Re: Framboise recipe

Shawn M. Johnson writes: The recipe is pretty simple though it will take a few years until it is ready to drink. I make my lambics with extract since the malt isn't a dominate part of the flavor or aroma. Almost all the standard brewing techniques are ignored here. The following is the recipe for the straight lambic that took silver in Nationals this June. This batch was brewed on Feb. 19, 1999 and was ready for competition this spring. To get a Framboise you just add the raspberries later. 6.5 gallons of water 3# Munton's Dry Wheat extract 3# Munton's Dry Light extract 100 grams of malto-dextrine powder 1 tbs Fermax yeast nutrient 120 grams of very old hops (no hop aroma or flavor) Boil for 90 minutes, SG is approximately 1.057 Run the hot wort into a plastic bucket fermenter and leave without the lid overnight to cool. The next day place the cover on the fermenter, wait another day and pitch some dry ale yeast (variety won't matter). After a couple of weeks add the Brettanomyces strain, the Pedio and the Lacto. Leave the fermenter alone for several years other than to make sure the airlock has water in it. After a year or two you can add the fruit if you want a fruit lambic - for Framboise you will need at least 10 (15 or more would be better) pounds of berries. To minimize the sediment in the bottles you can rack the beer to a different fermenter the day before bottling - I don't bother. The only time I rack after the wort goes into the bucket is to transfer the finished beer to the bottling bucket. For bottling I add a package of dry yeast along with the priming sugar just to have something to generate carbonation - it doesn't always work even then. The resultant beer will be pretty sour and dry. If you want a sweet beer you need a lot of extra work since the organisms in the lambic will eat just about any type of sugar. I think to get sweet lambics like Lindemans you would have to pasturize the beer after sweeting and bottling - that is something I have never tried. Details on pasturization aren't in the homebrewing books but books like Kunze or De Clerck will cover it. It will require heating the bottled beer to somewhere around 160 - 180 F for 10 or 15 minutes after you let the carbonation develop. Remember to let the beer carbonate before you pasturize. Note, any of the local homebrew shops can order the Brett, Pedio, and Lacto. cultures for you from Wyeast or perhaps White Labs. An alternative is to have them order Wyeast Lambic Blend, I have a batch going the started with the Wyeast Blend but don't know how it will turn out. -- Steve Piatz piatz(a)cray.com Cray Inc. 651-605-9049 1340 Mendota Heights Road Mendota Heights, MN 55120