Hey all,
I was wondering if anyone has ever tried brewing this style by any chance? https://dev.bjcp.org/style/2015/27/27A/historical-beer-lichtenhainer/
I know quite a few here aren’t huge fans of sour beers, while others don’t like smoked ones all that much, so it’s quite unlikely. But if someone also got intrigued by this style in the past and has some tips to share I’d love to hear them! This will likely be my next brew.
This is a weird beer. Let us know how it turns out & bottle some up for the next exchange!
Hey,
I made one in October I really liked it. I like smoke in beer and love sour and thought the first month in bottles it tasted like ham.
I used beech wood smoked malt. I think beech or cherry would be similar.
Oak smoked wheat malt seems to be recommended too but it seems to be popular in Grodziskie and I had tried that at a brewery before so I throught I would aim else where; I think its less ham and more “sharp” oak. I don’t have much experience with oak smoked wheat malt.
Don’t use peat smoked.
My recipe is:
1:1 beechwood smoked Malt to wheat malt (you could probably do 100% but 50% of the smoked malt was nice)
30 min boil, no hops
OG of 1.032
preacidified to ph 4.2 with Lactic acid
Kolsch yeast copitched with Lactobacillus
Ferment until it stabilized, maybe 50 days.
I split my batch and used wild yeast and bacteria from a cider which soured less. My patrons thought the original was too sour, but good for my taste. If you want to get it slightly sour, pitch the bacteria in secondary or kettle sour and control how sour you want.
Have fun!
That’s some great info Albert, thanks! I was actually hesitating between co-pitching and kettle souring.
I usually use wild harvested lacto from my food ferments to sour my beers, so kettle souring might be the safer option to keep the acidity in check.
But then again, it seems that the traditional way would be to infect the beer in secondary, so maybe I’ll try to select a food ferment that ended up less sour to inoculate from.