Gueuze - The Making Of ...

Hmm .. after the very unexpected win for this beer, I was left wondering how in the world an experiment could have turned out this way. I suppose it was a lucky combination of having judges who were able to appreciate the style (my family hates it) and having just the right sort of bugs in that mix.

My very nasty-looking culture of "house" bugs

From the BJCP judge's comments:
Aroma - funky aroma, barnyard, goat Lacto
Appearance - pale gold, cloudy/hazy, good head
Flavor - slightly sour, low bitterness - good. Nice fruity flavours, good acidity - could be aged longer or blended with more aged lambic.
Mouthfeel - creamy, tart, good carbonation
Overall Impression - good example of style

From an aggregate of all the judge's comments, they felt that it could benefit from extended aging or blending with an older lambic (which I do not have). I totally agree with this one - compared to a commercial example like Cantillon's Gueuze Bio, I'd say it lacks a lot in the sourness department. It is sour, but nowhere as intense as Bio. Also, though it has a nice bouquet of floral and fruity notes upfront, I'd have liked a more compelling presence of funk that really characterises the style.

Anyway, on to the brewing. It's actually a blend of 2 beers (well maybe 3, depending on how you look at it), so I'll put up the recipe of each of these beers. As I didn't have access to aged hops, I used first wort hopping (FWH) to get the perception of a smoother/lower hop bitterness. Also, I used saison yeasts for much of the Saccharomyces portion - the flavours that saison yeasts throw out are too amazing not to use in a gueuze.

#1 - Belgian tripel/saison base (It's a little too high gravity for a saison)
3kg Pale Ale malt
2.5kg Pils malt
1kg Light munich
0.5kg Wheat malt
Single infusion mash at 66C for 1 hour. 

14g Pilgrim (10% AA) FWH
14g Spalt (5% AA) at 20 mins

Primary fermentation with Wyeast 3711 (French Saison)

#2 - Sour / Funky base
2.2kg Pils malt
2.5kg Wheat malt 
Single infusion mash at 68C for 1 hour

7g Hallertau mittelfruh (4.2% AA) at 30 mins

For the yeast, I first pitched a mish-mash of various sour beer dregs from a bottle of Cantillon Bio Gueuze, dregs from a previous Saison that had Orval dregs added to it in secondary, a dubious strain of Lacto which I isolated from a racking line contamination, and dregs from a bottle of Boon Gueuze. The wort was not aerated prior to pitching. As some of the bugs (eg. Lacto) slow down/are inhibited beyond a certain alcohol %, they were added prior to the main fermentation. This mix was allowed to run for a week, before I added a starter culture of WLP 568 Saison blend to it at full pitching rates. This sour beer was fermented entirely in a HDPE jerry can which John helped me buy, as I didn't want to contaminate the rest of my brewing setup.

I had no idea what the hell I was pitching into my beer (as do many sour brewers, including commercial ones). The idea is simple - taste them, and blend them to your preference. I blended mine in a 30/70 ratio of sour to tripel, because the sour was just that - sour. It had an acrid nose, with just that slight hint of floral notes. The bulk of the aroma in the final gueuze actually came from the tripel/saison, which was aged out and developed a really beautiful fruity, earthy character. And finally, Brett. bruxellensis 'Trois' was added at bottling to allow it to chew through the esters in order to develop the characteristic funk. Sadly, I only had about 2-3 months before the event for Brett to secondary, so it had less funk than I'd have liked.

 Both beers were actually remarkably clear by the time they were blended, but I suspect that a secondary fermentation kicked off and somehow it formed a haze in the end product. Not a bad thing, in any sense; I've always felt that a little haze is authentic when you are brewing a farmhouse-style ale.

Beer number 1 - crystal clear! (Colour's a little off due to the phone camera .. it's lighter than this)

A hazy sample of the blended beer midway through aging with Brett

As an aside, I was terribly paranoid that the bottles would explode since you can't really control the re-fermentation by Brett and goodness knows how much pressure will build up. So I wrapped up each bottle individually in a wad of newspapers and a plastic bag, and contained it all in a plastic crate while aging, just in case I got bottle bombs. Thankfully, nothing untoward happened!

Now comes the all-important point - can I re-create this gueuze again? Honestly, no. The big industry players have the advantage of having a multitude of different beers which can be blended so as to achieve a somewhat consistent product. (Not to mention expert tasting panels - an area in which I am woefully inadequate.) They also do a solera, which further aids in maintaining the very same bugs in each batch. Kind of like those Mother Stocks that some Chinese restaurants boast of. As a homebrewer, I'm afraid that there will be inevitable batch-to-batch variation.I'm keeping at least 1 bottle of the "original" as a calibration bottle. Dang, should've bottled them in smaller bottles!

In retrospect, I would like to make the following changes in future attempts:
1. Age it longer - obviously! Maybe let it age with Brett for up to a full year so I get more Brett character.
2. Pitch Brett. lambicus instead of Brett. bruxellensis in order to get more of the funk
3. Prior to pitching #2, perhaps I'll let the souring bugs run for a full 2 weeks instead of 1 so I get more acidity. I'd like to get a more flavourful sour base so I can mix more of it though - perhaps using a really bold yeast like Dupont's would be a better choice.
4. Finally, I'd like to come to a stage where I'm actually pitching stuff that are identified, and not just a slurry of dregs. And hopefully maintain that "indigenous" culture of bugs, so as to develop a character unique to the brewing setup. Terroir, if you will. And of course, an oak barrel for the beer to age in would really be the holy grail.