Golly Jeepers Wild Mango Ale (Batch 346)

If you read Roll-a-Style 13 ... Wild Specialty Beer, you know that Saturday was Learn to Homebrew Day, and that I brewed Golly Jeepers Wild Mango Ale.

My friend "Doc" wanted to host another brew day, so I headed over to his "brewery".

Generally, when I "Travel Brew", I like to start my mash at home and let it convert during the drive over. Then, when I arrive I can just transfer to a boil kettle and therefore have a head-start.

I do this in my old-style gott cooler / propane burner system.

But, my friend "Du" also was heading over, and he asked to use a propane burner and boil kettle.

Roll-a-Style 13 ... Wild Specialty Beer

I brewed Humdinger of a Hootenanny (Batch 345) the weekend before Learn to Homebrew Day. I obviously had to have something to brew on the first Saturday of November (today if you're reading this the day it publishes)

About the time I discovered that I Lied about the 2021 BCJP Categories ... I came across some Wildbrew Philly Sour yeast in my favorite local homebrew shop.

That yeast has been sitting in my fridge since then, and I always had expected I'd use it to brew a Category 28. American Wild Ale with it.

I decided that Learn to Homebrew Day would be the day. It was on my Roll-a-Style list ... so ...

I pretended to roll the Online 20 sided die and pretended that I rolled ... 13

13 corresponds to 28C. Wild Specialty Beer, a pretty wide-open style.

An American Wild Ale with fruit, herbs, spices, or other Specialty-Type Ingredients.

I decided to go with a simple base beer with mango fruit. The "Wild" character would come from the Wildbrew Philly Sour yeast.

My recipe is 

Gruntled Berry Weiße

I brewed Sunday.

I decided that Super Bowl Sunday's batch would be a 2.4 gallon batch instead of my usual 5.5 gallon batch size. Being the lazy guy that I am, I thought I would use the base of a recipe I'd already designed and brewed: Gruntled Sour Weiße.

Just to make it a little different, I decided to make it a fruit beer, simply adding the same frozen mixed berries that I've been using to help flavor some of my yogurt. I do plan on not adding quite as much Lactic Acid as well.

The resulting recipe on SheppyBrew.com is Gruntled Berry Weiße.

Not only was this a small batch, but it is also very low in alcohol, thus low in OG, thus low in grains needed to brew it.

Kegging and Bottling

Last weekend I didn't brew, but I did have a pretty busy Sunday.

I bottled and soured my Gruntled Sour Weiße. I also kegged my Falling Leaves Harvest Saison.

For Some reason, this picture says "Gruntled" to me

You may remember that I mentioned that I would be souring my Gruntled Sour Weiße by simply adding Lactic Acid rather than using souring bacteria. Part of the reason I made such a small batch was that I wasn't sure how good the lactic acid souring would be. Billy from The Homebrew Academy did the same thing for a Gose (see Gose Homebrew Recipe). He didn't really give me the idea, but he did remind me of the idea. He also was kind enough to post an amount for me to start with.

Still More @Untappd Badges 17.5 #GABF Edition

Well, just a few days ago I let you know that I was sick of typing Still More @Untappd Badges 17, so I stopped. I promised that I would follow up with a "special edition of the @Untappd Badges".

So here we go.

Usually, in the past I don't check into very many beers at GABF.  This year, I didn't at the festival either, but when I got home I checked into all the beers that I had written down during the festival (which was a lot).

Obviously, first and foremost, we have ... 

Gruntled Sour Weisse

I'm doing a bit of a brewing experiment. I've decided to brew a Berliner Weisse. I'm going to sour this Berliner Weisse with lactic acid rather than adding souring bugs to the fermentation. I'm not sure how it will turn out, so I decided to brew a small batch.

If you would like to see my recipe, check out on the SheppyBrew website:

Gruntled Sour Weisse

Yesterday, my son and I went to the zoo together, and it wasn't until we were on the way home that I decided that I would brew for sure. We stopped by my most local homebrew shop and picked up malts and yeast.

