Bière de Coupage: Kettle Sours

Since writing the first post in this series, I've been slowly making my way through copies of the correspondence pages from early volumes of Le Petit Journal du Brasseur (provided by Dave Janssen of Hors Catégorie Brewing).  One common question about bière de coupage is whether there might be any shortcuts that would allow a brewer to produce them more quickly or cheaply than by buying or ageing beers for blending.  The answer to questions framed in this way is usually a resounding 'no': if you want anything of the complexity and character of an aged beer, you have to use a well-made beer of that sort. But the authors do often make suggestions about how brewers could accentuate or imitate certain elements of blended beers (e.g. by adding acetic acid), and its in that spirit that I planned the beers for this post.

Most of my attempts at making bière de coupage have involved using aged sour beers, usually drawn from a solera, because I was looking for both tartness and complexity.  But if the only thing you want is to add a bit of tartness to a beer, aged sours are not a necessity: all you need is a beer with a clean and pleasant acidity.  An increasingly popular and reliable way of achieving this is by a process of kettle-souring, i.e. pitching lactic acid producing bacteria into the wort in the kettle, boiling to kill them off once the desired level of acidity has been reached, and then fermenting the beer with a regular strain of saccharomyces.

From my experience, I'd say that beers made in this way tend to be a bit one-dimensional and boring by themselves, and I often find commercial versions to be overly acidic.  But these are all characteristics that make such beers excellent candidates for a certain kind of blending with clean beers: where the acid component can provide a controllable degree of tartness, the clean component can provide the further array of flavours we associate with beer, which are often suppressed (in the case of yeast-derived flavours) or overwhelmed in a straight-forward kettle sour.  This is essentially what Off Color does for their gose Troublesome, and what New Belgium does for their wheat beer Snapshot.

With that in mind, I had the idea of brewing a large batch of kettle sour, and storing it in a keg for regular blending.  My thought was that this would allow me to measure out different volumes of the acid beer as required: a few ounces if I just wanted to a small amount of tartness to a beer, or a gallon or more if I wanted some prominent acidity.

Kettle Sour

Grist: Pilsner (80%), Wheat Malt (20%)

Hops: EKG

Yeast: Safale US-05

O.G.: 1.042

IBUs: 20

ABV: 4.4%

Process

I made a litre starter for the Omega lactobacillus, and let this sit (without agitation) for 24 hours before pitching.  Since each half of the brew-day would be relatively short, I managed to fit them in across consecutive week nights.  On the first day I made the wort, doing a BIAB mash with as much of the total liquor as I could fit in my kettle, then liquoring down after mashout to reach my full boil volume.  At that point I raised the temperature up to just below boiling, then quickly cooled it to around 95°F before pitching the lactobacillus starter.  I wrapped it up in some insulation and a sleeping bag (the same stuff I use if I want to hold my mash-temperature for more than an hour) and left it to sit until the next evening.

The Omega blend performed as advertised, taking the wort down to 3.33 in around 18 hours.  Once I'd confirmed this drop in pH, the rest of the brew-day was quite straightforward: just a normal boil, cooling the wort, and pitching the yeast.  I was a little worried that the low pH would inhibit the US-05, but when I checked the next day there was visible activity after about 14 hours.

Once the beer had fermented out, I transferred it to a five gallon keg, added finings, and put it on my balcony overnight (the 'Chicago winter cold-crash') before transferring to a second keg the next day.  Its been sitting there under pressure ever since: whenever I need some for blending, I just attach the keg to some tubing and measure out the proportion I need.

The beer came out as expected: clean, lemony sourness, without much else going on.  My idea was to use it in varying proportions to add some degree of acidity to different beers, from a tart acidic bite at the end of an otherwise normal beer, to a pronounced but balanced sourness.

Blending

As of writing this post I have used this batch in three different beers, each with varying proportions of acid beer blended in.  For the first I made a dry stout, since I've been brewing them a lot anyway, and I thought it would do well with a small percentage of acid beer.  The second was a wheat saison, to which I was hoping to add a more noticeable acidity.  And third, a wheat beer, which would be the most acidic of the lot.

I came up with some rough percentages before brewing, but also took the time to test them after the beers had fermented out.  One thing I'll say is that this time around it was very clear to me that the perceived acidity increases once a beer is cooled and carbonated.  I tested these blends at rooms temperature, and in every case the final beer ended up a bit more acidic than I'd anticipated.

The proportions for each blend were as follows:

Dry Stout: 5% acid beer.

Wheat Saison: 12% acid beer

Wheat Beer: 33% acid beer.

Dry Stout

A dry stout seemed like an obvious candidate for this kind of blending, and as I mentioned in the first post of this series, there is considerable historical precedent , which is nicely captured in this rather poetic description of "first-class Irish stout" from the 1920s:

There is something at unspeakably seductive and evasive of true description about a first-class Irish stout, It is extraordinarily full and round, mellow and succulent. Yet is it bitter - but that somehow you don't notice. Behind it and enriching the whole lies that soupcon of strange lactic-like sub-acidity. 

The author continues in the same vein, suggesting that its this "strange lactic-like sub-acidity" that is the key to a great stout:

To the mind of the writer it is the will-o'-the-wisp sub-acidity that does the trick in Irish stout. Take it away and you've little left but a black, heavy, dry, but very soft and full mild ale with a lot of hops in it — nothing very characteristic or outstanding. Curious that no one has succeeded in fathoming and grasping that extraordinary suggestion of a rare old vintage wine — something lactic it exposes to us — hidden away in the chocolate-coloured depths. In the export variety you get too much of this sub-acid touch and consequently too little of the limpid polished fullness. But the home consumption product has a veritable perfection of nicety of balance in this respect : it is indeed a wonderful work of the Art of Brewing.

Of course, the beer being described was probably much stronger than the one I brewed, and the acidity likely came from a beer that had been 'vatted', rather than a pasteurized kettle sour.  Still, the basic idea is the same: some small amount of sour beer blended in to add a slight but noticeable acidity to the finish.

Grist: Golden Promise (57.6%), Torrified Wheat (17.4%), US 2 Row (11.5%), Roasted Barley (7.7%), Chocolate Malt (3.8%), Dark Crystal (1.9%)
Hops: EKG
Yeast: Wyeast 1318
O.G.: 1.034
IBUs: 33.2
ABV: 3.1%

Kettle Sour: 3-5%

I'm still working on this recipe, but I felt like the beer came out rather well.  The torrified wheat gives the beer a fuller mouthfeel that belies its very low ABV.  At test-blending the addition of 5% kettle sour seemed to mainly accentuate the bitterness while adding a slightly tart snap at the end of the palate.  However, once the beer was cooled the acidity became more prominent, giving the beer a more noticeable tartness.  I enjoyed it a lot, and the keg didn't last long (why would it, at 3.1% ABV?), but I felt there was room for improvement.  I wanted a little more roastiness and bite, so for the re-brew I increased the O.G. and bitterness, along with the percentage of roast malts, and added a small late addition of Challenger.  I also reduced the kettle sour down to about 3% of the blend.

