Earlier in the year North County San Diego’s homebrew club Society Of Barley Engineers (SBE) celebrated 20 years of homebrewing with a special anniversary meeting full of great stories and great beers. Current President and Co-founder Andy Gamelin brewed up a special beer for the occasion, a beer he called “barley champagne,” a high alcohol, light-in-color beer that was carbonated to Champagne-like levels. Along with the anniversary ale were several versions of the club’s lambic-style ale brewed the previous year.
Although no one in the club can quite remember exactly when it started, SBE starting making lambic-style sour beer beer as a group – either fermenting the beer on their own, or filling 50-gallon food-grade plastic barrels – around 15 years ago. Bill Sobieski, who is currently working on opening Hoparazzi Brewing in Anaheim this year, was one of the brewers who spearheaded the sessions. When the Southern California Homebrewers Festival rolled around each year, SBE would tap several sour ales at the club’s bar, including all kinds of fruited variations on the base beer. When the festival moved to its current location in Ojai, California, SBE stopped attending the festival with their bar and the group brewing sessions were no longer held.
But, in June of last year, Gamelin arranged for a brewing session at his house in Vista. Club members simply had to bring their brewing system to the house and set up in the driveway. Carbon-filtered Vista tap water, grain, and aged hops were provided for the brewers by the club. Batch sizes ranged from 5 to 12 gallons, with brewers mashing in one to three times during the day. The grain bill for the lambic-style ale was 70% premium 2-row pale ale malt, 21% white wheat malt, and 9% flaked wheat. Aged hops were added at the start of the 60 minute boil, although some members boiled longer, to provide a few IBUs and impart their preservation properties. The target mash temperature for the single infusion mash was 153°F, but there was some variation between brewers that wouldn’t matter in the end when all of the wort was blended in the fermentors. Although it wasn’t a traditional lambic recipe or process, this system made it easy for all-grain brewers to produce a maximum amount of wort in a minimal amount of time.
Fermentation went well and the beer was sampled after a few months and found to be heading in the right direction with its flavor profile. In November members of the club gathered back at Gamelin’s house with their kegs or carboys to get fills from the barrel. Some members added oak to secondary fermentation while others added fruit or just left it alone for more conditioning. We were all surprised at how well the beer tasted for being so young; normally, a year or longer is needed for the wild yeast and bacteria to produce the desired flavor profile and to clean up any off flavors produced during fermentation. With a successful result, another brew day was planned for 2014.
On April 26, a few dozen SBE members gathered again in Vista for another day of brewing and sharing beer. Nearly half a dozen brewing systems were set up, with big variations in size and equipment. Mashing was conducted in coolers, direct fired mash tuns, and even “brew-in-a-bag” style in the boil kettle. Brewers were able to wander around, check out the various systems, borrow a piece of equipment when needed, and pick each other’s brains about brewing philosophy and techniques.
Gamelin had several beers pouring from his gigantic 14-keg chest freezer, including last year’s lambic-style beer, a gueuze (a blend of 1, 2, and 3-year old sour ale), a Belgian golden ale with Brettanomyces, and a kriek. For inspiration, some authentic lambic and gueuze from Cantillon was opened, including a bottle of 1996 Rose de Gambrinus and 2012 Classic Gueuze. The dregs of each were added the barrels, mixing with the bacteria and yeast already prepared. A combination of Brettanomyces claussenii, Brettanomyces bruxellensis, Brettanomyces lambicus, Roselare (a mix of strains from Wyeast), yeast from the better of last year’s barrels, and other mixes of yeast and bacteria propagated from commercial lambic and farmhouse ales were used for fermentation. After brewing up 110 gallons of wort, the brew day was concluded and the waiting period begins. If all goes well, attendees of the 2015 National Homebrewers Conference in San Diego will have the opportunity to taste the results.