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As Seen In |
Hay, Anybody got any Three-Year-Old Hops? BY Bruce L Brode "Grand Hydro" (Published in the November 1996 Brews and News)
Brew Style of the Month: Lambic
Welcome to the world of truly weird beer. It's weird for me to write about it, because I've never brewed this style. On the other hand, it's a brewing approach that dates back hundreds of years and a group of styles that has a reputation now known by 'beer hunters' throughout the world, so how weird can it really be? I decided on this unique, even bizarre Belgian style as our brew style of the month at the urging of my predecessor as Grand Hydrometer, Maribeth ("MB") Raines-Casselman, and I didn't need much urging at all after tasting some of her two-year-old Lambic- style brew. Wow! Talk about rich flavor; I can see why these beers are often blended between older, more sour and intense brews and younger, fresher and fruitier ones. They are also often flavored, best known in these parts being the fruit-flavored ones called Kriek (cherry), Framboise (raspberry), and Peche (peach). I understand that MB is going to lead a Lambic-style brew on the shop's Pilot brewery in November, so consider signing up for a good look at the process as nearly as we can reconstruct it. An excellent written reference on the style is "Lambic," by Jean- Xavier Guinard (Brewers Publications, 1990, Classic Beer Style Series No. 3). I will attempt henceforth to "distill" (lauter?) the essence of Guinard's recommendations for recreating this style in one's home brewery: 1. Ingredients: The grist (grain complex) is typically pale 2-row barley malt, and 35 to 40 percent unmalted soft white wheat (rather than hard red winter wheat often used in bread). Guinard also includes up to 5 percent of 40 Lovibond crystal (caramel) malt in some of his home recipe formulations. The malt should be crushed in the usual manner for brewing, preserving large husk pieces for the lauter, but the wheat should be ground into fairly fine granules but not all the way into flour. The water source is not considered to be distinctive or critical, although Guinard does suggest 150 ppm Calcium sulfate (gypsum) and 60 ppm Sodium Chloride (table salt). Hops are another matter, though, as aged hops that are a minimum of two years old, three is better, are sought for use since they have lost their bittering power at that point (thus the title of this missive). They retain important preservative qualities, however. English varieties are favored, such as Goldings, but it is possible to use some lower- Alpha Acid European varieties too, such as one of the Hallertauer types. Hops are used at the rate of 2.5 pounds per 100 pounds of grain, so if you're brewing 5 gallons of a Lambic-style beer with about 10.5 pounds of grain, you'd be using more than 4 ounces of hops! Most strange of all among the ingredients is the microbial array which participates in the fermentation of these beers. Guinard has developed a simplified approach involving Saccharomyces cerevisiae (good old ale yeast, such as the popular Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. strain); Pediococcus damnosus (a lactic acid bacteria which we brewers ordinarily strictly avoid); and Brettanomyces bruxellensis or Brettanomyces lambicus (two different species of a "wild" yeast with a horsey aroma and flavor). Traditional brewers of Lambic beer are all located in the Senne Valley west of Brussels, and allow naturally-occurring microbial flora, including all of the above and many other species, to settle onto the wort as it cools overnight in large, shallow, open vessels. This results in rather low pitching rate equivalents and consequent slow growth of cell populations, and if you're going to attempt to duplicate what this does to the beer's extended fermentation you should consider adding the ale yeast right off the bat, he Pediococcus next (Guinard recommends after 2 weeks) and the Brettanomyces last of all (Guinard suggests after 3 weeks). These intervals could be stretched out even further, particularly for the "Brett" addition. A fresh mixture of all three is recommended as an addition at bottling, along with some priming sugar. 2. Wort production techniques: Mashing is done through temperature steps with boiling water additions and decoctions of the mash (about 1/5 of the mash each time) which are boiled; this result in a very high ratio of water to grist, 8 to 1 or so, by the time all the water has been added. The strike temperatures are 113 to 120 F. at dough-in, add boiling water to strike 136 F., decoct and meanwhile add more boiling water to strike 149 F. while the decoction is boiling, add another decoction to the first one and boil them together, then return the combined decoction to the rest mash to strike 162 F. for a 20 minute conversion rest. Add more boiling water to strike 170 F. for a mash-off. Sparge water temperature can be as high as 200 F. since it's okay to have some starch in the runoff--the extended fermentation will tend to reduce the starch. Also, the decoctions in which portions of the mash are boiled will gelatinize the wheat starch, improving conversion to sugar thereafter. Boiling is a long process of from 3 to 6 or more hours, with the hops added early on. A starting wort gravity of 1.030 to 1.032 is best, since the wort may lose 30 per cent of its volume during the long boil, raising the gravity to the typical pre-fermentation levels of 1.048 to 1.055 for Gueuze or 1.040 to 1.072 for fruit Lambics. This will also avoid undue caramelization during the boil, but between the low starting gravity and the large hop mass displacing wort in the kettle, you'll need a sizeable kettle. 3. Maturation: Ferment the beer with the programmed microorganism additions described above. Some aging in oak casks, or with some oak chips added at least for the flavor they contribute, is an authentic touch. Blending of a one-year-old beer with a younger one is also an intriguing thing to try, for best flavor balance, but then again it depends on the separate flavors of the source beers. Flavoring of a Lambic with candi sugar (a style called Faro) or with fruit is also fun to try, though a well-made Gueuze comes across as a rich, dry, sour, gassy, fruity treat-- surprisingly refreshing and satisfying. Alright, time to brew what is probably the world's most gruesome beer--just think of all that bacteria and wild yeast floating around in it! (Must be a Halloween hangover.) If you want the all-grain experience, get in on MB's brew, but just to say I included a recipe after all, here is Guinard's recipe for an extract-based Gueuze Lambic:
Gueuze-Lambic, by Jean-Xavier Guinard: for 5 gallons: Extracts: 3 pounds pale malt extract. 2 pounds wheat malt extract. 1/2 pound corn sugar. Hops: 1/2 ounce each Fuggles and Hallertau hops, 3 years old. Yeast, etc.: Fresh starter culture of Saccharomyces, with later additions of Pediococcus and Brettanomyces. Procedure: Boiling time 45 minutes. Ferment primary 3 weeks at 64 degrees F., secondary 1 week. Carbonate using 3/4 cup corn sugar at bottling. Original gravity 1.044, final gravity 1.009. That's all for now. Until next time, keep floatin', and go brew some really gruesome Lambic weirdness! |
