Aug 212010
 

I had Jolly Pumpkin’s Bam Bier a bit ago, and I loved it.  It’s a great low-alcohol beer with tons of flavor, and a nice subtle sourness.  I highly recommend buying this if you ever see it.  So, I was inspired to try something similar.  The style is along the lines of a low gravity saison, but with wild yeast and bacteria in the fermentation.  I listened to the “Can You Brew It?” podcast for details on the Bam Bier recipe.  Here was my plan: brew a 1.045 saison-ish beer.  Ferment 5 gallons with a saison yeast, and then throw some Bam Bier dregs into a half gallon to ferment separately.  Then when fermentation is complete, the two would be blended and allow to ferment of a bit longer.  Here’s the recipe:


Wildbriar Ale – Brewed July 24, 2010

Grains:
2-Row Pale Malt     4 lbs
Pilsner Malt           3 lbs
Wheat Malt           1 lbs
Flaked Barley      0.5 lbs
Crystal 80        0.25 lbs

Hops:
1 oz Spalt (5% AA) – 60 min
0.2 oz Cluster (7% AA) – 45 min
0.5 Hallertauer (3.2% AA) – 15 min
0.5 Hallertauer (3.2% AA) – flame-out

Starting Gravity: 1.045
Efficiency: 77%
Calculated SRM: 3.5
Calculated IBU: 26.85

Mashed at 148F for 1.5 hour with 1.5 qt water per lb grain. Collected 3.2 gal wort, batch sparged with 3 gal water at 168F. Boiled for a total of 1.5 h.
Chilled wort, transferred equal volumes to plastic food-grade buckets, and aerated by shaking for 5 min.
Transferred 0.5 gallon of wort to a 1 gall on jar.  Pitched 1 ml of a glycerol stock of dregs from a Jolly Pumpkin Bam Bier.

To the other 5 gallons, pitched Wyeast 3724.  Started fermenting at 76F.  Raised temperature to 85-90F for one week.  The gravity dropped to 1.004!  This is going to be super dry.
After another week, the 0.5 gallon fermentation seemed to be finishing up, so added that to the other 5 gallons.  Now it’s been sitting since then, and looks like it’s still fermenting.  I think this is going to be bone dry when it’s done.

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)