I recently tried a vintage Vin de Cereale from Rodenbach and was blown away. It really got me thinking about brewing a beer similar, and a few days ago some friends and I happened into a used chardonnay barrel from a local winery (I believe it's 55 gallons).
What I am thinking is doing a solara type beer in the image of Vin de Cereale - sour and funky. It's going to take all of us a few batches to fill this sucker up, but after that it will be easy to maintain. I'm thinking of inoculating the barrel with several packs of Wyeast 3763, and probably some dregs from Jolly Pumpkin beers and some other favorite sours whenever I drink them. The barrel will be located in a garage at my buddy's farm.
The beer I'm shooting for will be probably around 10%, OG: 1.086ish and hopefully it will finish out around 1.010-1.008...15-20 IBU. I'm thinking roughly 10-15% unfermentables to give the wild yeasts something to chew on.
I have a couple concerns about souring and high gravity...
1. Should I primary and ferment this beer with a sacc strain first? I do this when I make my Flanders reds but they are never more than 7% abv, so I don't have to worry about the bugs crapping out due to high alcohol conditions like they may in this beer. I'm just afraid that by the time this beer finishes fermenting in the primary the abv will already be too high to really enable these bugs to do their work.
2. I want this beer to be SOUR, not just tart. Would you suggest I sour mash it to give the lacto character a head start?
3. Will this beer attenuate down below 1.010? I really want this to be more wine like in the sense that it will be bone dry - especially for something with such a high abv. I'm just afraid the hyper attenuation I normally see in my Flanders beers will not apply to a beer this big.
Any other thoughts/comments are very welcome!
What I am thinking is doing a solara type beer in the image of Vin de Cereale - sour and funky. It's going to take all of us a few batches to fill this sucker up, but after that it will be easy to maintain. I'm thinking of inoculating the barrel with several packs of Wyeast 3763, and probably some dregs from Jolly Pumpkin beers and some other favorite sours whenever I drink them. The barrel will be located in a garage at my buddy's farm.
The beer I'm shooting for will be probably around 10%, OG: 1.086ish and hopefully it will finish out around 1.010-1.008...15-20 IBU. I'm thinking roughly 10-15% unfermentables to give the wild yeasts something to chew on.
I have a couple concerns about souring and high gravity...
1. Should I primary and ferment this beer with a sacc strain first? I do this when I make my Flanders reds but they are never more than 7% abv, so I don't have to worry about the bugs crapping out due to high alcohol conditions like they may in this beer. I'm just afraid that by the time this beer finishes fermenting in the primary the abv will already be too high to really enable these bugs to do their work.
2. I want this beer to be SOUR, not just tart. Would you suggest I sour mash it to give the lacto character a head start?
3. Will this beer attenuate down below 1.010? I really want this to be more wine like in the sense that it will be bone dry - especially for something with such a high abv. I'm just afraid the hyper attenuation I normally see in my Flanders beers will not apply to a beer this big.
Any other thoughts/comments are very welcome!