More on the Sour Pumpkin Wit

Do you remember me blending my my Rationalité Poison d'Ereeeek with my Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier? If you don't, no worries ... you can go check out my blog post at Blending the Sour Pumpkin Wit. Go ahead ... check it out ... we'll wait. You can continue reading this one when you get back.

So, I blended and bottled back in January. I primed with sugar just as I usually do when bottling. The 2-week carbonation period was over last weekend. I tried a couple of bottles this weekend.

On untappd, I called the combination Poison Pumpkin Sour Wit.

I like the beer.

Blending the Sour Pumpkin Wit

Today, bottled up some beer.

Remember when I brewed my Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier, I had about one extra gallon of wort that I let ferment in a separate fermentor? If you don't remember, you can refresh your memory at Whacko Wife Pumpkin Brew Day. I mentioned that my plan for that extra gallon was to blend it with my Rationalité Poison d'Ereeeek, which is my sour Flanders Red style beer.

It has been awhile, but finally decided to go ahead and blend the two beers and bottle up the result.

My bottling experience was a bit "old-school" for me. For quite awhile, when I've bottled beers, I have used my keg and Beer Gun to fill the bottles. Today, I decided to use my Mr. Beer "bottling bucket" and bottle-filling wand. I don't even remember the last time I bottled using this technique before today.

First, I transferred the gallon of Witbier from the fermentor to the bottling container. I added enough priming sugar to handle 2 gallons of beer.

On Whacko Wife and other things SheppyBrew

I am not brewing today, but the SheppyBrew Brewery had a somewhat busy morning.

I made a yeast starter for Whacko Wife Pumpkin Witbier . I am brewing Whacko Wife tomorrow, so I probably should have made the starter sooner. Of course if you have been paying attention to my last few brews that used yeast starters, you realize this has become somewhat typical for me. It does seem to get the main fermentation started quicker.

Whacko Wife is interesting. It uses a base of Whisky Wife Wit, which is a beer that I have brewed before as a partial mash. Very recently, I converted that to an all-grain recipe, but I have not brewed the all-grain version of the base, yet. So, for this pumpkin beer, I am brewing the derivative fruit beer before the main beer has been brewed. Just sort of backwards. It will turn out fine. It is just sort of interesting.

My #SourBeerDay

I would say that there are 3 kinds of people when it comes to sour beers. You love them or you hate them or you have not tried them.

Most people are in that "have not tried them" category. My wife is in the "hate them" category.

I am in the "love them" category.

As I mentioned last week, Saturday was #SourBeerDay. I really thought I was going to use the "holiday" as an excuse to stop by Crooked Stave's taproom and try a couple of Chad's beers. I never got around to it. Actually, I didn't even drink a sour beer and #SourBeerDay.

But what did I do?

#SourBeerDay is September 8th

I love sour beers. One of my #GABF goals every year is to try every sour I come across. As I've mentioned before, I plan on making a sour beer sometime in the "near" future.

I have just learned that September 8th is #SourBeerDay.

It is, obviously, like #IPADay and #StoutDay, only instead of celebrating IPAs and Stouts, this twitter holiday celebrates sour beers of all sorts.

The first sour beer I ever had was a happy accident. My first GABF, I came to the New Belgium booth very early in the night. In fact, I had only had one sample up until that point. I walked up, pointed to a random keg labeled "Eric's Ale", and asked for "some of that". Had I asked what "Eric's Ale" was, I don't know if I would have tried it, since I had never experienced a sour ale before.

But, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I am bummed out that I have never found it since then. Since then, I have made it my mission at every GABF I have been to (this year will be my third) to try as many sours as possible.

SheppyBrew and the Sour Mash

I have mentioned a couple of times on this blog that SheppyBrew Brewery wants to brew a sour beer (most recently in 2012 Q1 SheppyBrew Stats). Unfortunately, I'm not quite as confident as Scott, my buddy at SNB Brewing with his Sour Ale Project. I just don't feel ready to introduce souring bugs into my fermentation process yet.

So, my solution is to try a sour mash.