Tart Saison

For the next beer, I wanted to try making a simple and drinkable saison with a touch of tartness.  To this end, I came up with a recipe for a wheat saison, fermenting it with The Yeast Bay's Saison Blend II and their Lochristi brettanomyces blend.  After primary fermentation was complete I blended the beer with around 12% of the kettle sour (proportions were roughly measured for this one), and allowed it to sit for another month while the brettanomyces and saison yeasts continued to ferment the residual sugars in both components of the blend.  Once it had reached a gravity I was happy with, I packaged it in heavy bottles with priming sugar and allowed it to continue fermenting for another three weeks.

Grist: Pilsner (75.5%), Wheat Malt (18.9%), Torrified Wheat (5.7%)
Hops: Saphir, Bramling Cross, Sterling
Yeast: Yeast Bay Saison Blend II, Lochristi blend
O.G.: 1.038
IBUs: 23.8
ABV: 4.4%

Kettle Sour: ~12%

The final beer is almost exactly what I was hoping for.  The aroma is very fruit-forward, with a mix of citrus from the saison blend and the distinctive aromas of the Lochristi strains.  The beer itself is crisp, tart, and very easy to drink.  Not tremendously complex, but with enough going on to keep you interested.  I think the tartness works particularly well with the more fruity yeast flavours, and I don't know if I'd like this beer as much if I'd used more phenolic yeast strains.  At first I felt the beer was too tart, but as its aged the edges have smoothed out a little and I'm enjoying the slight sharpness.  Still, I'd like to experiment with smaller amounts of acid beer for a more subtle tartness in the finish.

Tart Wheat Beer

For the final beer, I knew I wanted to use a larger proportion of kettle sour, so I decided to try making a wheat beer that I could serve quickly from a keg.  The base was a pretty standard wheat recipe, with lots of European hops rather than citrus and coriander.  I fermented with with Wyeast 1318---an odd choice perhaps, but it was what I had available.  I think in future I'd use a more characterful yeast here.  

I blended the beer in a keg, with two parts wheat beer to one part acid beer, letting it sit for a few weeks at room temperature and then hooking it up to the CO2 in my beer fridge.  I felt that the beer was a bit one-dimensional at blending, so at the least moment I decided to add a small dry-hop of Citra.  This ended up dramatically changing the character of the beer, which I think would have been a bit flat without it.

Grist: Pilsner (51.4%), Torrified Wheat (20.1%), Wheat Malt (14.3%), Munich (8.6%), Flaked Oats (5.7%)
Hops: Saaz Special, First Gold, Styrian Goldings, Citra
Yeast: Wyeast 1318
O.G.: 1.049
IBUs: 21
ABV: 4.8%

Kettle Sour: 33%

The photo on the left was taken quite early on, and the beer cleared up slightly over time, though it always had a bit of haze.  It was fairly tart, but I didn't think the acidity overwhelmed the rest of the beer, which seemed quite well-rounded and moreish.  I think the higher F.G. played a role here. The character from the dry-hop seemed to increase over time, and I wonder whether the acidity played a role in that.  Ultimately, it tasted like a dry-hopped kettle sour, but I found it much more drinkable than the straight-up kettle sours I've tried, which can be hard to stomach after a glass or two.  

I'll be making this recipe again this summer, using Safale T-58 in place of the Wyeast strain, and backing down on the proportion of acid beer to get something closer to a tart wit.  I think these higher proportions would work well in a gose or other adjunct-complimented sour.  Based on my experience with this beer, I think I definitely prefer a blend of clean and acid beer to a straight kettle sour.  If nothing else, it allows for more control over the acidity of the final beer.

Bière de Coupage: Contemporary Versions

For this second post in the series on bières de coupage, I'm going to survey some contemporary examples of such beers.   I contacted a number of breweries while writing this post, and I've included any information they provided below.  The selection of beers is far from exhaustive, and I'll continue to update this post with new beers, along with any more information I manage to uncover about the ones I've included.  I'll advertise any updates on this blog's Facebook page.  Besides the breweries themselves, some information in this post was provided by Dave Janssen of Hors Catégorie Brewing, and Andrew Addkison of The Farmhouse Obsession.

Beers Blended with Aged Lambic

As we saw in the first post in this series, merchants and blenders have long been able to buy lambic in bulk from lambic breweries for making their own blends.  At the time Laurent was writing, this would generally have been for producing faro. (Laurent does not mention gueuze, probably because he was writing before the glass bottles essential to the refermentation of gueuze were widely available).  Its worth flagging how this practice differs from that of modern blenders such as Tilquin and Hanssens, who purchase wort rather than lambic, and ferment and age it in their own barrels.  A few of the things I've read suggest that this wouldn't have been unheard of in the eighteenth and nineteenth century—a response to one letter published in Le Petit Journal du Brasseur suggested purchasing wheat beers from regions outside Brussels and aging them in casks as a cheaper alternative to purchasing lambic—but most of the material is about people buying lambic rather than wort.  Today's home-blenders, along with breweries wanting to blend their own beers with genuine lambic, depend on sale of this sort, whether it be the small quantities involved bag-in-a-box lambic, or the larger volumes required for commercial blending.  Such blends provide some of the best examples of modern bière de coupage, most being made by European breweries.

Perhaps the best place to start in surveying these beers is with Brasserie de la Senne, the brewery opened by Bernard Leboucq and saison historian Yvan de Baets.  Many of the beers produced by Brasserie de la Senne show the influence of Yvan's labouriously researched essay on the history of saison brewing, which describes the practice of blending old and young beer, pointing out that lambic was often purchased for just this purpose.  Given this background, and the close proximity of the Cantillon brewery, it should be no surprise that Brasserie de la Senne released a number of beers made in this way.  Sadly its been a while since the last one was produced (and I've never tried any of them), but perhaps the brewery's upcoming to move to a larger facility will provide new opportunities for making this kind of beer.

