My last post, damn near a year ago (2020 has been weird, okay?), I was planning on fruiting a sour. However a few bouts of vertigo, my kitchen remodel and makeup college classes derailed anything fun. So, I’m back and I’m apparently starting a barrel program. I bought my second barrel for aging stouts and I started a less technical, more seat of the pants souring project.
Thanks to Home Brew Ohio for selling me this lovely barrel. I thought it would be an emptied Balcones barrel but this one may be virgin charred oak, as I couldn’t smell any spirits in it and was bone dry. But that is a post for another day.
I had a conversation with John at Sound Homebrew in Georgetown, and told him that I think I had a stalled or infected fermentation on my pilsner I had made recently. I also had a barrel that was neutral and probably filled with all sorts of bugs (microbes, not the ones you can get at T Mobile Field with ranch and barbecue flavor) and he handed me some saison yeast that was past it’s prime and then suggested I toss the pilsner in with the yeast into the Barrel of Mystery. So I did.
Okay, so the barrel had bugs in it. Usually, a brew master would innoculate a used barrel with specific strains of brett for a saison or lactobacilus and brett or pediococcus (sounds like something that would infect my foot), but I’m not a brew master. So I rammed a garden hose into the bung and sprayed it out.
So now it sits in month four, doing something. Not sure what though.
Ethanol Work 