The more I taste different Flanders Reds and appreciate their complexities, the more rapidly the style takes on legendary palate status for me. I love IPAs and Strong Ales, too. They have the sort of knock you down flavors that get your attention and push your limits, and that can be a good thing sometimes. But Flanders Red challenges your senses in a much more subtle and possibly more rewarding way. The craft of brewing them is far more complicated than almost any other beer, with the mastery of challenging ingredients, long-term aging, and blending all essential. I'm far from understanding these beers completely.
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| Crumple Cars blocking access to The Ranch, 1961 (photo: Stevens) |
I made
Crumple Car Flanders Red, my second attempt at the style, yesterday, and named it after one of my favorite surf songs. Elitist land owners at the Bixby and Hollister ranches north of Santa Barbara, CA used to leave old cars on the beach so that surfers couldn't drive up the coast to ride some of the more pristine and unspoiled waves in the industrialized world. Denny Aaberg wrote "Crumple Car" (mp3 below) with those barriers to access in mind. The ranches still occupy 16+ miles of coastline that the general public can't realistically access and enjoy.
The recipe is the result of some research into different approaches to Flanders Red ales and a continued commitment to my preference for simple grain bills. Aged Perle hops were used for bittering only. I boiled for 75 minutes at a slightly lower intensity to help bring out the red color. Wyeast's Roselare Yeast Blend was pitched this morning.
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| 16 hours after pitching the Roselare Yeast Blend. |
This approach was intentionally very different than
Farmer's Daughter Flanders Red. When
Lewy and I made that first sour, we were setting sail in uncharted waters (at least for us). We did the intuitive thing by making fourteen gallons and splitting it four different ways (2 x 5 gallons and 4 x 1 gallons), with different yeast combinations and dregs added. That approach presented an opportunity to see how the most important ingredient in beer (yeast) makes its presence felt. Now that he's made
Farmer's Bitch and I've brewed Crumple Car, there will be even more variety available when blending takes place.
After reading that I feel like I need to go out and buy a Flanders Red. I'm excited to see that you used the Roselare Blend for this batch. I think adding the different yeast blends to our/your house Flanders Red yeast will add beneficial characters for future batches.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see your recipe on this one as I'm about to brew up another Flanders and have not been extremely at my first two attempts off of Jamil's recipe.
ReplyDeleteI've done a couple of Flanders now, and just 'blended' my first Flanders. I had an old version (1.5 years) on 1st generation Roselare and a young version (8 months) on 2nd generation Roselare. The second version was more acid so I used a higher portion of that then expected.
My recommendation when you start to decide about blending is to have a nice malty Brown Ale on hand for blending to help give it some body. I ended up using a portion of a 100% brett Brown that I had laying around that helped round out the middle body of my flanders.
I'm not completely happy with my blend (even though I love certain aspects of it) and wish I would have used even more of the brown ale in it. It's only been in the bottle for a month and a half so time will tell!
If you can get your hands on ECY02 - Flemish Blend that seems to mature quicker then Roselare.
Cheers,
Nick
I appreciate your advice on the blending and yeast selection. Blending is an art that I have zero experience with. I'm excited (but also a little uncertain) about the prospect of relying on my palate to do the finishing that I usually am happy to entrust to yeast. I may take your advice and have an additional beer on hand when the blending actually takes-though I'm hoping that the Flanders Reds of other local brewers will help ensure that the final product is more than just palatable. You can access my recipe in the original post by clicking on the beer's name. Thanks for checking out my blog!
Deletegood fun now that The Ranch is open for everyone
ReplyDelete