One of the most interesting things about those early releases is that two out of three used beers from De La Senne's regular line-up as component in the blend.  Crianza, for example, was made by ageing a blend of their golden blond ale Zinnebir with Cantillon lambic in oak barrels for nine months, and the first of their experimental series of 'Wadesda' beers was a blend of Jambe-de-Bois and lambic that was also aged in barrels.  Anyone familiar with these beers will know that, like most of the brewery's line-up, they have a pretty firm bitterness, something that (according to conventional wisdom at least) might be expected to clash with any tartness coming from the lambic.  In fact, though, this aspect of their flavour profile probably brings them closer to historic saisons.  Those were bières de garde in the literal sense of beers made for keeping, and as such were often heavily hopped, with the bitterness gradually decreasing as the beers aged.  (I found a couple of places in the correspondence pages from Le Petit Journal du Brasseur where authors warn brewers trying to rush the process of making a bière de coupage about a corresponding difficulty: that young lambic will be too bitter for blending.)

Reninge Bitter Blond/Bitter Blond a lambiek

You can see the same combination of heavily hopped beer and lambic in another Belgian example of bière de coupage, the beers made by Chris Vandewalle at Seizoensbrouwerij Vandewalle.  Vandewalle, like Yvan de Baets, has an active interest in the history of Belgian beer, one that shapes the beers he brews today.  Vandewalle's Oud Bruin is made by blending together young and old beer made at the brewery, but more interesting for our purposes is the Bitter Blonde a Lambic, which is made by blending Reninge Bitter Blonde with lambic from Oud Beersel.

Reninge Bitter Blond is probably somewhat close to the historical saisons and bières de garde made in the region.  It has a beautiful orange hue, reminiscent perhaps of old beers that underwent a four or five hour boil in copper kettles, and at 7% ABV it is certainly strong enough for long-term ageing.  The beer hopped primarily with English-type varieties grown in Belgium, and is strikingly bitter. It is open-cooled, and then open-fermented after yeast is pitched in a U-shaped trough re-purposed from cheese-making.  After the krausen drops, the beer is cold-conditioned for three or four months prior to packaging.  The bottle I drank was about a year old, and had a definite brettanomyces funk to it, reminding me strongly of this C19th IPA recipe that underwent a secondary fermentation by brettanomyces clausenii.

For the bière de coupage, Vandewalle blends in a small portion of Oud Beersel lambic at packaging, without adding any extra sugar for priming.  The bottles are then left to condition at the brewery for at least eight months before sale, in which time the wild yeast and bacteria from the lambic bring the blend to condition.   The bottle I drank was from November 2013.  It was still only mildly tart (and the tartness did not clash with any residual bitterness), but the contribution of the brettanomyces was very dramatic, giving the beer an aromatic complexity that was quite striking (especially since the base beer already had a lot going on).  [Information in the previous two paragraphs was provided by Dave Janssen, based on a visit to the brewery in 2016.]

Cuvée De Ranke

As with Brasserie de la Senne and Seizoensbrouwerij Vandewalle, its no accident that Brouwerij De Ranke makes beers using this old process.  A key part of their brewing philosophy involves "respecting old traditional methods, without ignoring new techniques", and when I asked Nino about the background for this beer he mentioned the tradition of ageing porter in oak vats, with its counterparts in the Oud Bruins and Flanders Reds of Belgium, along with the lambic brewers and blenders of the Pajottenland.  "Our beer is a mix of these 3 styles: we live between the two oud bruin regions and are big lovers of real lambic."

Nino describes the base beer for Cuvée De Ranke as "a very simple amber coloured beer with moderate bitterness (30 IBUs) that ages for a year minimum in stainless steel tanks or barrels".  Interestingly, he also told me that this base beer undergoes a mixed fermentation, though I'm not sure if this includes LAB or just brettanomyces.  This base is blended with 30% Girardin lambic prior to bottling, and aged further at the brewery before release: "after the blending the bacteria and wild yeasts of the lambic find new residual sugars in our beer and create a new fermentation/evolution, it's like lambic take's over within 4 to 6 month."   Production time for cuvée is at minimum 18 months, and for Kriek (the same beers aged on Cherries) it is 24 months. I am not clear on whether any extra sugar is added for priming, but the process Nino described certainly sounds similar to the process used by Chris at Seizoensbrouwerij Vandewalle, and (as we'll see) it marks a difference between these beers and some American versions made in a similar way.

A number of breweries outside of Belgium also purchase lambic for blending with their own beers, including Birra Del Borgo and Birrificio Del Ducato from Italy.  Both breweries have released blends of their regular saisons with lambic, and unlike some of the other breweries listed in this post, these beers seem to be more widely available in the US (at least, the parts I've visitied!), which presents the opportunity for side-by-side tastings

Duchessa/Duchessic

Del Borgo's Duchessa, a spelt saison, is a lovely beer in its own right and well worth seeking out.  The spelt gives the beer a full and fluffy mouthfeel, along with a slightly savoury note in the taste, and the bottles I've had have all had a quite remarkable fruity character that reminded me of apricots.  I haven't been able to find out much about the process used to make this beer, but I'll update this section as I learn more.

Duchessic is a blend of the same beer with 20% lambic.  The original release was made with lambic from the Cantillon brewery, and aged for a year before sale.  I do not know whether more recent blends also use Cantillon lambic, but even if they do, I suspect that the recent sale of Del Borgo to AB-InBev will mean that any future versions of this beer will source their lambic from elsewhere.  The bottles of Duchessic that I have tried have all been excellent, with a quite pronounced lemony sourness and a soft funk.  The beer is slightly thinner than the basic spelt saison, and often quite highly carbonated.

Nuovo Mattina/Beersel Mattina

Del Ducato's Nuovo Mattina is a spiced saison, and the pepper, ginger, and chamomile were all very apparent in the bottle I tried, with the spices giving the beer an almost numbing quality.  While I wouldn't say they were overdone, I've never had a spiced beer that I've really loved, and this beer didn't make me a convert.

Beersel Mattina, on the other hand, was something quite special.  The original batch was made with lambic from Drie Fonteinen, purchased after the failed thermostat destroyed large quantities of Armand's stock.  These days the beer is made with lambic from Oud Beersel, which makes up 18% of the final blend.  As with other European bières de coupage, the blending is done at packaging, and the beer continues to age at the brewery for up to twelve months before sale.  The bottle I had was fantastic: a similar lemony sourness to Duchessic, but balanced here by a fruity funk that had a distinctive 'berry' character.  The spices receded into the background, and were barely apparent in the finish of the beer, adding some nice complexity (I don't think I would have picked them out if I hadn't tried the clean version immediately prior to drinking this bottle).

Several other breweries have released versions of their beer blended with lambic—Burning Sky from the U.K., and Hill Farmstead being two favourites of mine—but I have never tried those particular beers, so I won't write about them here.  I will, however, update this section as I try any other notable blends.

Beers Blended with Aged Mixed Fermentation Sours

As modern breweries start to come back to the idea of bière de coupage, several have started to make blends using their own sour beers.  This is naturally an excellent option for breweries outside of Europe, for whom the purchase of aged lambic would be prohibitively expensive.

