DC Homebrewers Club Blending Day

Sampling and taking notes of the available beers

This post is a summary of a blending day held by the DC Homebrewers Club in November 2017 and what led up to and came out of that day. It took me a long time to finish this post and it doesn't have as much info as I would like due to lack of access to the finished beers and limited notes/photos from the day (more on that later). If there is one takeaway from this post I think it should be that having a blending day like this is extremely fun and can result in very good beer. For a different perspective on the blending day and some better photos check out Luis's write-up in his blog Cerveza Artesenal: translated to English or the original in Spanish.

My contributions. About 25 gallons in total.

A little background on this blending day: For a long time I wanted to get together with some people to do a blending session that could create variety and complexity that had been missing from even my best homebrewed sour beers. Before I moved to California I realized that I had over 20 gallons of assorted mixed fermentation beers that varied in taste from enjoyable but not overly exciting to interesting but highly flawed. After mentioning that the beers would probably be better blended than bottled individually a friend from the DC Homebrewers club  mentioned that he also had a large number of sour/mixed fermentation beers that needed to be bottled and would be happy to host a blending session at his house. After a few more discussions and emails on the topic we were able to set a date for a DC Homebrewers Club blending session and also to have the DC Homebrewers' Anniversary Beer be one of the beers bottled at that time, two birds with one stone.

Each sample was labeled and assigned a paper for notes to be taken

Prior to the blending day we determined who would be able to attend and asked people to bring funky beers (unfortunately none made it) or some cleaner dry Saisons (we did get a couple) that could be added to the mix to complement the predominantly sour beers being used. In total around 10 people and about 20 beers were on hand and samples were pulled from carboys and barrels to be used in the tasting session (plus one homemade wine from Mike Tonsmeire).

There was a wide range in the beers and samples were tasted by all the participants with each person adding notes for each beer. These notes would be used later when it was time to determine blends. A couple of the beers (admittedly mine) were determined to be essentially unusable due to high acetic (vinegar) or nail polish (ethyl acetate) character but most were up to snuff and had at least some characteristics that could be interesting in a blend, even if not great on their own. The beers ranged from hop forward, to heavily fruited, to highly acidic, to having interesting fermentation characteristics. Over the course of a few hours and lots of test samples, we were eventually able to decide on 6 blended batches to bottle, plus two others that were kegged.

I tried to make a few test blends, not all of them worked

Having a basement full of sour beers helps

Once each blend was determined in a small sample (usually 20-40 mL) a 4-6 gallon blend was calculated using the same ratio of constituents and the proper amounts pulled from each carboy/barrel. This blend was then sampled and sometimes adjusted before adding to a bottling bucket with sugar and fresh yeast then bottled and capped or corked.

Instead of details of every blend or the beers that went into them I think it is more useful to give some takeaways and recommendations for those looking to do a similar blending session:

1) Plan ahead. While there was some good communication and planning leading up to this event we weren't 100% sure what beers would be available until the day of blending due to a few people backing out of bringing beer and a few late additions. More importantly there weren't enough clean bottles to package the beers and a large part of the day was spent de-labeling and cleaning the insides of bottles. Having every person who attends a session like this bring clean and sanitized bottles could certainly speed the process. Having a smaller selection of only the best beer options would also have helped and in hindsight I should have dumped a few of my worst contributions rather than drag them along.

Two of the barrels of beers that went into blends

2) Have good equipment. I brought a large bag of 5 mL pipettes I had ordered on Amazon for fairly cheap. These were great for taking small samples of the individual beers and for formulating small test blends prior to deciding on the final blend. Also of use in a blending session are LOTS of tasting cups/glasses, extra bottling buckets, multiple cappers/corkers, and plenty of healthy yeast for bottle conditioning. Aside from the lack of clean bottles we had a decent selection of equipment but that was with multiple people bringing things, one person's normal setup probably wouldn't cut it.

Lots of bottles to de-label, clean, and sanitize

3) Have a wide range of beer. Most of the beers I brought and to some extent the other ones on hand were moderately sour with low Brettanomyces character and low to moderate oak. Having some clean Saisons and other things (wine, juice, flavor extracts) helped to give more complexity to the blends but very Brettanomyces funk forward, highly lactic, or super oaky beers could have been useful.

