Stupid Flanders

In April of this year we attempted our first sour brown ale, or 'Flanders' style Belgian.  We love sours in general and we were introduced to the whole concept through beers like Duchesse de Bourgogne, Rodenbach, and Monk's Flemish Red.  Flemish sours are an amazing balance of rich, sweet, sour and somehow very refreshing.  Production almost always involves some form of barrel aging and/or combination of aged beer with newer beer.  Wild yeast imparted by old barrels provides the souring character.  On a homebrewing scale, this can be achieved without the barrels, but with a Belgian Sour or Roselare yeast.



Traditional yeast needs about 7 days to complete primary fermentation with another fermentation just to clarify and clean up any possible byproducts that aren't ideal.  The bacteria elements need more time to do their work and they also need a little bit of oxygen (headspace in the fermenter or wooden barrels) to keep growing.  For our attempt, we used a Belgian Sour Blend yeast that was capable of creating an efficient primary fermentation and also had enough bugs to continue to evolve the beer in the secondary.

The original recipe is as follows:

4.0lbs. Pilsner malt

4.0lbs. Munich malt

3.0lbs. Vienna malt

.75lbs. Cara Pils 120L

Single infusion mash at 151 for 60 min

1.0 oz Goldings 4% AA at 60min

Yeast:  WL Belgian Sour Mix

OG:  1.058

FG:  1.012

After over 4 months in the secondary, we bottled it today.  So far so good and will do tasting notes in about 2 weeks so the bottle has time to carbonate.

UPDATE 10/17/2009:
Appearance:  Deep ruby, bronze with a beige head
Smell:  Stone fruit, toffee some of the bright elements of its barrel aged cousins.
Taste:  Not as tart or as rich as the beers mentioned as its inspiration.  Judged on its own merit, no flaws apparent in the construction.  Just a little smokiness coming through the souring elements are there and nicely cut what would otherwise be a very malty profile.  Overall very enjoyable.  We will age a few of these bottles for at least a year to see how if the bugs can finish the souring job.

Will definitely make this one again.  The key change we'd make is to let the bugs take their course over a full year and add some oak chips.  The best way to go about these is to find an ambient temp corner and just forget about this one for a year.