Consecration Clone Recipe

So time for another long-term sour project. For this one, I took my clue from a clone kit available from MoreBeer.com, but made some variations to the recipe, and for reasons that will become apparent below, it's not likely to be an accurate clone of the target beer - Consecration, from Russian River Brewing.

This one may take about a year to eighteen months to be ready. The brewery's webpage says it is aged for 6-8 months, but I have heard that Roselare can take even longer to develop its full flavor.

Since this one takes so that long to be ready, it makes sense to brew a full batch. Most of the "work" associated with this one is storage, and since the beer will most likely improve with age, I don't have to worry about drinking it while fresh. So, this is my first 5 gallon batch.

Consecration Clone - 5 Gallon

11# Belgian Pilsner
1# Light malt extract
1# Brown Sugar
1# D-45 Candi syrup
8oz Acid Malt
4oz Carafa I
4oz Special B

.5 oz Styrian Goldings, 90min
1 oz Styrian Goldings, 30min
.5 oz Styrian Goldings, 1 min

Wyeast 1214 - Abbey Ale
Wyeast Roselare mix

2# black currants, secondary
2.5 oz Cabernet Sauvignon soaked oak cubs, secondary

Age ~ 1 year.

Mash at 158F, mash out, infuse with ~175F water for mashout temp of about 165F.

Expected OG / FG / IBUs: 1.071 / 1.018 / 16 / 6.9%

Brewed - 1/12/14

Hit my mash temps pretty well, both for the mash and the mash-out, but using my large square MLT, I realized that it has quite some dead space, so I was under-volume for the boil. As a result, I added about .75 gal to the boil in order to allow for boil-off over the course of 90 minutes.

The boil went fine, but at the end, the submersible sump-pump I've been using to push cool water through my chiller would not turn on. There seemed to be some type of electrical fault, as the power brick has a TEST / RESET button that wouldn't go to normal operation. Electricity and water should not be mixed. So instead, I filled a big grey bin full of cold water and put the brewpot in there. This was the same method I used before I got my chiller.

In any case, I left the beer like that at around 4pm, in the 40F weather. By around 10pm the beer was at 60F, so I transferred to the fermenter and pitched the WY1214. I got about 5.25 gallons. Unfortunately, I had not made a starter, although I had taken the yeast out of the fridge and popped the smack-pack earlier that day.

I took the fermenting bucket down to the basement where it was around 59F - 60F. That was probably too low. No bubbles on Monday afternoon, so I moved it to a warmer area where it was 62F. I didn't want it to get above 65F for the initial fermentation, in order to avoid hot alcohols, etc. from an overly vigorous fermentation in a higher-gravity wort.

1/114/14 - No signs of fermentation at all; even when I opened the bucket, I could not see any bubbles or krausen. So, thinking that the yeast had either fallen asleep or died or something, I just pitched the Roselare right in, even though that was not specified in the recipe. Oh well. I really didn't want the beer to get infected from a poor fermentation.

1/15/14 - Bubbling in the airlock, krausen forming. Yay!

2/5/14 - Transferred to a Better Bottle for secondary, but did not add currants or oak. There was the beginning of a pellicle starting to form when I opened the top of the bucket. The beer smelled good, and had a brownish appearance.  Did not take gravity reading. Placed in 68F-70F ambient air.

3/1/14 - Added the recycled yeast and a couple of oak cubes from my Flanders Red into the secondary. A few days later a brownish krausen seemed to appear on the surface of the beer. It has stayed there since.

3/31/14 - Added 2 pounds of organic raisins from Whole Foods. They had Zante currants, but on inspecting the ingredients I found that there was also peanut oil, vegetable oil, etc. in the container. I don't know why those were in there and I don't want oils in my beer. So I just used some raisins instead, which probably will have a fairly similar effect on the beer.

7/4/14 - Racked off the raisins into a tertiary container. Frustratingly, it was impossible to separate the raisins from the beer, resulting in about 1 gallon getting stuck and wasted. I am considering brewing a 1-gallon batch and starting a solera type thing.

6/11/15 - At some point a long time ago I did add some top-up beer. Bottled in mid May 15 with some wine yeast. A sample bottle tasted quite nice but was undercarbed. I hope I don't get bottle bombs. Now the bottles have pellicles, despite that there is (hopefully) very little sugar left for the microbes to ferment. Will open another bottle soon.