This is the recipe for my Flanders Red solera project as brewed in late 2019.

It’s a slightly Americanized take on the style, based on the “Wine Barrel Flemish Red” from American Sour Beers. I may change it a bit over the years as I see how the beer develops. I’ll link to any new posts related to this recipe in the notes.

Recipe

I changed a couple of things from the original.

• US 2-Row instead of pilsner. It seems I’m subbing out pilsner a lot these days. I might finally be needing it enough to stock bulk pilsner at home next to the bulk 2-row. In any case, I’m sure the 2-row will be fine here.
• I dropped the 27% Vienna from the original recipe and replaced it with 2-row. I couldn’t tell you why I did that. No mention of it in my notes. Seems like a strange substitution. I will probably include the vienna when I make this again.

Batch size:      6 gallons
Target OG:       1.062
Target FG:       1.006
Calculated IBU:  13.5
Calculated SRM:  15.6

Grain bill:
7.0 lb US 2-Row         (53.8%)
3.5 lb Munich           (26.9%)
1.0 lb White Wheat Malt (7.7%)
0.5 lb Crystal 40       (3.8%)
0.5 lb Caramunich       (3.8%)
0.5 lb Special B        (3.8%)

Mash (Batch Sparge): 157 °F @ 1.4 qts/lb

Hops:
1.0 oz Hallertauer Mittelfrueh @ 60 minutes

Yeast:
Small ~1L starter of ECY01 BugFarm, ECY20 BugCounty, or other interesting bugs.
(For my first solera fill I combined two batches of ECY20 and one of ECY01)

All batches were fermented at 65 °F ambient temp.

Notes

2019-12-29 - First brew. OG 1.066. Pitched Bootleg Summer Soelra 2019.

2019-12-30 - Double brew day. OG 1.063 on each. One got ECY01 and the other ECY20.

2020-01-17 - Discovered the batch with the Bootleg blend was not properly sealed. It tastes fine, but I don’t want to risk adding it to such a long running project. I’m going to age this on its own and brew a fourth batch for the solera.

2020-01-19 - Brewed batch four. OG 1.064. Fermenting on the yeast cake of the previous ECY20 batch, which I racked to a PET carboy.

2020-02-10 - Transferred the three ECY beers to the barrel. Ended up with about 2.5 gallons extra which I moved to a 3G better bottle. I didn’t have anything to top it up with but I added 5oz dme in a couple cups of water to get some CO2 production going and hopefully avoid issues with the head space. Gravity in the barrel is 1.012

2020-02-24 - The stand alone Bootleg batch has had a flurry of activity recently. After a couple weeks of very slow activity, it started fermenting vigorously enough that I’ve had to clean out the air lock a few times. Nothing like that is happening with the barrel.

2020-03-04 - Added Sapwood Elliptical Orbit dregs to the barrel. It’s still bubbling regularly but slower than when I originally filled it.

2020-04-04 - Topped up the barrel with about 3/4 gallons of the beer leftover from the original barrel fill. The top-up beer is down to 1.009. I didn’t take an acutal reading from the barrel, d’oh.

2020-05-18 - The barrel isn’t bubbling much these days. Getting tempted to take a sample. Maybe in June.

2020-06-10 - First barrel sample! Gravity is down to 1.005. Sourness is low to moderate. It has a ways to go still but it’s tasting pretty nice! Let’s keep the good flavors coming.

Vanilla/oak notes are at a pleasant background level, nothing overpowering. That’s good. I wasn’t sure how much oaky punch was left in the barrel. I figured there was a chance the first year’s beer would be too oaky and only good for blending.

Topped up the barrel to the bung. Took about half of the 64oz growler of top up beer that I filled back in april. Discarded the rest.

Interestingly, the top up beer tastes completely different from the barrel. Practically no sourness, a bit more brett funk, but overall just kind of boring. It tastes just like I remember from april. Bit of a mystery.

2020-10-10 - Topped up the barrel. It took a little more than half a gallon. Gravity steady at 1.005. Still tasting good! A little more sour than last taste I think. Overall very promising. Next update will be Feb 2021 when I take the first pull from the barrel!

2021-01-10 - First barrel pull! Slightly earlier than planned but this fit my schedule best. The beer is a little more than a year old with 11 months spent in the barrel.

Wow, this tastes great! I’m very excited for the finished product. Sourness is at a moderate level, same with funkiness, very drinkable. There is a lot of barrel character now, both in the smell and taste. The oak/whiskey flavors are prominent but come across very soft and vanilla-ey, not unpleasant at all. I’ve made a few harshly over-oaked stouts/barleywines in my day, so it’s a pleasant surprise to get this much oak character and have it taste so good.

I took a small sample yesterday so I could think about what I wanted to do with this pull. Mostly I wanted to decide if I’d add any fruit. I decided to do a split, some straight from the barrel, some will get sour cherries before bottling.

3 gallons bottled straight. Primed to 2.4 vols using Tonsmeire’s barrel aged beer/blend spreadsheet. Got 31 12 oz bottles.

2.5 gallons went to a 3 gal carboy with 2.5 lbs local sour cherries (with pits) that I picked last summer and stored in the freezer. I also added 4oz dried sour cherries that I had soaked in 4oz bourbon. My goal is to get a profile similar to Sapwood’s Opulence. That beer was high in wood/bourbon character and it played really well with the cherries. I think think the prominent oak character in my base beer will be ideal for emulating that. I’ll bottle the cherry portion in 6-8 weeks.

2021-03-14 - Bottled the cherry half. Time on cherries: 9 weeks. Got 26 12oz bottles and 1 750ml. The bottling leftovers taste nice. The cherry and oak work well together. A bit more sour than I remember the plain beer tasting. I’m looking forward to trying the finished products soon.

2021-05-10 - Tasting both versions of the beer side by side. Decent carbonation all around. Higher in the plain version but both good.

The plain version is very similar to when it was bottled though overall just not quite as good as I remembered. At bottling time I tasted it after the priming sugar was added. I think that little bit of sugar helped balance things. It’s still tasty though. My best sour to date. Strongly oaky but not in a harsh way. Moderate-high sourness. I’d be happy if a commercial brewery served me this.

The cherry version is quite a bit more sour. A bit too sour for my tastes. The cherries are out-competing most of the other flavors. Wish it was a bit less sour, and a bit more complex, but overall still enjoyable.

I might try half this fruiting rate if I add cherries to this project again. I tried a blend in the glass of 50% each of these two beers and it was nice. The cherries were toned down, but still present, and you could taste more of the base beer.

1lb/gal might be good in some applications where you want a really cherry forward beer but I’d be wary of how sour the beer already was before I add that much again.

[plain beer on the left, cherry on the right]