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