Barrel-Aged Sour Tripel

Last night, a group of about a dozen brewers emptied a barrel of the Tripel we had aged and soured for four months.  All of the brewers were from the our homebrewing club, the Brewers of South Suburbia (www.bossbeer.org) 

Dave Persenaire organized this barrel project and hosted it in his basement.  He said this was the fifth beer he had run through this barrel - the first had not been soured, but each batch afterwards had been.  As we were emptying the barrel, the appealing aroma of brett was apparent. 

When we peered into the hole of the barrel with a flashlight, a big pellicle with bluish mold on top was visible floating on top of the beer.

A Tripel is a Belgian style beer, light in color and body, high alcohol, but dry and easy to drink, with some spice and fruit flavor from the yeast.  The sample we tried as we emptied the barrel had a nice, balanced sourness to it, with the character, flavor and qualities of the Tripel still apparent.  Dave shared a bottle of the same beer aged in the same barrel but bottled a year ago and it was overwhelmingly soured - it had changed remarkably in a year. 

I brewed this batch back in early May with another club member, Robert Donahue and we added it to the barrel in mid June.  This is a big beer, with an original gravity of around 1.092, made with Pilsner malt, some wheat malt, table sugar, Mt. Rainier hops, and Abbey Ale yeast.  For such a big beer, it fermented quite dry, 1.008 measured as we took it out of the barrel. 

This week, I need to brew for another barrel project, this one I'm organizing with a barrel from Jim Beam/Goose Island - an Imperial Robust Porter.