The main point of this update was to check on the pellicle. As I mentioned in Barrel Notes: Day 60, the pellicle had appeared to be clearing up.
To recap, here is the progression of the pellicle:
Day 17
Day 22
Day 34
Day 60
And now today:
Day 102
It appears that things are starting to develop again on the surface. I'm still not sure what is going on. I like that it appears to be forming a pellicle again as I intend to age this barrel for 3 years and a strong pellicle will help cut any O2 exposure in the head space. I spoke with Vinnie at Russian River before I got home today, so only had the first 4 pictures to go off of. He had some good things to say, but no real definitive "this is what's going on" answer. He recommended asking the folks on Babble Belt, so that's what I'll do. Feel free to read and join in on the conversation over there.
I didn't take a sample out this time, but it smells fantastic...
Long since out of print, however is still regarded as the definitive text on Lambic. Currently it is very expensive to get a copy of this book, but I was lucky enough to snag a copy off of eBay for $3 from a seller who didn't know what he had.
I've just started reading this book and I wanted to type out the "Etymology of Terms" section for you all.
According to a writer from the Tirailleur newspaper in 1883, the term lambic has its origin in the peasants' belief that lambic, being very harsh to the palate, was a distilled beverage. The peasants would often call it the alambic, in reference to the distilling apparatus. Belgian historian Godefroid Kurth agrees that lambic derives from alambic, but according to him, alambic was the old name for the mashing vessel used to brew lambic beer. The dictionary of the Academy of Gastronomy suggests that the etymology of the term lambic is found in the Latin verb lambere meaning to sip. It could also be that lambic, which often appears as lambiek, is deribed from the village of Lembeek in Payottenland.
As for the term faro, it comes from the Spanish words farro meaning barley wine, a wine from Portugal, or a lighthouse. Indeed, Belgian rumor has it that after drinking a few pints of faro, people would become very enlightening. Faro was the main drink in Belgium in the nineteenth century. In 1855, a two-cent increase in the price of a glass of faro almost caused a riot among "Brusseleers" for whom the daily mug of faro was a necessity. A group of actors from famous cabarets even staged a play to denounce the price hike.
The gueuze appellation was born in Lembecq, a small town outside of Brussels, which was very fortunate not to have to pay any excise tax on the brews it produced until 1860. In 1870, the mayor of Lembecq, who owned a brewery, hired an engineer by the name of Cayaerts. Together, they decided to apply the methode Champenoise to referment lambic beer in a bottle. Gueuze was born. This new invention was called "lambic from the gueux" because the liberal ideas of the mayor were those of the political party of the gueux. The lambic of gueux soon became known as gueuze. According to the Dutch writer Anton Van Duinkerken, the term gueuze more simply originated during the War of the Gueux in the sixteenth century.
The beer I make follows the traditional lambic process in every way possible without actually being located in Belgium. As Americans we want to be able to classify every beer into a style category. If one was to try classifying my beer, they may find the lambic category a more accurate title than the generic "AWA".
Some view lambic as more than a word to describe a style, but a hallowed Belgian product. Why it is so holy, and how it became sanctified, I do not understand. Many claim terroir, the history, or a unique microflora, but I have found those claims have little base in reality or the modern production of lambic within Belgium.
Part of me wants to believe that lambic is a sacred term. I don't like that Lindemans/Timmermans/Mort Subite uses it on their pasteurized, back-sweetened, fruit syrup, ersatz "lambic". I wouldn't categorize that stuff as lambic, but that is because I don't like their production method for those beers. I'm disappointed that there hasn't been more done to protect the term within Belgium.
In an attempt to half avoid the issue, half to show respect, I try not to use the term "lambic". I will use the term "lambic-style" or "American Lambic" when asked to classify the beer, because that is how I would classify it. Its much easier than saying "Spontaneously fermented ale brewed in Wisconsin following the traditional methods of Belgian lambic brewers".
Call it what you want. Classify it as you see fit. I don't really care as long as you enjoy it and understand how it was made.
Wow, already 2 months in. Last time I took a gravity reading was Day 9, so I thought the 2 month mark was a good time to do it again.
Gravity reading: 1.010
This is about what I expected. What I didn't expect was the color of the beer. If you compare that to when I got the wort (far right in this image), you can see there has been a huge change. It use to be dark brown, and now is orange. I wasn't sure why this happened, so I asked expert home brewer Jay (aka Fear025):
The wort was dark because there were caramelized particles suspended in the liquid. As time passed, gravity pulled those particles downward to settle at the bottom of the vessel.
Pretty simple answer really. I wasn't really worried about the color, but it is nice to know it will clear up to a more traditional lambic color.
Now on to the pellicle, here is a picture of it from today:
This I find odd. Compare that picture to the image from Day 34, and then to the one from Day 22. Its almost as if the pellicle is clearing up. I have read that the brett will eat the pellicle, but I thought that is something that would occur very late in the aging process and at a minute scale. Any ideas as to what is going on? The only other thing I can think of is that the weather has been very warm lately, which should have kicked in the pedio stage. Is this the beginnings of my beer turning "ropy"? I hope so!
Checking in on the pellicle again. Here is how it looks:
Comparing that to the previous picture, the pellicle has gotten denser over the last couple weeks. The aroma hasn't changed much, but I am getting a bit of an almost tropical fruitiness. Still very funky and still quite a bit of lacto. It's encouraging to have a wide range of aromas already.