One brewery that has led the way in the renaissance of this technique is Jester King, who use it in a number of their beers.  The most prominent example is Das Wunderkind, a saison that is made by blending aged sour beer with hoppy young beer.  The brewery is quite forthcoming with information about their beers, and have already published the recipe for the base beer in this blend.  This aged saison has been released in the past as Das Uberkind, and is also used as a base for their second-fermentation fruit beers.

As far as I know, unlike the European breweries described above, Jester King tends to blend beers that are already very dry and basically done with fermentation.  This means that, though their beers certainly continue to evolve in the bottle, they are not relying on a further fermentation of the original beers for carbonation.  Garret Crowell told me that they "look for a nice level of acidity in the older beer", and mentioned that this can be a good use for a beer that has become overly acidic: "if a barrel-aged beer is too sour, it can be blended with non-sour beer to balance it".  The brewery generally uses about 10-12% aged sour beer in their blends, though they have used as much as 25% in the Dichotomous series.  Crowell says that the blended component is often subtle at the rates they use, "but over time, further subtle fermentation takes place and can increase acidity".  He adds that "the most apparent evolution is the increased presence of brettanomyces".

For Das Wunderkind, the brewery blends in 2 oak barrels of aged beer (118 gallons), ranging between anything from eight to twenty four months old, with 30 bbls (930 gallons) of freshly-fermented hoppy beer.  This blend is then dry-hopped, cold-crashed for a week, and then packaged.  The hop character resulting from the combination of young fresh beer and dry-hopping is one of the most striking features of Das Wunderkind.  Although it is not a uniquely American practice, the resulting beer shares something of its flavour-profile with my favourite American mixed-ferment saisons, beers like Jolly Pumpkin's Bam Biere or Crooked Stave's Vieille Saison.

Goose Island (and co.)

Once you become familiar with the concept of bière de coupage, it becomes apparent that quite a few American breweries are making beers with this process, especially as sour beers gain in popularity.  For instance, 20% of Goose Island's Sofie is aged in wine barrels with brettanomyces and citrus before being blended back into the base beer.  (I've been trying to find out more about their process, and will update this post when I do.)  What's more, a number of brewers who spent time working at Goose Island have gone on to deploy the technique in their own beers.  John Laffler of Off Color uses it in their gose Troublesome, which is a blend of a kettle-soured acid beer and a "really boring" wheat beer.  Brian Taylor, who is head brewer at an exciting new Chicago brewery called Whiner Beer Company, will be using it in one of their first releases, a saison called Le Tub that will include some lactobacillus-fermented acid beer aged in wine barrels.

Bière de Coupage: Some Background and History

This is the first in a series of posts about bière de coupage (previous posts on the subject can be found here).  In this first post I'll be looking at some of the background and history behind the idea of bière de coupage, focusing in particular on some of what I've learnt from going through some old French brewing texts, particularly Auguste Laurent's 1871 monograph Livre de poche de l'appreteur de bieres en France et en Belgique: Coupages et Melanges, and Georges Lacambre's 1851 treatise on brewing and distilling.  My aim in working through these texts was to find out a bit more about the practice of blending lambic or other kinds of aged beer with younger beers such as saisons, a practice that is described by Yvan de Baets in his essay on the history of saison, and that survives today in beers like Birra Del Borgo's Duchessic, De Ranke's Cuvee De Ranke, or Jester King's Das Wunderkind.   The second post in this series will look at those beers, along with other contemporary examples of bière de coupage, and include information about the processes and practices employed by brewers making them.  The remaining posts in the series will be about my own experiences making bières de coupage at home.

Two quick notes before I begin this post.  First, my reading knowledge of French is shaky at best.  Knowing a bit about brewing helped, but there were times when I could not work out what was going on, even with the help of an online translator.  I've tried to only include information I was fairly certain about, but I may still have made mistakes.  Second, the texts I am relying on are among Yvan de Baets' sources for his essay, and when I contacted Yvan for help in locating these texts, and he warned me that Laurent's text in particular was often contradictory and unreliable.  Yvan himself put a great deal of research into that chapter of Farmhouse Ales, sifting through what scant and scattered evidence there is about French and Belgian farmhouse brewing to form a general picture that allowed him to assess the veracity of particular sources.  I haven't done a fraction of that work, so I am not in a position to make the same kind of judgements.  Again, I've tried to keep that in mind when repeating claims made by Laurent and others.

So what is bière de coupage?  When the name shows up in the historical literature, it works by a sort of metonymy, serving as the name for any beer that was made with a particular process (in this case, blending).  The same is true of bière de garde, which doesn't really refer to a distinct style of beer in the way we might think of it, but to any beer intended for long term storage.  Laurent will happily use the phrase bière de garde in comparing beers from Northern France and Bavaria, in a context where it is clear that the beers in question were very different. (Of course, bière de gardes from a particular regions might all bear certain stylistic similarities to each other.)  So just as a bière de garde is a beer that underwent some ageing before sale, we might think of bière de coupage as a name for beer that was blended at some point before it was sold.  In this sense, the name is appropriate for many diverse 'styles' of beer, including the lambics of the Pajottenland, the red and brown ales of Flanders, and the historic porters made in London.  Recently people (including me) have started using the phrase to refer to saisons made by blending aged sour beer with  younger beer, a characterization that can be stretched to fit most (though not all) of the commercial lambic/non-lambic blends listed here.  These certainly fit the broader category of bières de coupage, but (as with all things saison) there is very little information about such beers in the historical brewing literature.  Lacambre, Laurent, and the other authors I looked at are all concerned with industrial brewing.  As Yvan de Baets put it, "no-one among the scholars at that time cared for a beer made by farmers".

However, that doesn't mean that we can't learn anything interesting from looking at when and why historical brewers relied on blending.  There is at least some chance that the kinds of beer brewed at commercial breweries in Belgium and Northern France grew out of local farmhouse traditions, and modern brewers who blend lambic in with their non-lambic beers are following a tradition of industrial brewing that goes back to the beers described by Laurent and co.  When I asked Nino Bacelle from De Ranke about the historical background to their Cuvee De Ranke, he mentioned the practices of 18th century porter brewers, along with the blending traditions that survive in Belgium: lambics in the Pajottenland, and the red and brown ales like Rodenbach from Roeselare/Kortrijk, or Liefmans from Oudenaarde.

