Category: The Mad Fermentationist

A couple months ago I brewed 10 gallons of wort that fell somewhere between schwarzbier, dunkel, and bock (92% Weyermann Floor-Malted Bohemian Dark, 4% Weyermann CaraMunich II, and 4% Briess Blackprinz mashed at 158F to 1.058). I fermented half with 34/70 slurry harvested from my first LoDO Pilsner in an attempt to create a schwarzdunkelbock. The result was wonderfully bready-malty with a smooth chocolate-roast. It was so good in fact that I didn’t get around to taking formal tasting notes before it kicked… conversely I recently dumped the last couple gallons of that Pilsner.

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I found myself with an extra six gallons of low-gravity saison wort, so I decided to ferment it with a vial of East Coast Yeast Bugfarm 15. I was especially intent to trial this iteration of the annual super-blend because it included an isolate of Kloeckera apiculata, a microbe that Vinnie Cilurzo mentioned as a suspect for the citrus-forward character of the spontaneous fermentation of Russian River Beatification!

The result was certainly more lemon and pineapple than funk, but it lacked excitement or depth at a year old. I bottled two gallons as is to see how it evolves (tasting to follow eventually). I racked half a gallon onto wild prickly pears, a gallon onto muscat grapes, and split the rest between fresh and frozen mangoes. The fresh was 1.5 lbs of sliced ataulfo, the frozen was two pounds of 365 Organic Mango Chunks.

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