Out of the Bottle: A beer five years in the making

In late 2015, shortly after this blog went on its long hiatus, I brewed my first Kriek Lambic. Five years and a lot of waiting later, it's bottled and ready to drink.

Just being able to start this beer took awhile. To create my aged hops, I took an ounce of Willamette leaf hops from 2014 and stuck them in a warm furnace room for a year. That hopefully dried them out enough to provide little to no bitterness in my beer.

The beer itself follows a pretty straightforward recipe. My grains are a 2:1 mix of Pils malt and Flaked Wheat. The hops are the aforementioned aged Willamette. Cherries are a mix of sweet and tart whole cherries from my local supermarket. Finally, the yeasts are Wyeast's Lambic Blend for fermentation, with Red Star's Premier Blanc champagne yeast added at bottling time.

Before I dive into how the beer came out, here's the full recipe for the five gallon brew.

Grains:
6lbs Castle Pilsen
3lbs Briess Flaked Wheat

Hops:
1oz Aged Willamette Leaf Hops: 60 min

Extras:
1oz Oak Cubes (Secondary Fermentation)
3lbs Sweet and Tart Cherry Blend (Tertiary Fermentation)

Total Boil Time:
90 Min

Yeast:
Wyeast 3278 Belgian Lambic Blend - Fermentation

Red Star Premier Blanc - Bottling

Mash Schedule:
Saccharification Rest: 149F for 60 min
Mashout: 168F for 15 min

Original Gravity:
1.049
Final Gravity:
1.004

IBU: 7 (guesstimate)
SRM Color: 6

Fermentation Schedule:
3 Weeks Primary
24 Months Secondary
36 Months Tertiary with Fruit
2 Months Bottle Conditioning

So after five years of waiting, how did it turn out?

Tart. Very tart. That's what first hit me.

The cherries add just enough sweet flavor and aroma to counteract all of that puckering tartness. As I had hoped, there's zero hop presence. I'll definitely save that aging trick for the future.

While my beer is not something I'd drink quickly, it does make for a compelling companion on a lazy afternoon. I find that a single glass can last me several hours, even though the ABV is just south of 6%. Usually, a beer of that strength lasts me an hour at most.

My overall impression is that of an oddly refreshing brew that's quite similar in profile to a Rose' Champagne. I definitely have to be in the right mood for it, as it's not the first beer I'd reach for after mowing the lawn. But it makes an excellent diversion from more typical beer styles.

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