Festival Belgian Dubbel 'Kriek'

[achaddy]

So I am a fan of the Belgian brown kriek beers such as Kasteel Rouge, Petrus Aged Red or Bacchus Kriek.
These are all based on a Belgian brown beer aged with cherries. So I thought I would attempt to make my own using the Festival Belgian Dubbel kit, with the addition of Cherry Puree, added during the fermenting process.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out but I am hoping it will be somewhere in the region of the real thing. Fingers crossed!
I also substituted the 500gms of supplied dextrose with 500gms of Muntons Dark spray malt to attempt to make the best possible outcome. Probaly shouldn't have and concentrated on just seeing if I can make this work.

So far I have made the brew to the instructed 18ltrs. Today was day 5 so I have added dry hops as per instructions and 2KG of the Funkin Morello Cherry puree. This has added aprox 2 Ltrs as you might expect. The ingredients of the puree states that 10% is added sugar and 90% is fruit.
The starting SG was 1.065, before adding the puree it was at 1.017. After adding it went back up to 1.025.
I have the FV in a brew fridge and for 2 days the Wort temp was 22deg but I lowered it down to 20 as I thought this may be a little too high. (First time i have used the brew fridge).

I am now thinking that about another week to get to FG and then cold crash for a couple of days before bottling.

Any thoughts or advice happily received. I am quite new to brewing and only done kits so far.

 

[achaddy]

So I am now at day 8 of the brew and it appears it may have stopped. PILL is reading a steady SG of 1.012 for the last 24hrs. The kit instructions suggest the FG should be in the region of 1.006. However, I have added fruit puree so would this affect the expected FG level?
The Wort Temp has been reading a reasonably constant 20.5C so I have upped the temp of the fermentation Chamber by 2.0C to just see if I can squeeze the last bit of fermentation out of the yeast.
If not then I will lower the temp right down with a view to bottle over the weekend.
Or alternatively, leave it another week?

 

[clib]

The beers you are seeking to mimic are all mixed fermentation and probably all contain some form of sugar too. So using some sugar wouldn't be wrong, and using just the kit yeast won't achieve the sourness and complexity of a Petrus or Bacchus. You are not in a position to do that now but you should still get a nice beer. You could still add some sugar. You could maybe get a bottle of two of Orval, drink them and add the last inch of the bottle to your beer and leave it a month. That would add the Orval Brettanomyces which would work on the remaining sugars in the beer and provide additional flavours and a hint of sourness which would increase over time. What I've done a few times is split a beef after primary fermentation, bottled half or more, and added Brett to the rest in a smaller FV for a month before bottling that.

But no harm in just bottling what you've got.

 

[achaddy]

The beers you are seeking to mimic are all mixed fermentation and probably all contain some form of sugar too. So using some sugar wouldn't be wrong, and using just the kit yeast won't achieve the sourness and complexity of a Petrus or Bacchus. You are not in a position to do that now but you should still get a nice beer. You could still add some sugar. You could maybe get a bottle of two of Orval, drink them and add the last inch of the bottle to your beer and leave it a month. That would add the Orval Brettanomyces which would work on the remaining sugars in the beer and provide additional flavours and a hint of sourness which would increase over time. What I've done a few times is split a beef after primary fermentation, bottled half or more, and added Brett to the rest in a smaller FV for a month before bottling that.

But no harm in just bottling what you've got.

Thanks for your input.
I hadn't considered the sour element to the fermentation to be honest and assumed that would come with the cherries being on the sharp side. However, the suggestion of adding the yeast sidiment from a couple of Orval is an interesting idea. Been a while since I have had one but do remember them being quite sour. I even have a Orval glass in my collection for when I used to be able to get Belgian Beer direct from Belgian at a low price.
I guess on this occasion I will just bottle what I have as it would be nice to have them ready for xmas.
If I was to approach this again, what sort of yeast should I be looking at? And I am guessing plan for a much longer fermentation period.

 

[clib]

It's a complex area and one I've read about a lot but have limited experience with, brewing wise. Fermentation with bacteria is tricky and unpredictable. And beers soured with bacteria are often blended with fresh beer to produce beers that have different degrees of sourness.

It's not something I'm inclined to invest the time and effort into. I only drink these beers occasionally.

But I do like the effects of Brett yeasts and I've made several beers with Brett Bruxellensis and Brett Claussenii. Orval uses Brett B.

Doing this is really easy and produces good and predictable results. To date I've only added Brett after primary fermentation with a regular saccharomyces yeast. But you can co-pitch from the start, and you can ferment with just Brett.

When you add Brett to secondary, as is the case with Orval, the beer changes significantly over time. Young bottles display the fruitiness that the Brett produces, but over time the beer becomes more sour. It's an interesting journey to taste bottles at regular intervals over a year or two.

If you just want to add some sourness to your beer you could simply add a little lactic acid, which is sold by homebrew retailers. Another simple solution is Philly Sour yeast, which ferments like a regular sacch yeast but produces lactic acid. I made a raspberry sour with it which turned out well, but it's not like a beer soured with bacteria over a long period.

A mate of mine made a beer with the Roeselare blend which is from Rodenbach. His beer became super sour. Rodenbach blends sour beer with fresh beer in different proportions. That's the correct way to make the kind of beer you seem to be after. If you blend fresh and sour beer the blend will gradually become more sour unless the kill the yeast and bacteria, which Rodenbach must do, presumably by pasteurization before packaging. Or by using a chemical like sodium metabisulphite.

Just adding cherries to the Dubbel kit is a good start and I'm sure will produce a nice beer.

This is an interesting read...

https://www.sourbeerblog.com/understanding-brewing-blending-lambic-style-kriek/

 

[achaddy]

So I bottled this yesterday and not sure it is working out as I would have hoped. This was supposed to be an 18ltr brew but I only ended up with 15ltrs. Lost a lot to the trub. I did expect to have a bigger trub but more than I expected.
When tasting I didn’t get any cherry notes, although it does have a sharp edge. The hops are very forward currently which is probably masking a lot of the other flavours. May be because it was on the hops for an extra week than expected.
Guess just need to give it time in the bottle now to see how it develops.

 

[Graz]

If nothing else you selected a good starting point, I made that Festival Belgian Dubbel a few years back and it was lovely. Best Belgian style beer I've brewed.

 

[achaddy]

If nothing else you selected a good starting point, I made that Festival Belgian Dubbel a few years back and it was lovely. Best Belgian style beer I've brewed.

Let’s hope I haven’t ruined it then. If anything I have made this £20 more expensive to produce. But I guess it’s good to learn these things.