Flanders Red

I'm a devout reader of http://www.themadfermentationist.com/ and I've been thinking about doing a sour beer for a while now. I'd like to hear about people's experience in brewing them.

In particular I'd like to do a Flanders Red. So if anyone has recipes or tips I'd appreciate it.

Hey Kent did you ever get around to that Flanders Red? I have been talking about brewing one myself for the last 6 months, and could use any pointers if you have them. Currently I am building up different
Brettanomyces strains to ferment beers.
Dallas

I'm sorry Dallas I just saw this post.

I've got a recipe from the Wild Brews book that I've been working my way through. I plan to do this as soon as work slows down a bit. I think I'm going to go with the Wyeast Rosalare (sp?) blend. Then maybe throw in some dregs from a 529. That's where I'm at on it.

I know this is an old post, but after many visits to the blog, I just barely discovered the forum today

Just wondering if you ever got around to brewing your Flanders Red? I brewed my first attempt at this style about eight or so weeks ago, so it still has a long ways to go.

I basically followed the recipe from Brewing Classic Styles except I swapped out the listed hops for some aged homegrown hops. I went with Wyeast's Roeselare blend from the start. I've also pitched dregs from some Russian River sours. I'm hoping the finished product will be as tart and complex as some of the commercial sours out there.

Welcome to the forum.

I did brew this. It's been in the secondary for about 10 months now. I actually took a sample of it this past week. It's tarting up nicely, but might be just a bit thin. My thought right now is to brew up another batch and mash pretty warm to leave some body, then instead of using the Wyeast Rosalare blend exclusively, I'll pitch a big lacto starter and some clean ale yeast. Then I'll blend it together.

I might need to throw in some oak cubes as well.

Nice! Question for you, what are you fermenting it in and did you do anything special to ensure you got a little bit of oxygen permeation (e.g. an oak stopper)? I normally use a stainless conical or glass carboys, but I picked up a Better Bottle to dedicate to sours.

I didn't do anything special. I'd read a bit on Michael Tonsmeire's blog http://www.themadfermentationist.com and it seemed like I'd be okay just using a glass carboy. He did his first batch using an oak chair leg as a stopper I believe. Now I might pick up a better bottle and give that a shot. Let me know how that goes.

On a side note I never did get much of a pellicle.