4) Plan for a full day. We started in the early afternoon and the blending session easily went into the night. Understand the limits on your time and the limits on the number of blends you can make.

5) Pace your drinking. This was a fun club event with a lot of homebrewers/beer nerds. Outside of sampling the individual beers and the sample blends we also drank all types of sours from Cantillon to Rare Barrel plus a lot of clean commercial beers including Belgian Quads and IPAs and lots and lots of homebrew. I brought some sanitized vials with me to try and capture some of the yeast/bacteria from both the homebrew being blended and commercial beers being enjoyed but between drinking, cleaning, blending, and more drinking I entirely forgot about them. I also wanted to take detailed notes and lots of photos but lost track of time and only got a limited amount of info. In the end I stayed sober enough to make it to the end of the day and help out in multiple ways but I should have passed on a few of the beers and had a few more waters.

6) Have a goal (or a couple goals) set ahead of time. There were a few conflicting goals to this blending session and how we were going to hit each wasn't fully discussed ahead of time. There probably ended up being a few too many things we wanted to achieve which may have limited the overall blends in terms of both variety and quality. As a club we wanted to make the DC Homebrewers Anniversary Beer, have at least a few different blends, get some interesting variations, and finish with great beers. I wanted to use up as much of my beer as possible since I wasn't taking it with me. Others had other goals for the beers they had brought. A few of my beers that could have been used more in blends stayed largely untouched and, due to the previously mentioned time constraints, exuberant drinking, and lack of clean bottles, we didn't get quite as many different blends as we could have or use quite the right amounts of specific beers that others had planned. While I think we did a decent job in the end of meeting the conflicting goals and producing good beers, establishing the goals more clearly ahead of time and not having so many could have led to an easier day and better results.

Tasting Notes:
Below are the compositions of the final blends. I also jotted down some quick notes from a couple months after the blending day. I didn't get to try the two kegged versions and the tasting notes were hurried during a brief time at my parent's house where I was able to sample the bottles. I hope to get more detailed notes and photos of each blend in the future when they have had more time to develop in the bottle and in some cases finish carbonating.

Blend 1 (DC Homebrewers Guild Anniversary Beer):
3 gal Barrel Aged Sour Tripel with White Grape Juice

Thoughts- a tasty base beer with good oak and grape/wine character. This was a good base for many of the blends. Highly carbonated but almost no head retention.

Blend 2:
2 gal Flemish Red w Cherry/Raspberry
1 gal Kriek
1 gal Barrel Aged Sour Blonde
1/2 gal Acetic Red
1/2 bottle Red Wine

Thoughts - a bit disappointing. Overly acetic (the acetic red should probably have been cut down if not cut entirely). The blends of fruit (cherry, raspberry, red wine grape) is nice but a bit lost by the vinegar. Not carbonated, possibly due to acid shock, hopefully it just needs more time.

Blend 3:
2 gal Cuvee Blonde
1 gal Wild #2
1 gal Saison

Thoughts- Oak forward with moderate brett and acidity. More tart than sour. More subdued than others but quite enjoyable.

Blend 4:
2 gal Flemish Red on Peaches
2 gal Barrel Aged Sour Tripel with White Grape Juice
1 gal Cuvee Blonde
1 gal Funky IPA

Thoughts - a fairly nice and enjoyable blend. Very fruity on the nose but less fruit forward and more subtle but interesting in taste.

Blend 5:
3 gal Barrel Aged Sour Tripel with White Grape Juice
1 gal Brett Saison
1 gal Lambic
1/2 gal Bootleg Biology beer

Thoughts- I really enjoy this one. Probably the most gueuze like with a nice complexity of funk, acidity, fruitiness, and oak.

Blend 6:
2 gal Barrel Aged Sour Tripel with White Grape Juice
1 gal Cuvee Blonde
1 gal Bootleg Biology beer
3/4 gal DC Beer Week beer
1/2 gal Wild #2
1/4 gal "Dregs" (my stepped up mix of assorted commercial dregs)

Thoughts- lots of stone fruit and white grape character. Some citrus but just mild sourness and funk.

