After about six months my lambic is progressing nicely. Below is a pic of the pellicle becoming quite pronounced. I dare sneak a taste at this point as I’m told you never want to disturb the pellicle.
Here is a good example of why it is good to use a secondary fermentor. This is my Saison Ete and I was a bit worried about the cloudiness when going into the secondary. You can see how it goes from a very light butter color to nice clear beer. Yes, this is the same beer after about a month in the secondary. I’ll probably bottle in a week or two depending on my schedule. And yes, that is a 78 F temp on the carboy. Ok for a saison, but I’ve got definate fermentation temperature issues in my current apartment.
Here’s a few pics of what I discussed in my last post. This is the Saison Ete, after 11 days in the primary it is just now starting to clear a bit, you can the beer getting darker toward the top:
Here a few pics of the top forming trub. Much has dropped and settled to the bottom but there is still much at the top:
Very bizarre happenings with my two saisons still in the primary. The Saison Ete is more of a tradional saison and the Saison d’Hiver is a big chocolaty saison. Both are using the White Labs WLP565 with a starter. The first week, I had blowoff tubes setup for both and the d’Hiver was fermenting away nicely with vigorous trub rolling about in the carboy and the blowoff bubbling away every few seconds in the pot of sanitized solution. The Ete was fermenting as well, but not nearly as much and only bubbled every few minutes. After about a week, I replaced the blowoff tubes with airlocks and since then the Ete has taken off and bubbles every second or so while the d’Hiver has calmed down and bubbles every minute or so.
Similarities: same yeast, same starter, same pitching temp, same fermentation temp (a high 78-80 F)
Differences: I forgot to put Irish moss in the Ete, so the clumps of yeast/trub are much smaller. It’s harder to see the whirling about in the Ete as it is much lighter but it was not as vigorous as the d’Hiver. Now, a week later, there is still a good amount of CO2 bubbles forming and the airlock is just bubbling away. The d’Hiver is much darker, a bit more malt and I used a bunch of Irish moss, about 2 tblspns. There was a massive collection of trub on top of the beer. I agitated the carboy a bit and a good portion sank to the bottom, but there are still a few clumps that keep floating.
Weird. I know that the Irish moss is definitely coagulating the d’Hiver trub/yeast more, but no explanations for Ete taking a week to take off. Interesting stuff.