Rebellious Lambic - AKA Old English October Beer...

[johnrm]

Updating

[Garry]

The words wine and lambic mean nothing to me, but if it's room you're after I might be able to help. What kind of size are we talking?

[johnrm]

Hey Garry,
Thanks for the offer, appreciated.
Its about the size of the last barrel, 225l.
Its going to be immovable for a period, I'm not sure how long, I will need to consult with the house expert.
I'll cover the barrel and sort logistics if you're happy with this.
Do you need to run it by The Management? 

[johnrm]

Looking at another thread, it seems this might become a long term fixture.
As in a few years.
Let me know if this is workable, I'll understand if not.
Thanks

[Garry]

My garage is MANzone so no need to consult with management. I still don't know what lambic means, maybe mr happy could give me a few lessons? My garage is NOT insulated, so the temps will fluctuate a good bit during the year. If this isn't a problem, count me in 

[johnrm]

I'll see about bring a 'sample' if you are at the gig on Saturday 7th

[mr hoppy]

Sounds really interesting - but don't underestimate the commitment! Even without a 225l (!) barrel brewing a real lambic is pretty hardcore and something I'd have looked at being a longer term ambition:

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/11/brewing-sour-beer-at-home.html

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/08/lambic-3-turbid-mash.html

[Garry]

Sounds really interesting - but don't underestimate the commitment! Even without a 225l (!) barrel brewing a real lambic is pretty hardcore and something I'd have looked at being a longer term ambition:

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/11/brewing-sour-beer-at-home.html

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/08/lambic-3-turbid-mash.html

You're a bad influence on me JRM! I think I'll need to speak to Mr.H about this. I'm still open minded though.

I'm not sure if I'll make the meet on the 7th yet. Mrs Garry is out that night so it's my responsibility to find a babysitter  I'll do my best. Are Mrs RM and Mrs Happy going? I might be able to bribe her into a triple date??

[Taf]

Sounds really interesting - but don't underestimate the commitment! Even without a 225l (!) barrel brewing a real lambic is pretty hardcore and something I'd have looked at being a longer term ambition:

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/11/brewing-sour-beer-at-home.html

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2009/08/lambic-3-turbid-mash.html

You're a bad influence on me JRM! I think I'll need to speak to Mr.H about this. I'm still open minded though.

I'm not sure if I'll make the meet on the 7th yet. Mrs Garry is out that night so it's my responsibility to find a babysitter  I'll do my best. Are Mrs RM and Mrs Happy going? I might be able to bribe her into a triple date??

I know that Sam black is bringing his wife, and there should be plenty of other women there, including my own, so they can get together and bitch about us, and bond around that!

[johnrm]

I was planning staying with the Mistress, Sheila up on Wellington Road.

However, seeing as its a Christmas party, a Birthday AND a Rebel meetup all rolled into one, I think I'll bring her.
We have a young lad who needs to earn his keep that can mind the smallies.

This is going to be great craic!

[Taf]

don't know anything about lambics either, but would be interested to find out more. Is there any appetite to fill the existing barrel again, once it gets emptied of black IPA? Not sure it would be worth having two barrels on the go, so maybe the whiskey one becomes a smoker in Kanturk. Also, primarily being a hophead, not sure how many non hoppy projects I would like to be involved in.

[johnrm]

As I understand the beer needs to be barreled for quite some time, i.e. a year or more.
From the quick read of the process, the beer bit is handy enough.
The magic is the combination of yeasts that are used and the treatment over time in the barrel.
Andrew would be the best person to ask about using the First barrel.
Maybe Sam can host a second Barrel and we can compare notes and/or blend.

The Barrels El Tubo (NOT that fecker Il Tubo) are from Red and White wine.
Again I defer to Andrew expertise in all things Belgian and wonderfully Sour. 

[mr hoppy]

To be honest I'd be thinking let's do something a bit more accessible like a Flemish Red (like Rodenbach which was on sale at the FW Oktoberfest) or a Flemish Pale like Petrus Aged Pale with the existing barrel (six month turn around and I've some recipes we could work from) first, to dip our toes into the whole crazy sour barrel gig and then we can do a lambic after if people like the Flemish Red.

Lambic is a huge commitment: it involves unorthodox mashing methods (worse than decoction mashing) and you really need 18 - 36 months to make anything halfway decent. Also, given the incredibly long timescale I'm not sure it's going to be an issue if we're running 6 months behind other clubs.

Folks in the US often use whiskey barrels for sours (including lambics) and I think 160 litres is probably more manageable than 225 (which is a seriously big volume - especially without Billy's big boiler).

[johnrm]

Look at how the other groups did their small batches and combined them, this worked very well for them.
There's no reason why this would not work.
As for the brew, maybe some in between complexity would make more sense to ease the learning curve.

[mr hoppy]

Flemish red would be well suited to the small batch and then combine approach because the funky stuff only comes into play in the secondary (which could be done in the barrel).