Introducing project Hanssens

Now that I successfully hav isolated a Saccharomyces and a Brettanomyces strain from Orval, it is time to go wild. A few weeks ago, I drank a Hanssens oude geuze. I saved the dregs and poured some DME wort on to bow some life into this wild dormant soup. After a day, the dregs had come to life and were happily producing CO2. I will now plate out this mini starter and hope to get some nice colonies. By making a starter I should have favored the growth of Saccharomices strains, so theoretically thay should show up first on my plate. After a while I also hope to get some Brett strains appearing. I also would like to get som Pedio or Lactobacillus out. For that I will use DME agar supplemented with 10 % tomato juice, some dead yeast and 2% CaCO3 to buffer te acid produced. As a teaser, here's a picture of what my mini starter looks like under a microscope. The tiny rods are most likely Lacobacillus of Pediococcus. The bigger cells look like yeast, of which the round ones look like Saccharomyces and the smaller ones Brettanomyces. To be continued...

Planning the next brewing season. Suggestions?

During the summer I will take it a bit easy. I will mainly be drinking instead of brewing. However, the recipe designer in me can't help thinking about hte next brewing season, again dominated by Belgian beer styles. Here's what I want to brew during the fall (if I manage):

• Dubbel


• Tripel


• Strong golden ale


• Lambic


• Imperian amber wit


• Blonde


• 100% Brett amber ale (Brett from the Orval project


• Strong saison with Sorachi Ace hops

The reason why I want to brew these beers is either because I brewed them before and want to improve the recipe, or because I feel the urge to experiment with hops and yeast strains. More then one of them will be split batches, with several yeasts in parallel. I really don't feel like washing 1000+ bottles, whitch is approximately what it will take to bottle all of these beers. Should I consider kegging? I don't know, in my opinion, nothing beats bottle conditioned beer!

Project Orval, the first pictures!

I have finally managed to take some pictures of some of my orval clones. On the left you can see one clone, probably Saccharomyces cerevisiae because of its rounded shape and budding daughter cell. On the right you see a clone with the working name "tiny colony" because it grew much slower on wort agar. Judging by its slow growth and its ogival shape, this is probably a brett strain. At least it's not Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Today's brewing day!

Today I will brew my (probably) last beer before the summer. A Belgian dark strong ale called "St-Trudo Abdis 12" after a monastery in Male, close to Bruges (Belgium) where I grew up. I even have a personal connection with the monastery as my childhood dentist changed career and became a nun.
It should be a nice brew with a respectable OG of around 1100. A few experimental touches: first time I brew a massive beer on the club's Speidel Braumeister, and as part of my sugar I will use molasses. The exact amount will be determined later, as I want to taste the wort after several smaller amounts of molasses. I definately don't want to make a licorice bomb!
As the mashing is automated in the braumeister, I should have plenty of time to dish-wash 7 crates of empty bottles and bottle 3 beers :)

Beer tasting with my brother in law

Yesterday my brother in law invited me to taste some beers he bought. Assisted by the owners of the local beer shop, who also happen to brew (De Ranke) he came home with an impressive selection of beers: Vicardin tripel gueuze, saison de Dottignies, saison Voisin, Taras boulba, Koeketiene, Hercule and Noir de Dottignies. I liked then all, except for Taras boulba which was a bit boring. Favourites were Vicardin and Koeketiene. I have to visit my sister more often :)

Yesterday's catch

Yesterday was beer shopping day in Bruges. 2be had a lot of beers, but is very much focussed on tourists. Anyway, these are the beers I bought: Oerbier, cuvee des trolls, saison regal, saxo, pannepeut, saison 1900, hanssens oude gueuze. I was disappointed on the available saisons, but maybe I'll be able to go to de hopduvel in Ghent before heading back to Sweden.

Westvleteren blond, 8 and 12!

I just have to show off... When I arrived to Belgium a nice surprise was waiting for me in my parent's cellar. 6 bottles each of all the Westvleteren beers. My appologies for the picture quality. It was taken with my cell phone, and it's quite dark in the cellar. Good for the beer, bad for the photo :)