Hi all, hopefully this is the right place to ask...
I've been brewing now for just over 2 years - I'm sure I've seen many of you about the forum in that time...
To date it's been mainly IPAs, bitters, porters and lagers - I do 10L batches and bottle all my beers, no kegs. But I'm interested in expanding my repertoire and experimenting a bit more. But where do I start?
- I've recently made my first kettle sour - I've had a few sour craft beers, I like them and this is something I'd like to do more of.
- I've also tried a few Belgian beers recently which have opened my eyes to wider possibilities of brewing with brettanomyces (e.g. Orval) and sour beers (e.g. Rodenbach Grand Cru).
N.B.
I have no expectation at all to try to clone these Belgian beers! More just to take them as inspiration to go a bit further off piste, experiment and see what happens.
So where to start?
- Is it simply a case of trawling through Milk the Funk?
- James Spencer of Basic Brewing recently made a Golden Ale spiked at bottling with Brett. Could that be an area worth exploring?
- I'm interested in biotransformation of hops - in his book, Josh Weikert points to some Brett strains (among others) as having such properties. Could brett work with more hop forward beers?
- Historically I believe Porters were aged in barrels which we now know contained brettanomyces (or was it lactobacillus? It's been a couple of months since I was reading about it!). Is it worth trying this with my existing porter recipes for example?
- What else to try with regard to sour beers?
Any suggestions would be welcome - I'm in no hurry, if nothing else the last 2 years have taught me to be patient! (Which is just as well if what I've read about aging with brett is anything to go by!)
Cheers,
Matt