Coupage, then, refers to a process of blending.  In the best case, this is a matter of blending aged beer with younger beer, but historically at least the idea of 'blending' also covered the use of sugar syrups and acids such as tartaric or even vinegar to modify the flavour profile of a beer. Laurent covers all of this.  Again, in the best case the aged beer was intended for ageing and lacking any pronounced flaws, though the practice of cutting beers was disreputable in some circles, since brewers would use it as a way to get rid of bad stock or old beers returned by vendors.  Although Laurent emphasizes the fact that blending is uncontroversial and expected in many places, he still feels a need to spend a good portion of his book defending it.

Whatever the historical origins of this practice, it was perfected on a large scale by the porter brewers of London in the 18th and 19th centuries.  The quality of this beer came from long-term ageing in large oak vats, where it would undergo a secondary fermentation that we now know would have involved both brettanomyces and lactic-acid producing bacteria.  The result was a tart, vinous beer, often blended at serving with younger beer according to the customers' preferences.  Interestingly, while the practice died out in England towards the end of the nineteenth century, it seems to have persisted for some time in Ireland, to the point where English brewers were again considering ageing a portion of their beers to imitate the Irish taste.

I don't think anyone really knows the original connection between the porter brewers of England and the red and brown sour ales of Belgium.  Alexander Rodenbach certainly spent some time in English breweries, and the story of him taking the practice of 'vatting' ales back to Belgium with him is an enjoyable one, though I suspect the tradition of brewing such beers predated his innovations.  (One thing he might have learnt in England was the superior quality of beers aged in large vats as opposed to small casks, something English brewers understood to be one of the most important technical developments in brewing porter.)  Whatever the truth of that story, by the time Lacambre and Laurent were writing their treatises in the late 19th century, blending of old and young beer was a common (though occasionally disreputable) practice.  Describing barley beers from the regions around Antwerp, Lacambre states that they age well for several years, and are rarely consumed pure "because we are in the habit, as is the practice with so many beers in Belgium, of cutting them with beers of the same type that are younger and fresher". (p.305)  He says the same thing about double uytzet, a bière de garde brewed in the region around Flanders.

In his treatise on blending, Laurent tends to focus on lambic, bière de mars, and faro from the Pajottenland. This is unsurprising, since part of his purpose is  to recommend the practice of blending to brewers who are leery of it, and one way he does this is by showing is that it is uncontroversially part of certain brewing cultures.  He opens his book by describing the mix of brewers and blenders to be found around Brussels, and returns repeatedly to the production of faro from lambic and bière de mars as a good example of what can be achieved by blending.

One reason Laurent uses faro as his example is that there seem to have been different approaches to its production.  The beer itself was a blend of lambic and bière de mars, both typically products of the same mash, with the wort for lambic consisting of the first runnings, and the wort for biere de mars coming from the last.  Laurent describes various approaches to making faro: some brewers seem to have blended the worts prior to fermentation, while others let them ferment separately and then recombined them in a single tank.  Much more common was the practice employed by merchants who purchased lambic for resale: blending the two beers prior to serving, or in the glass, typically using younger bière de mars and sugar syrup as well.  Laurent describes how different establishments would each have their own distinct version of such beers, made using blending ratios that were a carefully guarded secret.

The picture that emerges from Laurent's descriptions of Lambic culture around Brussels involves a mix of both breweries and independent merchants who purchased lambic from the brewers.  Laurent suggests that the latter had various financial advantages over the lambic breweries, since they did not have to invest capital in a brewhouse system.  There is no explicit mention of these merchants blending lambic with other kinds of beer besides bière de mars, though Laurent does mention in passing an old practice of blending in some brown beer, or beer boiled with lime, to give colour to lambic (though he also suggests that the latter was considered bad practice by the time he was writing).  But at the very least we know that lambic was sold and purchased for the purpose of blending, so it is presumably at least possible that these merchants purchased and blended in other kinds of beer as well.

This brings us to the primary motivation behind blending: achieving a particular flavour profile that will be pleasing to the consumer.  This is the virtue Laurent stresses most frequently when describing the process.  In fact, for me, the most interesting parts of his book were where he described the distinctive taste desired by drinkers in northern France and Belgium: la vinosité.  This is partly a matter of the aromas of aged beer (particularly, I would suspect, those that are produced by brettanomyces), but Laurent also describes it as a certain kind of balance, with a bitterness that does not dominate the beer, and a slight tartness that does not undermine its overall quality.  In fact Laurent states more than once that a touch of acidity was both desirable and expected in both bières du Nord and faro.

Obviously if you're aiming for a delicate balance of bitterness and acidity, its going to be easier to produce a consistent product if you have various beers available for blending, and this is exactly how Laurent describes the brewers of bière du Nord vineuse.   A bière de garde that has become tart can be blended with a younger beer, the latter providing a mellowness that complements the aromas and acidity of its older counterpart, while also aiding in head retention and carbonation.  It is interesting to see Laurent also emphasize that while an acid beer can be an excellent component for coupage, one should not use beer that is too acetic or otherwise marked by poor fermentation.

Laurent points out other virtues of blending as well.  One thing that comes up repeatedly in most brewing books I've looked at from this period is the way in which the seasons affected what the brewer could produce.  Summer in particular seems to have been a difficult time to make good beer.  One practice that Laurent recommends, apparently common in brewers of 'ordinary brown beers' around France and Belgium, is blending some aged beer in with the newly fermenting wort in the summer.  English brewers did something along the same lines, calling it 'breaking in'.  This helped the beer along its way, presumably staving off less desirable organisms as the populations from the older beer took control.

In fact, the planned time between blending and consumption would sometimes dictate the proportions of the blend.  Laurent suggests that porter brewed in spring and intended for consumption that summer was blended differently from porter intended for longer ageing, though from what I can understand the proportions he describes in both cases are the same, one part old beer to three parts young, or 9 gallons of old in a 36 gallon barrel.

Laurent states a preference for beers blended and allowed to referment prior to consumption, since it allows the qualities of the various beers to meld with each other, but he also spends some time describing beers that were blended at serving.  As I mentioned above, this was common with porter and some versions of faro, but Laurent also mentions a drink he calls half-en-half, a blend of equal parts lambic and faro, or in England, porter and ale (apparently in 1930s America 'half and half' referred to a blend of stock ale and pilsner.).  Dave Janssen tells me that Jean van Roy served him a half-en-half of Rose de Gambrinus and Fou Foune at Cantillon, so clearly the practice survives today.

