Two Quick Lambic Questions

[butterpants]

1)Doing 15 gallons of Lambic inspired beer in an oak barrel. How long are you guys waiting to remove the airlock and hard bung it? Initial fermentation and the disgusting aged hop krausen are gone. It's been in a month.


2) Can you solera a Lambic cask and get somewhat repeatable results? I've had this work well with traditional pitched sours but nothing where the progression/succession of micro flora played such a huge role in final flavor.

Thanks!
-BP

 

[RPh_Guy]

I don't have a barrel (yet), but I'll take a stab at your questions.

1)Doing 15 gallons of Lambic inspired beer in an oak barrel. How long are you guys waiting to remove the airlock and hard bung it? Initial fermentation and the disgusting aged hop krausen are gone. It's been in a month.

If the airlock is still bubbling, then leave it on.
You could also use one of these:
https://www.morebeer.com/products/p...icone-bung-barrels-variable-volume-tanks.html

2) Can you solera a Lambic cask and get somewhat repeatable results?

I believe the repeatable results are the entire point of using a solera method (at least for professionals).

I've had this work well with traditional pitched sours but nothing where the progression/succession of micro flora played such a huge role in final flavor.

I'm not sure what you mean.

Hope this helps. Cheers

 

[butterpants]

No sorry Rph it didn't help at all but thanks for contributing.

Take a look here to enlighten yourself:
https://www.lambic.info/Microbiology_and_Biochemistry#Stages_of_Lambic_fermentation

Essentially there is a progression of dominance from a microbiological standpoint in lambic. It's present and develops on the initial inoculation and ageing but will not be present upon fresh wort addition if doing a solera. I'm looking for someone who has tried it and cares to report back with results, even anecdotal ones....a buddy of a buddy's tale is good enough for me. I suspect the solera beer would be significantly different than the initial lambic but in what way I do not know.

I guess you could break it down further as to weather or not your freshly added solera wort (post 2/3'rds finished beer removal of course), was inoculated via lambic tradition (air) or by the barrel, per solera tradition.

 

[isomerization]

No sorry Rph it didn't help at all but thanks for contributing.

Take a look here to enlighten yourself:
https://www.lambic.info/Microbiology_and_Biochemistry#Stages_of_Lambic_fermentation

Essentially there is a progression of dominance from a microbiological standpoint in lambic. It's present and develops on the initial inoculation and ageing but will not be present upon fresh wort addition if doing a solera. I'm looking for someone who has tried it and cares to report back with results, even anecdotal ones....a buddy of a buddy's tale is good enough for me. I suspect the solera beer would be significantly different than the initial lambic but in what way I do not know.

I guess you could break it down further as to weather or not your freshly added solera wort (post 2/3'rds finished beer removal of course), was inoculated via lambic tradition (air) or by the barrel, per solera tradition.

For the barrel solera, I heard at my homebrew club that a group had success with this until the 5th (or so) round of removal/additions and then it all turned to nail polish remover. I’d be really worried about the O2 ingress that a barrel allows. Maybe waxing would help?

 

[chrilr]

Personally, I don't hard bung my barrels and use an s airlock. On our level it is easy to keep an eye on 1 airlock, a commercial brewery with a large amount of barrels couldn't do this( so the need for hard bunging or silicone airlocks).

I also don't solera but empty completely, saving some slurry to reuse for the next fill. The reasoning is I don't want the bacteria to grow so hardy that there is 15 gallons of face melting sour to blend down.