This week we sample Mike’s Flanders Red. I brewed this up over 6 months ago. Its not really sour but there are some hints of acidity. Its got great flavor, so maybe its something we can rescue.

This brew started with a fate pointing towards failure. My Roselare yeast blend was frozen and likely dead on brew day. I knew I wasn’t getting the the LHBS anytime soon either. I had a saved pitch of Belle Saison and Brett Clausinii from over a year ago in the fridge. I warmed that up and put it along with the thawed out Roselare blend in the carboy. A month later I racked it off the yeast pack into secondary and added an ounce of toasted French oak cubes.

Today the beer is a 1.004 dry dry dry Saison. It has a great ruby garnet color with hints of vanilla, oak and a touch of cherry. The acidity level isn’t enough to make it sour, however it is enough to make it…. acidic. You can tell it wants to go somewhere but there just isn’t any nutrients or enough microbes left to really go anyway else.

I was just going to keg it and drink it as a Fall Saison. John had the good idea of splitting the batch and trying to rescue half of it. I have more Roselare and some maltodextrin on hand. The plan is to keg the first half, then I am going to add a gallon of concentrated DME/maltodextrin wort along with the smack pack of Roselare. Hopefully that will restart the process and get things moving in an interesting direction.

Stay tune for the additions and the some shots of what the beer looks like today.

Cheers