Lambic Mk 1

Today I brewed my first sour beer. When this ready I'm planning on bottling half of it and continuing to age the other half, to be blended into a geuze 3 years from now with 2 more batches.

Straight Lambic

Recipe Specs
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Batch Size (L): 20.5
Total Grain (kg): 5.000
Total Hops (g): 80.00
Original Gravity (OG): 1.048
Expected Final Gravity (FG): 1.006
Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 5.6 %
Colour (SRM): 3.2 (EBC): 6.3
Bitterness (IBU): 5.4 (Rager)
Brewhouse Efficiency (%): 65
Boil Time (Minutes): 120

Grain Bill
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3.000 kg Pilsner (60%)
2.000 kg Flaked Wheat (40%)

Hop Bill
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80.0 g Aged Cluster Leaf (0.5% Alpha) @ 120 Minutes (Boil) (3.8 g/L)


Ferment at 20°C with US-05 for 1 week then add Wyeast 3727 Belgian Lambic Mix

Mash
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Mash in at 45°c for 15 mins
15 min rest at 55°c
45 min rest at 64°c
30 min rest at 70°c
Then raise to 76°c for mashout

My efficiency was down quite a bit on this brew, I'm usually around 75%, possibly due to the high percentage of unmalted wheat.

Also for a lambic the hops should be well aged to remove bitterness and flavour. I used hops which are a couple of years old, kept at room temperature, and there was still a fair amount of bitterness when I tasted the sample at the end

Maybe I can call it an Imperial Lambic and market it as a new style

Grain Shot

Underletting

1st Temp rest

2nd Temp rest

3rd Temp rest

4th Temp Rest

Sparging

Boil going with hops just added

Cooling

Rehydrated US-05

Draining into FV after cooling to 20°c

OG hydro shot

looking good mate , I hope it turns out well sometime next year . I love the sour beers but haven't gotten round to making one ( except a cheat raspberry lager with acid malt ) they just take soooo long .
btw flaked wheat has been steamed and rolled which releases the starch ready for conversion when mashed normal .Also try using a high AA hop , this will give less harshness to the bittering . Now just the long wait .

Might have been gooier than usual!

24 hours after pitching half a pack of US-05 and it's formed a nice krausen.

Interesting. Should be within the next couple of weeks I try mine. My wheat isnt flaked, it's just unmalted. I also dont have any aged hops. Have some low AA ones though so hoping I can get maybe 40gr in whilst keeping below 10 IBUs, which I read was the threshold for the lacto and pedio to work getting it sour. Whether 40gr is enough for preserving the wort/beer I dont know.

Looking forward to Xmas 16 to hear how it tastes.

As far as I know the hops don't affect the pedio, just the lacto, so if you do go over the 10 ibu limit (many debate the accuracy of this anyway) then it won't cause any issues as long as you age the beer for an appropriate time.
From what I read, pedio will do the same job as the lacto, maybe even with a little more complexity, it'll just take longer to do it, hence the need for long aging.
I was happy to read that because as mentioned above, my hops were nowhere near as debittered as I thought they were, so that'll probably inhibit the lacto.

Cool. I shall be less worried about my hop usage then.

Today I added the Wyeast lambic mix to the fv (got a serious whiff of brett funk up the nose when I opened the pack ) 7 days after adding half a pack of US-05.

Took a hydro reading, only down to 1.018 so taking it's time, as you can see there's still a thick krausen.

Now it's the waiting game...

I feel your efficiency pain, just did an attempt at a lambic with 3kg of pilsner and 2kg of unmalted wheat and the efficiency was 50% when I frequently get 80%. Not even sure the wort is strong enough at 1.040 for the style (or to lay down for 18 months), I assume the brett will eventually eat everything in there but even going to 1.002 leaves it a sub 5% beer.

Looking at it the fact I used unmalted wheat, rather than flaked, may have meant I needed to do a special mash. Oops. Will leave it and see what happens anyway.

Had a peek at this today, about 6 weeks after pitching the sour mix and it's developing a beautiful and disgusting skin on top of the beer and there's a definite brett aroma. So far so good

Just another 80 odd weeks left then hell of a wait .

Another gap in my brewing education. Think I need to try a Lambic .......... I've got to admire your work there Steve.

Why do commercial Lambic seem top have a strong fruit vibe?

Five months after pitching and this is how it looks now.
As you can see the pellicle is damaged at the right side. Don't know how that happened or if it's anything to worry about.

there is a faster way of making sours ive got one fermenting now that will be ready in 4 weeks

Only tasted a lambic once, thought it was vile...

I do the souring post boil. Which takes about 24 hours then when the wort is soured to taste boil as normal killing the bacteria and ferment at normal temp

Search for chorlton Brewing in Manchester they have a good range

Probably not
I had some incredible lambic, fruit lambic and gueuze in Belgium, Cantillon, Tilquin, 3 Fonteinen, Boon.
But here, certainly in NI anyway, it's difficult to find.
The only ones I can find are Lindemans which imo, are to sour beers what John Smith's is to English ale, so I can understand your dislike