Recent content by levifunk

I am a complete newbie to the soda world, so excuse my ignorance. I know quite a bit about fermentation and feel very comfortable with it. I got the idea to make lacto fermented soda for my pregnant wife since she can't enjoy any of the beers I'm making/drinking. The idea came partly from...

We've got a couple commercial size batches going right now using the lessons learned in this experiment. They will be sold early 2014 in the Minneapolis area. In general it seems to be very hit or miss with brett in cider. I can see how people have attempted this is the past and concluded...

You are going to want to clean it. Up to you how strong you want to clean it though. If left untouched, you may end up with straight vinegar next batch.

You are kind of in a pickle here. You want to kill the aceto or it will continue wrecking your beer, but don't want to kill the rest of the bugs. I don't think the addition of boiling water will kill everything (though it will do a pretty good job). What it will do is lower the counts across...

In its inception, geuze was made by just using some young lambic to get the mature lambic to bottle condition. It was a reflection of the champagne method and learning how to carbonate beer. There really is no hard and fast rule as to the age of the young contribution or its percentage. Some...

Its just a 5 gallon barrel, so I would boil 5 gallons of water and dump it in there. Let the really hot water soak in there for a day. I might even repeat that process once or twice. Also, yea, I'd recommend waxing the outside of the barrel. These small barrels have more surface area and...

Has anyone tried adding back a portion of the must after pressing to the juice? Would the addition of skins do anything?

oh wow, yea, keep an airlock on it. At a year it won't be overly sour, just tart. Let it keep going. Also, you should wait until the base is ready before adding fruit.

We have thought about fruiting some of the fermented ciders, but that is something we can experiment with using some of our final product. ECY has a couple brett strains we didn't use last year, so: 6 - Brett anomala 7 - Brett brux (ECY) 4 more to go...

Actually, after a year, there likely isn't going to be much CO2 activity to speak of. I would think you would be fine sealing it. What is the gravity at? There is still activity going on, but nothing that kicks off CO2.

Last year's brett cider panel was a great success. We learned a ton about how the different strains perform in cider and are using that information to produce 1,000 gallons of 100% brett ciders this year! (which I believe will be the first 100% brett cider commercially produced). We still have...

I've got a bit of experience with this and I would say yes, you want to use aged hops. People don't realize it, but lambic wort is heavily hopped. More than some IPA recipes! I scaled Cantillon's recipe to a 10 gallon batch here...

I think the Rodenbach GC bottle was a '94. One thought on the lacto and pedio pitch. It seems lacto creates acidity much faster, so it could be seen beneficial to get the ph down quickly and then let the pedio take over and continue dropping it over the long haul.

Brewers keep using lacto because its the best souring bacteria for quick brews. Pedio produces diacetyl that requires Brett and time to clean up. Pedio can also go through sick stages. So, while pedio is more resilient and, I believe, produces a stronger/cleaner acidity, lacto still has its...

Not a whole lot more I can say really. WY Brux and Fantome have been the crowd favorites. Custer is very good, but seems to be somewhat polarizing. Still working with the orchard and trying to get ready to do a couple larger commercial batches this fall. I'm really hopeful for the results...