wish I had carbonated it a bit higher, I think it's lacking that. But every bottle I try gets better and better. If anything it's been tasting sweeter which plays into the cola thing; I think my next go at a bretted dubbel I want to have it be as dry as possible with good carbonation.
Update (12/9/16): The dubbel completely exploded over! Two days post-pitch it had a slight krausen, nothing too crazy but 4 after I walked into my storage unit and noticed a strong wort-y smell. I looked under the blanket shielding the beers and lo and behold there was gross yeast gunk everywhere! It completely overfilled the airlock and spilled out onto the storage rack holding my beers, surrounding the dubbel and the 3 gallon funkel.
After I cleaned it up, I pitched the Wyeast Brett Lambicus to give it a chance to start working while there was some sugar left. When I checked a day later (5 days post-brew) the beer was still bubbling away quite happily. I'm excited to see how this beer develops!
1/6/2018: Tasted a small amount, very nice dubbel. The brett isn't showing up yet so I'm going to let it be for at least 3 more months. I think instead of doing #3 in my list above I'm instead going to put half this dubbel into a keg and the other half I'm going to age in a carboy with various souring dregs (or an inoculation from my sour solera which I tasted today and is tasting good). That way I can try a dubbel with Wyeast Brett L which I've been curious about, and then also get a tasty sour dubbel out of the other half.
3/10/2018: Bottled 3.5 gallons of the dubbel, transferred the other 2 or so gallons blended with 1.5 gallons of the golden sour and sweet cherry puree into another carboy
4/8/2018: Tried a bottle of the dubbel. Pretty good! It's not as funky (yet) as I was hoping. The bottle is still a little undercarbonated, I'm worried that I put in priming sugar for 3 gallons but really I had 3.5 gallons in the carboy. There's little to no head, but the flavor is nice for this beer.
Ultimately I'm going to try a bottle every other month and just sit on these for a while. Interested to see how the actively fermenting sour/dubbel/cherry beer will be, I'll likely wait another month or two before bottling that.
7/12/2018: The dubbel is getting really nice now, it reminds me of some generic "cola". I wish I had carbonated it a bit higher, I think it's lacking that. But every bottle I try gets better and better. If anything it's been tasting sweeter which plays into the cola thing; I think my next go at a bretted dubbel I want to have it be as dry as possible with good carbonation.
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