In general, then, coupage is just blending, but typically refers to a once common practice of blending old and young beers together, the aim of which was to combine the best characteristics of each beer, particularly the tartness and aromatic complexity of an aged ale, and the mellow smoothness and improved head retention of a younger beer.  Bière de coupage is a handy name for any beer made in this way, and would be particularly appropriate for any beer whose character depended on the combination of features of old and young beer.  Nothing I've written in this post pertains solely to the combination of saison and lambic/sour beer in particular, and none of the authors I looked at discuss anything in these terms.  However, it should be clear that if one's aim were to achieve a combination of the properties of lambic and young saison, the general considerations outlined by these authors would apply in this case too. Moreover, Laurent's description of the vinous profile associated with the beers of northern France and Belgium suggests that such a combination would have been desirable to brewers and consumers in this region, and his description of the culture around Brussels makes it clear that it was possible to purchase lambic for the purpose of such blending.

In the next post in this series, I'll be looking at contemporary beers made in this way, including some details of the brewing process employed by their producers.  The remaining posts in the series will focus on brewing bières de coupage as a homebrewer.

Tasting Notes: English Ales with Brettanomyces

Here are some short tasting notes about some of the British stock ales I made last year.  I've made links to the original posts, which included recipe details and historical background.  All three were aged with brettanomyces clausenii.

As you can see, I've decided to stop using the appearance/aroma/taste etc. breakdown for tasting notes, since I don't find it a very natural way to write or think about my beers.  In future I'll be writing down my own overall impressions, but also including any notes I get from friends/fellow homebrewers/competition judges.

IPA

Based loosely on recipes for nineteenth century IPAs.  For a long time (i.e. the better part of a year) this beer was almost undrinkable.  The combination of massive amounts of hops with elevated sulfate levels gave it a rough and soapy bitterness that was not at all pleasant.  I was worried it was never going to turn a corner, but I'm happy to say that its really come together in the past few months, to the point where I'd say it is probably one of my favourite homebrews I've made.  That's not to say its not still incredibly bitter, because it is, but the edges are much smoother and the soapiness has becoming a more subdued minerality.  Combine that with a soft, barnyard funk from the brettanomyces, and the overall impression is something like a cross between De Ranke XX Bitter and Orval.

I find the brettanomyces aromas quite pleasant, and I'm usually quite leery of beers that have a lot of brett-related phenolics. On sipping, the beer is sweet for a second but then bitterness and minerality wash over your tongue.  Its very dry, but with same slightly fuller mouthfeel as De Ranke, which I associate with the use of large volumes of hops.  I am excited about this beer, but I can imagine that it wouldn't be to a lot of people's tastes (which is fine by me, because I don't have many bottles and I don't plan on sharing them).  I will be making another batch for next year, and also trying similar hopping-rates and extended ageing in a beer fermented with saison yeast.

Stock Ale

This was based on an 1887 recipe for Fullers XXK in Ron Pattinson's book.  Its been in bottles for a while now, but I haven't been enjoying the beer very much at all, though I can't point to any glaring flaws.  The aroma is interesting: a mix of shoe leather, some plastic, cherries or maybe even a bit of strawberry.  I can see the whole thing becoming increasingly sherry-like as it ages, as it has that slightly sweet oxidative character.  The taste is very slightly tart, and a bit astringent, with some alcohol warmth as it goes down and around the sides of the tongue.  I think the biggest problem is that the mouthfeel is a little thin, which means that the mid-palate is really lacking.  I can see this beer being a great way to add a bit of complexity to a younger, more full-bodied beer, but by itself it is a little insipid.  I didn't finish my glass, which at least meant it was still around for me to take another photo next morning when the light gave a better indication of its colour.

Stale Porter

This beer was also based loosely on a recipe from Ron's book, this time for an 1831 Keeping Porter.  I wrote some earlier tasting notes here.  Since then, the beer has smoothed out quite a bit.  By itself it is slightly tart and vinous, with aromas of berries, bread, and chocolate.  Quite unique.  The body is thin, which again makes the beer by itself underwhelming, but where it really shines is in blending at serving with a younger, fuller beer.  I blended the last few centimetres in my glass with an imperial brown porter brewed by a fellow homebrewer, where it provided a light and tingling acidity that completely changed the finish of the bigger beer.  In a side by side comparison, it was also surprisingly noticeable in the aroma.  From now on I'll be drinking most of this in blends made at serving.  The small 187ml bottles are great for that purpose, I just need to find time to brew a Running Porter for the blending.

Bière de Garde with Extended Boil

My first brew of 2016 was also my first attempt at making something like a classic
bière de garde.  I have a few malty saisons cut with red sours that could probably pass for interpretations of the style, but here I wanted to make something closer to the stronger, malt-forward beers described in Phil Markowski's Farmhouse Ales.
Initially my plan was to make something along the lines of the 'Bière de Garde - Artisanal Brewery Version' on p.89 of that book, which relies on an array of specialty malts 'to yield a greater complexity and depth of malt flavour'.  However, as I was flicking through the rest of the book, my attention rested on the following short note on simpler single-malt grain bills:

This approach to malt grist formulation might be more appropriate if a longer keeping time (six months or more) is desired for a bière de garde.  As the beer ages and slowly reacts with oxygen (ingress through the bottle closure) the malt character will intensify and come into its own over a period of six to twelve months.  A formulation containing a larger degree of specialty malts (Munich, Aromatic, Biscuit, etc.) may become 'too malty' over an equivalent aging period.

Since I'm planning on ageing this beer for quite a while, I decided to change my original plans and go for a much simpler grist.

Something else also caught my eye in the simpler recipe for a 'Bière de Garde - Large Brewery Version' on p.88.  In the notes below the recipe, Markowski says:

An extended boil (two or three hours) will add complexity and character.  This grist formulation will yield a bière de garde suitable for longer-term storage (greater than six months).

I'd been meaning to experiment with longer boils for a while, prompted in part by conversations with Andrew Addkison from The Farmhouse Obsession.  Boil-length and intensity was one of the ways in which traditional brewers could control the flavour profile of their beer without relying on the array of specialty malts we have access to today.  As Yvan de Baets mentions in his essay in Farmhouse Ales, longer brews were also characteristic of at least some historical farmhouse ales:

The boil lasted five to eight hours and sometimes up to fifteen hours "due to the generally accepted opinion that beer kept better the longer it boiled". This resulted in a deeper coloured wort, intensified by the fact that the copper boiling kettles were generally heated by open fire. (p.107)

Longer boils are also associated with traditional lambic brewing, and I think they might add some interesting complexity to my pale sour soleras.

With all this in mind, I decided to try making a bière de garde with a simple grist of 80% pilsner and 20% Golden Promise, hopefully getting some colour and complexity from an extended four and a half hour boil.  The planned O.G. was 1.075, with bitterness and hop character coming from some French Aramis hops.

The extended boil took some extra planning, since with my full-volume BIAB mash I couldn't fit all the liquor I'd need in the kettle.  The solution was simple, holding back some water until after the mash, then adding it back before the start of the boil.