Blend 7 (keg):
2 gal Flemish Red w Raspberry/Cherry
1 gal Flemish Red w Peaches
1 gal Mariage (this was itself a blend of homebrews leftover from my wedding)
1/2 bottle red wine small bottle white sweet wine
32oz cranberry juice
~1/2oz vanilla extract

Blend 8 (keg):
5 gal BA Sour Tripel

2oz Nelson dry hop

Wheat Beer Split Batch (Green Spree Hoppy Wheat and Pink Dream Fruited Gose)

I love doing split batches when I homebrew. It allows me to double (or more than double) the number of beers I'm able to create with almost no increase in effort or time. Another proponent of splitting batches is Michael Tonsmeire who spoke about this very topic on the Experimental Brew's Brew Files podcast. This was perfect timing given that I was making a similar split batch (1/2 hoppy, 1/2 sour) and using the grain bill from one of Mike's recipes (Fortunate Islands) to do it.

Green Spree is inspired by both Mike/Modern Time's Fortunate Islands recipe and Mike's business partner Scott Janish's flavor descriptors for El Dorado hops as tasting like "Green Spree" candy. To up the green (in my mind this means sour apple but also lime, grass, and pine) character I added Warrior (which I found to have pine, grass and lime) and Centennial (resinous and citrusy) hops to the bill. The goal for this recipe is to sit somewhere between the light-to-moderate bitterness and hop character of my Pilsner and the heavily hopped West Coast NEIPA I have on tap, while still giving a chance to explore some new hops that I've been holding onto for a long time.

Pink Dream is a take on the classic Leipziger style featuring salt and a lactobacillus driven sourness but with the twist of orange peel instead of coriander plus an increased sweetness and darker color from the Caravienne malt. I also plan to add a hibiscus tea and possibly lychee or passionfruit to the beer to up the fruitiness and quenchability. The gose formulation (especially in terms of salt levels) and hibiscus addition (in terms of dosing and method) were inspired by Mike's Gose and Hibiscus Wit.

Not surprisingly the two beers appeared very different in the fermenters with the Green Spree half being hazier and having a more vigorous krausen while the Pink Dream half had little foaming even during the peak of fermentation and was much clearer and looked darker due to this.

Green Spree (Hoppy Half):
12/14/17 Brew Day
Expected OG: 1.045
Actual OG: 1.053
Expected Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficientcy: 85%
Expected FG: 1.012
Actual FG: 1.015

12/18/17
Added dry hops to Green Spree. Gravity down to 1.015 (7.5 Plato refractometer reading). Tastes fairly sweet but also moderately hoppy and tasty.

12/22/17
Transferred to 3 gallon keg. Tasting hoppy but a bit grassier and harsher than expected.


Pink Dream (Gose Half):
12/14/17 Brew Day
Expected OG: 1.045
Actual OG: 1.042
Expected Efficiency: 75%
Actual Efficientcy: 70%
Expected FG: 1.013
Actual FG: 1.010

I pulled off 3 gallons for this half just after the combined wort hit a boil. This was then cooled to 100F and Lactobacillus Delbrueckii was added. Prior to pitching the Lacto I pre-acidified the wort with 3 tablespoons of 10% phosphoric acid in hopes to minimize the protein denaturing. After 12 hours I pitched a GoodBelly Straightshot due to concerns with the Lacto Del's souring capacity. 24 hours later I pitched a pack of S-04. I left my pH meter in Maryland so I had to just use taste of the sour wort and other people's experience to determine timing.

12/18/17
Pink Dream half down to 1.010 (5 Plato refractometer reading). Moderately sour with a noticeable but not overwhelming saltiness and some sweetness.

1/2/18
Added hibiscus by adding 1.5 cups of nearly boiling water to 1 oz. hibiscus poured into carboy. 1/2 oz each Amoretti Lychee Compound and Passionfruit Swirl added to keg with the beer then racked on top. Has good color, strong fruitiness, but it comes off slightly artificial. Hopefully the first pour just had more of the extracts than the rest of the batch and with some time the flavor will meld more.

1/16/18
Brought a swing top bottle of this to a San Francisco Homebrewers Guild meeting. Mostly positive response with several noting low salt levels (intended but below style requirements) and a mixed response to the hibiscus levels (some saying too high, others thinking it was a subtle enough touch to not overpower the beer).

5 Way Berliner (and My First Competition Ribbon)

Not strictly a "split batch" or formal experiment (or should I say ExBEERiment) I nonetheless wanted to taste test 5 variations on sour wheat beers side by side to see which method I liked the most.  While 3 of the beers were started at the same time and used identical worts, the other two were made earlier and one used a very different wort (the extra runnings from my Hefeweizen).  The breakdown of each beer is listed below.  Each batch was a little less than 1 gallon.

