The solera project is about to turn one year old. Before I can package the first year’s beer, I need get year two’s refill ready to go in.

I’ll be brewing two batches to get enough volume for this year. I expect to need about six gallons to refill the barrel and the rest will age in a keg that I’ll use to keep the barrel topped up. I think I’ll get enough extra in the keg for about two years of top ups.

Last year, top ups were the most error prone and annoying part of the barrel aging process. Each time I topped up the barrel, I had to rack the top up beer into smaller and smaller vessels to avoid leaving excessive headspace. In the end I wasted a lot of the top up beer, and the top up beer that remained at the end of the year didn’t taste great.

Storing the top up beer in a keg and topping up the barrel with a picnic tap should be a much nicer way to keep the barrel full. I’ll never have to rack the top up beer around again, and it’ll always be protected from oxygen.

In another process change from last year, I’ve moved the barrel. It was a pain to try to air condition the closet my sour beers were in last year. There is no cooling in the new closet, but last summer I measured that the temps were quite stable and never got above ~75*. That’s a bit on the warm side but I think it’ll be ok.

Recipe

Pretty similar to last year. Notable changes:

• Weyermann Pils instead of US 2-Row
• Added the 27% Vienna from the original recipe that I accidentally forgot last year

Batch size:      6 gallons
Target OG:       1.060
Target FG:       1.005
Calculated IBU:  13.5
Calculated SRM:  15.6

Grain bill:
3.5 lb Pils             (27%)
3.5 lb Vienna           (27%)
3.5 lb Munich           (27%)
1.0 lb White Wheat Malt (7.6%)
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:
ECY20 BugCounty
Decanted 3L starter split evenly between the two batches

Both batches were fermented at roughly 66 °F ambient temp.

Notes

2021-01-02 - Double brew day. First mash 158, second mash 157

Pre-boil gravity on first batch 1.056. Expecting OG around 1.064. Target was 1.060 First batch chilled. OG 1.062. Second batch OG 1.058 after adding a little extra water toward the end of the boil.

Mixed the two together to get two ~5.5 gal batches at ~1.060

Had some extra volume so I split off two 1 gal test batches. One got ECY46, the other some old Imperial Dry Hop. One or both of those will be aged with some bottle dregs depending how they taste after primary.

2021-01-10 - Transferred from primary to the barrel. About 4 gal went to a keg for future barrel top ups.

2021-01-24 - Both 1 gal batches got some bootleg biology funk weapon 2 dregs. I’ll probably use them for blending with overly sour beers in the future.

2021-04-10 - Topped up the barrel from the keg. Topping up from the keg is great. I’m never topping up barrels without a keg again.

2021-07-15 - Topped up the barrel from the keg. Snuck a little sample from the barrel, still tasting great!

The top up beer isn’t tasting so good. It’s not gross but definitely sub-par. Not sure what’s going on there. Same wort, same ECY20 pitch, same temperature. I think I’ll dump the rest of the top-up keg and re-brew for year three.

2021-10-10 - Topped up again. Sampled the keg and decided not to use it. Still not tasting nice. Topped up from a 1 gal batch of the same base beer that was aging with just brett (BB Funk Weapon 2). Took about half a gallon. Bottled the rest of the brett beer.

2022-01-22 - Barrel pull day! This year I made three variations:

• 3 gallons straight from the barrel
• 2 gal barrel + 1 gal old ale w/brett will get 2.25lb frozen/thawed black currants
• 2 gal barrel + 1 gal non-sour red ale w/brett will get 2.5lb frozen/thawed montmorency cherries + flesh and pits of another 2lb with most of the juice drained.

The cherries are getting kinda old. Would like to use them up. I’m hoping draining the juice from some will cut the sourness a bit but still give some flavor. Giving this the whole 4.5lb cherries would be too sour.

Both fruited versions also got 2/3 oz oak cubes boiled 1 min + a couple oz of whiskey (enough to cover the cubes)

I’m blending in other beers with the fruit versions to reduce the sourness a bit. Straight from the barrel, the sourness of the solera beer is right where I want it already. Add sour fruit and it’d be too much. If these blends still come out too sour, I have a couple other blending options I could experiment with before bottling.

I split a packet of rehydrated EC-1118 between the two fruit beers and the bottling bucket of the plain beer. Primed the plain beer with 3.5oz sucrose, targeting 2.5 vol CO2.

2022-05-21 - Bottled the currant portion. The blend is tasting pretty nice. I prefer it to plain beer straight from the barrel. I gave about an extra 0.5 gal of a plain tart red all to cut the currants a bit, but the original sour + funky old ale blend was close to what I wanted.

Will bottle the cherry half soon.

Straight barrel beer carbonation is pretty nice. Flavor is similar to last year, but maybe not quite as good. Maybe the new mix of microbes that I added this year will help.

Will do a side by side between the two years some time.

2022-06-05 - Dumping the cherry portion. RIP. It isn’t awful but it’s quite meh. Disappointing, but I’m trying to get a little more picky about what I bottle. I’ve built up a pretty decent collection of “not terrible, not great” sours that I’m just not drinking.

2022-07-08 - Trying a currant bottle. Barely any carbonation. That’s annoying. Won’t try again til September I think.

Taste is pretty good. Very currant-y, not too sour. Maybe a little too much oak. I’ll hold off on judgment until I see what it’s like when carbonated.