So after adding dates to the small 5 gallon barrel, fermentation started again and I noticed the S-airlock burping. The next day however it wasn't burping, but there was maintained pressure on the water in the S. I was a bit confused at why that would be.
Now, the 5 gallon barrels I have were previously wine barrels (a plus) that had been sitting on display for 2 years (a minus). Needless to say, they were not in the best of shape when I got them. The barrels did swell tight, and after I steamed this barrel, I think it should be good to use. However, given its past, I started wondering if the staves on the top of the barrel (where no beer is directly in contact with) might not be drying out and the joints separating just enough to let out some of the C02 produced during this fermentation. (Note: there isn't really an issue with gases escaping now, however, if gas is allowed to enter through these same cracks later, we run the risk of acetobacter ruining the lambic) So I decided to test this hypothesis:
Here I have a piece of wet cloth covering the top of the barrel. In a few minutes the barrel started burping! With my hypothesis proven, I kept the cloth on the top of the barrel, and kept it wet, for about 24 hours swelling these staves from the outside.
I know paraffin wax is commonly used on barrels. When people don't want oxidation or the oak flavor to be imparted on the contents of a barrel, it is poured into the inside and allowed to coat the interior. Obviously I don't want to seal the whole barrel as lambic greatly benefits from that slow oxidation oak provides. I do, however, want to seal part of the barrel. Now that I've re-hydrated the top staves so they are air tight again, I want to lock that in by paraffin waxing just these top staves.
First I tape off a line at about 1/3 of the way down. This is far enough down that the level of the beer inside should always be safely above.
The next step is to coat the barrel with paraffin. I melted a couple blocks in a metal tray and then simply scooped it on with a spoon. This allowed me the control to make sure every bit of the target surface was covered with wax. I could stop here, but its a bit ugly looking with a lot of unnecessary wax.
To remove the excess, I took a blow torch and melted the wax from the top of the barrel down. WARNING: If you are using a spirit barrel for the first time, do not do this until you have filled the barrel!
As you can see, this leaves a clean looking finished barrel. Only a thin film coats the barrel, and that is all that is needed.
Finally I remove the tape and paper protected the rest of the barrel and you can see the final product! The burping of the airlock has really picked up, even more than after just swelling.
One complaint people have about using 5 gallon oak barrels is the higher surface area beer has to oak, and so the higher level of oxidation that occurs. It makes me think that this might be a good thing to do even if your staves are air tight. I'm not sure how to calculate it, but I'm sure one could figure out what percent of the outside of a 5 gallon barrel should be waxed so that it results in the same relative oxidation as a 60 gallon barrel. I wouldn't be surprised if its the whole outside except for the heads!
Update (02/23): I added the dates (that provided the sugars for a new fermentation) 5 days ago. Since waxing the top, the airlock has been burping about every 7 seconds. Compare this to not burping, and then only burping about every minute after swelling the top. While swelling the barrel from the outside certainly helped, there was still a considerable amount of gas allowed to escape through the stave joints. I feel as though by doing this I have avoided serious problems down the line and hopefully saved the integrity of the lambic in this barrel. Conclusion; I HIGHLY recommend doing this to your barrel if it had sat empty for any substantial amount of time.
I have checked in on the pellicle again as I am interested to see it during different stages of development. Here is a picture of its current state.
As compared to the picture in my previous post, it appears as if little colonies have developed. The aroma coming from the barrel is increasingly funky.
You may remember that in addition to the 225 liter barrel, I had enough wort left to fill a small 5 gallon barrel. To ferment the 5 gallon barrel, I used an assortment of commercial sour dregs collected at a beer tasting event. It is interesting to compare the pellicle formed in the big barrel (above) to that of this 5 gallon barrel (below).
There are a few major factors that cause such a different pellicle formation between the two barrels. The primary factor would be the different yeast source. Another factor is the 5 gallon barrel has higher oxidation due to greater surface area with the oak. In addition, there was only about 4 gallons remaining to fill the 5 gallon barrel, so it is a relatively short fill resulting in a larger head space. This head space has theoretically been filled with CO2 during the primary fermentation phase, however I do not doubt a certain amount of oxygen was present as well.
I don't want that much head space in the 5 gallon barrel during the aging process. After some consideration on what to do, my plan for this 5 gallon barrel is to make the Sikaru I talked about earlier. To do this, I will be adding dates and honey to the lambic. The rule of thumb in fruiting lambic is 2lbs of fruit per gallon of lambic, so I will be requiring 8-10 pounds of dates. Normally fruiting is done a few months prior to bottling, however, I will be adding a portion of the dates now to eliminate the unwanted head space in the barrel.
I purchased 4.5 pounds of whole dates. I'm not 100% sure the reason behind using whole fruits, however I know Cantillon and others insist on it, and so I made sure to follow suit.
I wanted to wait until primary fermentation had ended to add the fruit, but make sure they were added before the aging stage started. With the amount of sugar in dates, and the amount of dates I added, I wouldn't doubt if I saw a reasonably strong second fermentation. I'm not worried that I've damaged the existing pellicle (and of a second fermentation damaging it further). It was not dense enough to fall, and the disturbed area will grow back in short time.