1. "B" Hefeweizen 2nd Runnings w/ Lactobacillus Delbrueckii followed by British ale yeast
• The 1st version was fermented on the Lacto Del for 3 days before being moved to secondary with the British ale yeast.
• OG ~1.040, FG 1.003
2. "C" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii only
• Pitched on the lacto cake from version 1.
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.002
3. "X" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii, British ale yeast, and Brettanomyces (BKYeast C2)
• Pitched with the final slurry from Version 1 with Brett added 5 days later.
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.002
4. "Y" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii and wild microbes (my Sunroom blend)
• 1 pint pitched with my Sunroom blend (of wild microbes harvested from my Sunroom) before receiving a small amount of the Lacto slurry while being stepped up from an to 1 gallon.
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.003
5. "Z" Wheat Extract w/Lactobacillus Delbrueckii and Brettanomyces (BKYeast C2)
• Given a pitch from the Lacto slurry before being given Brett 5 days later
• OG ~1.030, FG 1.005

Appearance:

B- cloudiest, light pale color, short lived white head

C- darkest by far, longest lasting head, most carbonated, fairly clear

X- 2nd cloudiest, almost no head

Y- 3rd cloudiest, 2nd biggest head

Z- clearest, smallest head

Smell

B- fruity, light citrus,

C- medicinal off smelling, especially as it warms

X- lots of Brett funk, fruity citrus

Y- lightly fruity, vanilla, maybe a touch of butter, very interesting

Z- light fruit, berries, light Brett

Taste:

B- fruity and tart, sourness is moderately high

C- lightly medicinal, just lightly tart

X- funky, light to moderate sourness

Y- moderately sour, some definite diacetyl butteriness, a little fruit

Z- light grain, lightly tart, fairly restrained

Mouthfeel:

B-Super dry, lightly carbonated

C- medium body with medium carbonation

X- dry with low to medium carbonation

Y- a slightly slicker mouthfeel (diacetyl?) medium low carbonation

Z- medium low in body (the Brett and lacto don't seem to have attenuated as well as the lacto and yeast combos) medium carbonation

Overall:

B- my favorite of the bunch, moderately sour but with some nice banana, lemon, and wheat in the mix

C- my least favorite by far, just using the lactobacillus is clearly not an advisable option as it surprisingly is under sour and very medicinal

X- my second favorite, and the second most sour. Brett character is a little too high and sourness a little too low

Y- while it was cold this one was really interesting and enjoyable, as it warmed it seems that diacetyl is the most dominant character and the sourness isn't quite high enough

Z- an alright beer, this sort of feels like a bland saison with a light Brett touch. The sourness of the lactobacillus and Brett alone isn't high enough.

Thoughts:

This small test has made me think that lactobacillus followed by saccharomyces is the best option for quickly fermented sour beers. I'm a little disappointed in how buttery the wild fermented beer came out and learned to never do lacto only beers, but otherwise the results weren't overly surprising.

Updates
3/8/2015
Spoke to a brewer at Tired Hands in Ardmore Pennsylvania and was told that they use a very similar process as version "B" for their sours: lacto for 3 days followed by British ale yeast.

3/23/2015
Happy to say version "B" received a score of 35 and third place in the Sour Ales category at the DC Homebrewer's Club Cherry Blossom Competition.  Sure, it was only out of 6 beers in the category but for a beer not brewed to style and with no expectations it still did well enough to receive a ribbon.

Lambic #3

What can I say? I have a sour beer problem.  With my lambic #2 currently very funky but not sour at all I wanted to brew another beer with the yeast cake from my first few sours.  My Sour Mix #1 started with Wyeast's Roeselare blend and has since had dregs from Drie Fonteinen and Cantillon, BKYeast's C2 brett isolate, and American Ale yeast added.  Popping open the top of bottle storing the mix of yeast and bacteria gave such great aromas that I'm confident in the direction this one will head.

This beer is all about the yeast/bacteria so I kept it as simple as it comes for the recipe: 5 pounds dry malt extract, 2 ounces lambic blend hops (1.2% AA) for 60 minutes and my Sour Mix #1.

