Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Bottling Michigan Lambic Framboise

 I finally had to time to bottle my 2 gallons of Michigan Lambic that I had aging on raspberries.  In May of 2012 I brewed a Lambic and allowed it to ferment for a year.  Then in May of 2013 I put 2 gallons of it on 5lbs of wild raspberries, 2 gallons on 5 lbs sour cherries and then reserved 1 gallon for use in a gueuze blend.  5 months later it was ready to bottle the raspberry version.
After transferring onto the raspberries it fermented quietly for the next 3 months.  For the next 2 months fermentation stopped and the majority of the raspberries had fallen to the bottom of the fermenting telling me it was time to bottle.

I siphoned the beer off of the raspberries and into a sanitized keg with the required amount of sugar to insure carbonation of 3 volumes in the bottles.  The beer smelled delicious when I opened the fermenter, sour raspberries and beautiful Brett funk.  It was very easy to suck up the raspberries due to them losing all their form and turning into a mush.  It took careful siphoning to get it all out without to much gunk.

A sample confirmed that fermentation had completed and gave me a FG of 1.002.  I tasted the sample and was very pleased.  The tasted followed the aroma, fresh sour raspberries with a mild funk.  It is sour but not teeth eroding sour.  No noticeable off flavors or nasty barnyard Brett esters.

My wife used my Blichmann Bottle filler to fill the bottles and then I got to use my new corker to cork and cage the bottles.  I am hoping to sample the first one this summer with the hopes of trying new ones throughout the years to come.

I also completed a rack to hold all of my sour beer.  I still need to sand and stain but it came out nice.

Siphoning out the Framboise

Misses filling bottles for me

 Fantastic color

All bottles corked and caged

New rack full of homebrew and commercial sours.



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