I do my brewing on the stove-top, placing the kettle across two burners, which together provide enough heat for a moderately vigorous boil, as you can see in the following video:

I removed a small sample of wort at the start of the boil, and then roughly every 40-50 minutes afterwards.  As you can see from this picture, the change in colour over the course of the whole boil was quite striking.  The turbidity of the final sample (hops and protein) doesn't do full justice to its dark colour:



I fermented the beer using a kolsch strain (Wyeast 2565).  I'm also planning to add a small pitch of brettanomyces for a slow secondary fermentation, probably the Wyeast Clausenii strain.  Contemporary wisdom has it that brettanomyces doesn't really have a place in bière de garde.  Here's Gordon Strong on the topic in his new book:

[Bière de garde] is a widely misunderstood outside of France because of the condition of their exported beers. The style doesn't have a musty, cellar-like quality; that is something that comes from dried-out corks used in old bottles.  Some imported examples were fruity due to oxidation.

This is almost certainly right when it comes to contemporary versions of the style, but if it really does have its roots in French farmhouse brewing, a secondary fermentation by brettanomyces doesn't seem completely out of place in a beer intended for a long-term storage.  If nothing else, it will help to dry things out, and perhaps add some interesting complexity.  Since I'm not planning to enter this in any competitions, I don't care if its considered 'to style'.  I might even add a light dry-hop, or just use the whole batch for blending...

My First Kegged Beers

Its taken me a while to get a kegging system, mainly because I don't have the space or the money for the kind of multi-keg setup I'd like.  But after my trip home this summer I decided it was time to look into something basic, if only so that I could brew the kind of fast, low-ABV beers I missed from home without the hassle of bottle-conditioning.  I already had a very small fridge that I'd picked up for cheap from a graduating student---barely enough for one three gallon keg and a five pound CO2 tank, but I had to start somewhere!

I actually bought this fridge over a year ago, and it was only when I noticed the relatively cheap prices for new three gallon kegs at RiteBrew that I finally decided to put it to use.  I bought two kegs, even though I knew I could only fit one in the fridge.  My idea was to prime most beers with sugar, allowing one keg to condition at room temperature while the other served beer from the fridge.

This has worked well so far, and is even easier now that I've built a basic spunding valve to regulate the pressure in the keg.  It also fits with one of my ambitions with these kegs, which is to come as close as I can to something like cask-conditioned beers from back home.  I took my lead here from Terry Foster's advice in his book Pale Ale:

An argument against the use of kegs is that you have to push the beer through the serving line and tap by carbon dioxide pressure.  This might be all right if you are operating at CO2 levels of 2.0 or above, but it is not so good if you want a less gassy beer... There is a very simple way round this that I use.  When I fill the keg, I set the regulator to around  5 pounds per square inch and let the beer equilibrate over a few days.  I draw off a pint or two, set the regulator to 10 pounds per square inch, open the valve, allow the pressure to balance, and then turn off the valve.  The valve is opened only when the flow of beer slows while serving, and it remains open for just a few minutes.  In that way, the pressure in the keg always remains close to 5 pounds per square inch and the beer is perfect, no gassier than real ale served from cask by a beer engine.

So far I've found that I don't need to close the valve: setting the regulator to around 5 lbs per square inch is enough to serve most of the keg, and I can just turn it up for a minute if the flow stops entirely.

The results so far are still a way from cask-conditioned beer, though certainly closer than anything I managed with bottles.  For one thing, the serving temperature is too cold---I've bought the parts to build a temperature-regulator for the fridge, but I need to borrow some tools from a friend to do the wiring, and haven't got round to it yet.  Another problem---obvious in the pictures below---is that all of the beers I've brewed so far have chill-haze, meaning they are not at all bright.  I suspect this is a result of my BIAB process, combined with the shorter conditioning time.

Below are descriptions and photos of the first three beers I served from the keg: all dry and bitter, with a low-ABV.  I expect I'll mostly be brewing beers along these lines, sticking to bottle-conditioning for my saisons and sours, but serving almost everything else I brew (almost all of which is what people call 'session beer') directly from the keg.  In fact, I have a kolsch lagering in the fridge right now while I take a few weeks off booze.

One thing I'm particularly looking forward to is brewing some beers with American hops, something I haven't done for quite a while!  I gave up on making IPAs and pale ales early on, once I realised that it would be impossible to make really excellent versions until I could minimise the amount of oxygen the beer was exposed to.  To solve this, I picked up a cheap second-hand five gallon keg, and my plan is to use this as a primary fermentor for hoppy beers (another use for the spunding valve), transferring them directly to a serving keg (with dry-hops) with CO2.  I found this post from Ales of the Riverwards very helpful here.  But more on that in a month or two.

Bitter

Grist: Golden Promise (97%), Medium Crystal (3%)

Hops: EKG, Styrian Goldings

Yeast: Wyeast 1318

O.G.: 1.044

IBUs: 45

ABV: 4.4%

A standard recipe here, going for a lighter-coloured bitter without too much crystal malt character, nice and dry, with a moreish hop bite at the back end.  Most of the bitters I brew look something like this, though sometimes with slightly more crystal malt, and sometimes with a darker crystal malt.  Besides the bittering charge, this one had an addition of EKG at 20 minutes, and some Styrian Goldings at flameout.  In my experience, Wyeast 1318 tends to mute the hop character a bit, unless your dry-hop, so the end result was a sort soft hoppiness that blended well with the slightly fruity character of the yeast.  Very drinkable: this was my first beer in the keg, and it was a bit of a shock how quickly I finished it!

Dry Stout

Grist: Golden Promise (69%), Flaked Wheat (17.2%), Roasted Barley (6.9%), Chocolate Malt (4.%), Dark Crystal (2.8%)

Hops: Northdown, Challenger

Yeast: Wyeast 1318

O.G.: 1.044

IBUs: 39.5

ABV: 4.2%

What's not to like about dry stouts?  Bitter, roasty, and with a low ABV to boot.  I think I'll be making them a lot more frequently now that I have a keg.  I've been trying to come up with something a bit different from the standard home-brewer Guinness clone: something with a bit more hop character, bearing more than a passing resemblance to De La Senne's Stouterik.  The bitterness was nice in this one, balancing well with the fuller mouthfeel from the wheat, but I would have liked a bit more roast and/or chocolate.  Next time I might try pulverising the roasted barley and adding it post-mash, or perhaps backing down on the roaster barley adding more chocolate malt.  

One of my plans for this year is to try souring a batch of this recipe with the Omega Yeast lactobacillus blend.  My thought is that I could split this into small jugs, and then add it to regular batches to give a little lactic bite, either blending it in the keg and relying on the hops to keep the lactobacillus at bay, or maybe even adding it to the kettle for the last 15 minutes of the boil.  Watch this space.

