Lambic Mk 1

Well it's approaching a year since I brewed this so it's hopefully nearly ready for stage 2.

The plan is to rack half of it into demijohns, which will go back into storage for a couple more years, and bottle the other half. The bottles will be aged for about a year or so and the stuff in the demijohns will eventually be used to make a gueuze which is a blend of 1, 2 and 3 year old lambics.

Batch 2 will be brewed in a few weeks time, batch 3 a year after that. I hope it's worth the wait

I'll taste a sample soon to see how it's doing, but it definitely has the funky, leathery, fruity, horsey, lambic aroma

Took a sample of this today, the sg is at 1.010 which is surprisingly high. That means an abv of about 5% which is a little lower than hoped for, though presumably this will continue to ferment slowly for a while.

The flavours are along the right lines, brett, grainy wheat and lots of sourness, but it's very obviously way too young. It will need lots of time for the flavours to mellow and blend.

As you can see it still looks fairly disgusting

I'd love to have a go at a Lambic at some point, great thread.

no its kept at 45 degrees till it sours. When its sour enough boil to kill off the bugs

ive never done sour that way i used lactobacillus added first to the wort then us05 a few days later. I was considering using a plastic bucket and an element connected to an stc to maintain the 5 degrees needed but never got round to making it.

A fantastic thread thank you - I have quite a lot of 2011/2012 hops and have been searching for help on a Lambic. You have more than provided it!

Today I racked/bottled this, 2 demijohns full and 24 bottles all stashed away again for another year.
My bottling wand snapped during the process but thankfully there was only about a pint or so left. I tried drinking the leftovers but could only manage a little, it's still very harsh. Hopefully a year will be enough to mellow it out.

And I thought waiting for lager was a pain , hats off for the patience Steve .