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| Give me a break, it's Halloween... |
Aroma: Grape skin, figs..small stale sweet cherry notes.
Appearance: Cloudy/hazy, nice small head that dissipates quickly, burnt amber/orange color.
Flavor: Cherry stem, sharp acidic undertones, cherry pie sweetness, earthy tones of Brett and Lacto. Very dry finish. Very easy drinking beer.
Mouthfeel: Good viscosity balance, even carbonation levels. A small hint of sharpness on the tongue.
Overall Impression: This is the best sour I've ever made. Very drinkable for a 9%+ beer, given the cloudy impression, this beer will continue to age in the bottle. Remembering this was a blend, it is almost impossible to recreate.
Brewing Timeline/Notes:
The beer started as a collaboration with DeeperRoots Brewing last year. Since then, we brewed a total of 3 more beers in addition to the first two batches. During the blend this was our favorite batch, named #7. This beer was carbonated and bottled with my Blichmann Beer Gun. Danny's batch is bottled under normal conditions with Champagne yeast. Over the next couple months it will be great to see how each of them hold up side by side. Interesting note to add, Danny added wine grapes fresh off the vine 3 weeks before this blend. This is where the haze comes from. All the other beers were done and very clear. I still have 4 gallons of our leftovers that when combined, started to ferment again. I am planning on keeping it as a house sour blending addition.
I need to figure out some time to try these blends and bring over a couple of mine. I just bottled my Super Flanders Red that is a 1.5 yr old. It is over 10% and was a 1 gal experiment. I bottled .5 gal straight and the other .5 gal went on a lb of the elderberries.
ReplyDeleteHow did your batch end up at 9%? And would you brew it that way again?
I was just talking to Danny about this. I will send out an email. We are thinking about doing a double brew day and drinking some beers.
DeleteFor the sour, it is a guess on the ABV. Since they are all blends. The original double batch was 7.6% My second was 8.0% but I added simple sugar (2#) into the batch while fermenting. On Danny's side, with the additional 10 pounds of grapes we guessed it added over 1%. So honestly we could be wrong completely on the ABV but it is a good guess given the backround.