Pale Bitter

Grist: Golden Promise (92.6%), Torrified Wheat (7.4%)

Hops: EKG

Yeast: Wyeast 1318

O.G.: 1.038

IBUs: 37.6

ABV: 3.7%

Here I was going for a pale beer, along the lines of the historical Boddington's Ordinary Bitter, or its modern counterparts like Marble Manchester Bitter.   Its supposed to be where Wyeast 1318 came from, after all! The original Boddingtons was reputedly intensely bitter, but I've also read that it didn't have much in the way of hop character.  With this in mind I decided to keep all my kettle additions before the final 30 minutes of the boil.  I did add a very light dry-hop to the keg though, giving it a delicate citrus aroma.  

I liked this beer A LOT, but I'm sure I'll tinker with the recipe a bit in future, perhaps trying a blend of different base malts.  To finish, here's a picture that gives a better sense of the colour of this beer (and also shows you where I write these posts!):

Spelt Saisons

Since the end of the summer, I've made a series of spelt saisons, each with a different combination of saccharomyces strains, and each intended for a different treatment post-fermentation.  I've written here before about the fact that I like to keep unmalted grains around for both baking and brewing.  Pictured below is the lunch I ate while writing this post mid-brewday: the bread was based on a recipe from Chad Robertson's Tartine Book No. 3 for a loaf that included spelt flour and sprouted spelt grains (see here for the process).  The beer was an earlier attempt at a bitter spelt saison.

Speaking of the Tartine book, I made one change to my process this time round, based on some of the techniques used in baking.  Robertson includes a number of recipes for breads that include a sort of adjunct porridge, much like the kind we make when we do a cereal mash, and he mentions in passing that this can be made in advance and kept in the fridge until needed.  Copying this, I've started doing my cereal mashes a day or two before brew day.  As well as saving me some time on the day itself, this means that the porridge is already made by the time I start my step-mashes, which means that the spelt is in the mash for the protein rest at 131°F, whereas before I added the porridge after this step to bring the mash up to saccharification temperatures.  I'm hoping that including the spelt at this earlier stage will lead to an improvement in head retention.

Each recipe was basically the same: a 70/30 split of base malt and unmalted spelt, with the majority of the base malt being pilsner, in some cases supplemented by 5-10% of either Golden Promise or Vienna to see if I noticed and liked the differences these made.  Each beer came in with an O.G. somewhere between 1.042 and 1.044, and each was hopped quite aggressively to around 38 IBUs, although since I used EKG in all cases but one the bitterness should be a bit softer than the numbers might suggest.

This is actually one of the things I'm looking to test here.  My original idea was to dial-in a recipe for a bitter, hoppy saison, with the spelt providing some of the additional mouthfeel needed to balance and round out the bite from the hops.  But some of these beers will be sitting for quite a while before I can package them (simply because I'm running out of heavy bottles, and have a quite a few batches I'd like to condition to 3+ volumes), so I expect that bitterness to soften a bit with age.  I'm inclined to think, without any real evidence I suppose, that the the tannins provided by large doses of low AA hops help beers age gracefully.  I certainly think it provides a different quality of bitterness to small doses of high AA hops.

I'm planning to blend two of these beers with a small amount of pale sour left over from this Autumn's blending session, and I also backed down a little bit, but not by much, on the bitterness of these beers.  Brewing lore has it that sourness and bitterness shouldn't mix, but I have to say I'm not convinced of that: some lambics seem to me to be characterized by a sort of earthy bitterness, as are some well-regarded saisons like BFM √225.  I suspect its more a matter of the character of the bitterness, and the way it balances with any acidity.  

I've included descriptions of the various beers, along with their post-fermentation treatments, in a list below.  Some will be dry-hopped, some are under-going a secondary fermentation by various brettanomyces blends, and it will be some of these beers that I go on to blend with a pale sour for a bit of acidity.  One batch, which was fermented by a blend of Wyeast 3726 and a saccharomyces strain that a fellow brewer isolated from a bottle of Hill Farmstead, has been turned into a sort of small solera, which I may keep going for a few pulls if I like the results.

Spelt Saison 1: Clean

Yeast Strain(s):  Yeast Bay Saison Blend II
Grist: Pilsner, Vienna, Unmalted Spelt.
Hops: EKG
Post-fermentation treatment: This beer will be kept 'clean', besides anything it picks up from my saison equipment.  When I transferred it to secondary I noticed that the gravity was still relatively high, at 1.010, even though most of the yeast had dropped out of suspension.  In an effort to bring it down a few more points, I added some of the still-fermenting wort from Spelt Saison 4, hoping that the saccharomyces strains from that fermentation would attenuate it further.

Spelt Saison 2: Brettanomyces and Dry-Hops

Yeast Strain(s): Wyeast 3726
Grist: Pilsner, Unmalted Spelt
Hops: EKG
Post-fermentation treatment: Wyeast Brett C added to secondary.  Once secondary fermentation is complete, this will probably get a light dry-hop with Styrian Goldings before packaging.

Spelt Saison 3: Brettanomyces and Coupage

Yeast Strain(s): Wyeast 3726
Grist: Pilsner, Golden Promise, Unmalted Spelt
Hops: EKG
Post-fermentation treatment: Yeast Bay Lochristi Blend added to secondary. Once secondary fermentation is complete, this beer will be blended with a small amount of sour beer leftover from the blending session from my pale soleras.  Compare with Spelt Saison 4 below.

Spelt Saison 4: Brettanomyces and Coupage

Yeast Strain(s): Wyeast 3724, Wyeast 3726
Grist: Pilsner, Vienna, Unmalted Spelt
Hops: Crystal
Post-fermentation treatment: Yeast Bay Beersel Blend added to secondary.  Once secondary fermentation is complete, this beer will be blended with a small amount of sour beer leftover from the blending session from my pale soleras.  Compare with Spelt Saison 3 above.

Spelt Saison 5: Solera and Dry-Hop

Yeast Strain(s): Wyeast 3726, HF isolate
Grist: Pilsner, Vienna, Unmalted Spelt
Hops: EKG
Post-fermentation treatment: Blended with two gallons of aged-hop saison.  This was a beer I brewed about twelve months ago.  The original was four gallons of saison cut with one gallon of mixed-fermentation pale sour.  I racked three gallons of the old beer onto about 15g of Crystal dry-hops, and then racked this batch onto the remaining two gallons of aged beer.  In a few months I'll either take off another three gallons for dry-hopping, and add a further three gallons back, or simply dry-hop and package the whole five gallons.