10/24/14
Brewed on stove top with 6.5 gallons of unfiltered Arlington water with K-Meta added.  1 tbsp phosphoric acid 10% and 1 tsp each of gypsum and calcium chloride added prior to boil.  Extract and hops added at full boil and boiled for 60 minutes prior to chilling. OG measured at 1.054.

10/25/14
With no signs of active fermentation taking off I added yeast from my Saison Blend #1 (Wyeast French and Belgian saison yeasts).  Some bubbles appearing in airlock after 12 hours.

10/26/14
Gravity down to 1.006.  A little fruity, slightly bretty, a touch bitter.

11/1/14
.5 ounces Pinot Blanc soaked medium-plus toast Hungarian oak cubes (and about 8 ounces of the pinot) added to primary.

Lambic #2

As my first lambic approaches the one year mark, and with a plethora of recently brewed and bottled beers on hand, it seems like a good time to brew another sour beer that I can stash away for a while.  While I bottled half of the first lambic months ago, and it's tasting quite good, the other half is still churning along on some oak cubes and will likely be nice to blend with this Lambic #2 a year or two from now to make my first geuze.

Unlike the first lambic which used primarily malt extract and just a small amount of fresh, low alpha hops, this version is a bit more complex using 2-row, flaked wheat and a touch of oats and light crystal malt. While I am not going so far as to perform a turbid mash, the use of actual grains and aged hops should put this one closer to the traditional style.

Rather than use my Sour Blend #1, which was based off of the Roselare blend with dregs from Drie Fonteinen and Lindemans, I decided to start a new bug blend with Wyeast Pediococcus, American Ale II, and BKYeast C2 at initial pitch with the Wyeast Lambic Blend and bottle dregs planned to be added later.

Brewday notes:

Hops: the lambic blend hops are very interesting. Intensely dark in color with aromas of musk, herbs, light pine, decaying wood and some fruity sweet plum character. Somewhat similar to Styrian Goldings in smell they're like a grandmother's basement: perfume, plum and lots of must.

Oak: I boiled 1 oz of Hungarian medium toast oak. I believe this oak has been used at least once before but it was in an unmarked bag. Almost no oak aroma came off it before boiling so it might have lost almost all of its character in its previous uses. I can always add more later if I'm not getting enough flavor from this addition.

5-5-14

Fermentation still appears active though slowed from a week ago. This one has been putting out some vomit and sulfur smells. Took a tiny sample, smelled of lemon and grainy wheat. Taste was surprisingly bitter and lightly lemony. The bitterness should fade in time and there doesn't seem to be any detrimental off flavors. This beer is far from being complete but I have high hopes so far.

5-28-14

Gravity down to 1.003. Taste is lightly tart, lightly bitter and not very interesting otherwise. Still a long way to go.

6-12-14
I decided to add my spontaneous starter to give this some more complexity and sugars to work with.  Prior to pitching the starter gravity was down to 1.002.  Taste is dry, lightly bitter, and fairly fruity. The warm temperatures seem to have caused some ester formation, though the spontaneous starter was much fruitier.

6-29-14

Added Petrus Aged Ale dregs.

3-27-15
Coming up on a year and this beer is simply just slightly tart and fairly funky with a touch of butter.  I added .5 oz Lactic acid, 1 tsp balsamic vinegar, and .25 tsp acid blend hoping that some increased acidity will help the flavors.

12-13-15
This beer had been tasting very nice, fairly acidic but with a fruity apricot character. Unfortunately it seems to have gotten a little too much oxygen exposure recently and is now quite sour. I decided to hope for the best and added the 3 lbs each of apricot and peach Vintner's Harvest purees I had purchased for the beer to about 4 gallons of remaining beer.

1-17-16

After about a month on the apricot and peach purées the beer is a touch too sour and has developed a serious pellicle. At this point I've decided to blend it out with my less sour and fairly boring Lambic #3. While this will unfortunately reduce the fruit character, the sourness is simply too high as is.

#19b - Sour Red Tasting

I brewed this sour brown beer (probably actually closer to a Flanders red style-wise) in the summer of 2012 and, well, wow time flies when you're brewing beers. This version received additional Brett compared to the straight version of 19 and was also bulk aged a bit longer.

Appearance- medium brown/garnet in color with no trace of a head and a few carbonation bubbles coming up. Extremely clear after all this time.

