Back in November 2014 we decided to move our homebrewing to the next level and make a sour beer. This has been quietly fermenting under our stairs since then. Yes, fermenting a sour beer can take a year or more. After an initial fermentation by yeast, which makes alcohol, the remaining sugars (generally the complex ones that the yeast cannot metabolise) are consumed by bacteria which produces the sour flavours – lactic acid, some acetic acid and other byproducts that give interesting flavours.
The recipe we used was based on Rodenbach Grand Cru, so naturally the Cheshire Peaks version will be Sandbach Grand Cru. (If you don’t know where Sandbach is, follow this link).
We tasted the beer a week or two back – sure enough we have a complex sour flavour reminiscent of Rodenbach and with not too much acetic acid (vinegar) flavour. Too much oxygen during fermentation leads to excess acetic acid production which spoils the beer. I’m very pleased we managed to avoid that on our first sour brew.
This Saturday we racked and bottled one third of the beer. We also racked another third into a fermenter and added 1kg of apricot puree. The last third remains in the carboy. When the apricot version is finished and bottled we’ll rack the last third and add cherries. Voilà! Three beers from one!
The cherry beer will hopefully be reminiscent of the discontinued Rodenbach Alexander and will of course be called Sandbach Alexander. (We’re open to suggestions for the name of the apricot version!)
We’re already planning how we can re-use our bacteria for a second sour beer: probably a sour porter.
Bloomin excellent - look forward to tasting the results.
ReplyDeleteWith apologies if some (or all, lol) of these are a bit contrived/over thought, I offer the following ideas for the apricot version.
ReplyDeleteFirst on the theme of naming your beers after existing beers I did a search for apricot sour beer and found a few:
West Ashley
Which with a Cheshire theme, could become West Astbury. There is even an Ashley in Cheshire, but that's a bit close to the original!
Fou' Foune
I didn't come up with anything for this one, primarily because I spotted the meaning on the urban dictionary and decided you'd want to steer clear!
Map of the Sun
Bach of the San came immediately to mind, but my least favourite suggestion because it's nonsense!
Damascene Apricot Sour
Damascene moment - an important moment of insight, typically one that leads to a dramatic transformation of attitude or belief, which led me to...
Alternative Approach ("change of attitude" and another allusion to the fact that it came second in the process)
Having exhausted the list of beers I could find, I tried typing "apri..." into Google to see what its search patterns would come up with. Not a lot, it turns out, but if you corrupt it slightly to "apres" a few more possibilities emerge:
Apres Coup
Initially meaning afterwardsness, an element of Freudian psychoanalysis explained as "a mode of belated understanding or retroactive attribution of ... meaning to earlier events", it can I reckon be applied here, since you made it second in the process, and "coup" can also mean cup, and "apres coup" sounds like a bastardised version of "apricot"
Also, possibly, for similar homophonic reasons - apres gout (aftertaste)
Or Apres Que ("after that", since again it was the second brewing)
Hope those give you some ideas, or lead you on to better things :)
JB
Thanks for that John - lots of ideas in there!
DeleteI think I like West Astbury best because it brings in the Cheshire placename. But it doesn't tell you it has apricots in it.
Maybe we just go silly and call it Apricot juxta Mondrum!