Smell- chocolate, raspberry and vinegar predominate. The chocolate malty character comes through surprisingly strong but the acetic acids slight sting dominates.

Taste/Mouthfeel- on the tongue this one feels tingly, and tastes fairly fruity (blackberry, raspberry) with a surprisingly high malt characteristic that encompasses toast and shortbread. Finish is fairly dry with a sharp back of the mouth burn followed by lingering vinegar and, again, toasted bread.

Overall- this beer is very interesting. At times I find it to be way too sour, but tonight I felt the fruit and malt characters shined and kept it enjoyable. Definitely a beer only sour lovers could get into, and even then the high acetic levels might put some of them off. Not nearly as bright, funky or complex as my favorite sours but interesting nonetheless.

The BKYeast C2 added to this half might be partially responsible for the more balanced beer compared to my other tastings of #19 as the Brett's fruit flavors help to balance the extreme tartness. It would be interesting to do a side by side taste test but with only a handful of bottles of each left, and the extremely sour character they each display, that might not be a great idea.

Sour Brown (Funky Kast #2)

I brewed a sour brown ale back on August 26th, 2012. This was intended to be a bit like the traditional flanders brown/oud bruin .  I haven't made one of these before and have only even drank the similar Flanders Red style but it seemed pretty similar to a Northern English brown ale in terms of recommended ingredients.  In this spirit I used a grain bill similar to one from an English brown with a full pound of victory malt and an oz. of willamette for bittering.  This beer will probably sit in the primary for 1-2 months, secondary for 6-12 and bottles for another 6-12.  It's a long way off from the first tasting but I'm already excited.

8/26/2012

BIAB Mashed at 148F for 60 minutes. Sparged at 160 F. OG was only 1.032. Pitched the Roeselare pack with no starter.

9/1/2012

Realized that the OG was so low due to forgetting a pound each of Caramunich (not a big deal in terms of gravity) and DME (a big difference).  I steeped the pound of caramunich in a little over a half gallon of water, then added the DME and boiled.  Cooled and added into the glass carboy.  Big blow off began within an hour.

10-7-12
Added dregs from 3 Fonteinen Oude Geuze.

10-13-12
Big lacto bubbles on top of this beer now (hard to see in the picture but there's one in the top left), seems the Drie Fonteinen dregs were pretty aggressive..  I added dregs from Lindemans' Cuvee Rene. With dregs of two of the better geuzes I've tried this one should end up nice and funky.

1-12-13
The lacto bubbles have faded and now a thin brett pellicle covers the top.  Gravity is now down to 1.007.  Smell is not very pleasant (a little bit of "outhouse") but taste is more berry and sour with just a touch of sweetness.  The initial characteristics from the malt of toast have faded almost entirely.  Not sure what to do with this one, so I will probably continue the wait and see approach.

2-2-13
Gravity continues to fall slightly, now hovering between 1.005 and 1.006.  This beer is tasty now, but probably won't be safe to bottle for another 6-18 months.

3-2-13
This beer continues to improve. Still around 1.005 but more complex in its sour and funk.

5-18-13

Tastes too good to hold off bottling anymore, full batch ha 3.5 oz sugar added with 1 case worth bottled an the rest moved to a 3 gallon Carboy for secondary. Flavor is moderately fruity with solid but not overpowering complex sourness. Possibly the best sour beer I've ever tasted even flat.

6-9-13

Taste a bottle, still fairly flat. Aggressively sour with some light fruit. Not quite the complexity I would like but it will be interesting to see where the carbonation takes it. I also added the BKYeast C2 Brett to the unbottled half which has taken over, hopefully upping the fruitiness to balance the sour.

11-25-13
Bottled 2 gallons with 1 oz sugar.  The previously bottled version is aggressively acetic which detracts from the roast/fruit flavors.  I don't have high hopes for this half of the batch but letting it go any longer would probably not help.

The Funky Kast

The funky kast is the name I've given for sour/wild/Brett beers and other potent potables I plan to brew. The name comes from the word kast, Dutch for closet as I plan to brew some of these in my bedroom closet and sour beers have a notorious Belgian tradition where Dutch is the majority language. It will also be a play on a cast of characters. I'm currently in the planning phases of a lambic, a Brett saison, a sour cider and another beer which uses a sour mash method.