Peeterman – A Happy Accident

I was scouring back though my brewing books trying to get motivation for a recipe, something different.  In Brewing with Wheat, by Stan Hieronymus, I came across a recipe for a Peeterman, a type of wheat beer.  It was bigger, sometimes darker and usually drunk fairly young.  It was similar to a Blanche de Louvain where “One third of the wort was brewed with hops.”

In that same section Hieronymus discusses how the beers from around Leuven (Louvain), Belgium were made.  One third of the wort was boiled with hops and the other two-thirds were ran straight into the fermenters.  These beers were tart to sour and so I thought, that this might be a perfect chance to make a modern take on this beer through kettle souring a portion.  I wanted to make a beer that was sour, but not too sour, and that didn’t have the chance to pick up any nasties. 

My idea was that I would make the wort, run off a third, and boil it with enough hops to contribute ~10 IBU to the entire volume.  The remaining two-thirds I would run off into a separate kettle and sour.  My idea of a modern take was to pre-boil the two-thirds wort for a few minutes and then pitch a 3 GoodBelly shots (Lactobacillus Plantarum) and let this sour for two days at 95*F.  Back to the first third, I treated it just as I would any of my beers, boiling it with the hops, cooling it to pitching temperatures, and then pitching yeast.  I would let this beer ferment for 2 days while the other portion was souring, as a kind of starter akin to the sake process, except on the second day I would boil the soured wort for 15 minutes and pour it back into the fermenting portion.  Get all of that?  It might take a flow chart…

My recipe looked like this:

Recipe: Peeterman

Style: Witbier

TYPE: All Grain

Date: 31 Mar 16

Batch Size (fermenter): 5.50 gal  

Estimated OG: 1.065 SG

Estimated Color: 5.5 SRM

Estimated IBU: 10.5 IBUs

Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %

Boil Time: 75 Minutes

Ingredients:

6.00 ml           Lactic Acid (Mash 60.0 mins)

13.0 oz           Rice Hulls (0.0 SRM)                       4.9 %        

7 lbs 1.4 oz    Pilsner (2 Row) Bel (1.7 SRM)        42.8 %       

7 lbs 1.4 oz    Wheat, Raw (2.0 SRM)                    42.8 %       

15.1 oz           Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM)                    5.7 %        

7.6 oz             Aromatic Malt (26.0 SRM)              2.9 %        

2.5 oz             Buckwheat, Raw (2.0 SRM)            1.0 %        

16.00 g           Crystal [6.00 %] - Boil 75.0 min     10.5 IBUs    

0.50 tsp          Yeast Nutrient (Boil 10.0 mins)

1.0 pkg           Belgian Wheat Yeast (Wyeast Labs #3942)

Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Batch Sparge

Mash In   Add 21.92 qt of water at 163.6 F        150.0 F       60 min       

Sparge: Batch sparge with 2 steps (Drain mash tun , 3.52gal) of 185.0 F water

Fermentation started at 68 degrees and finished at 73.

The execution of this recipe was a disaster.  Like anything for the first time, I was running around trying to figure out what the hell I needed to do next.  I had also convinced myself that I could do both batches at the same time.  This led to a couple of errors on brew day, not oxygenating the wort and totally missing my numbers.

Missing the oxygen didn’t turn out to be a big deal, but I had never used this much raw wheat in a batch, and I totally missed my numbers.  What was supposed to be a big, sweet finishing beer, ended up at 1.043 preboil and 1.059 in the smaller one-third portion.  By calculation, I figured I would have somewhere around a 1.050 OG beer.  I chalked it up to a lesson, and moved on. 

From there the beer went on great.  The sour portion acidified down to 3.5 pH by strip, which is a little better than measuring it with my tongue.  The yeast in the clean portion ripped through the wort and was already slowing down when I combined the two beers.  It finished out nicely, albeit a little higher, at 1.012, approximately 5.0% ABV, and 3.6 pH. 

So even though this was probably nothing like a Peeterman, it turned out a mighty fine beer.  More so than other kettle soured beers that I have tasted and made, this beer had a lot of character from the Saccharomyces yeast.  This was a nice welcome to a beer that could have just been sour.  The finished beer had a good sour finish, but you could still catch that nice Belgian character with a bit of bubble gum and stone fruit.  I could not detect any major flaws, but as the beer became warm there was an interesting phenolic note, that I don’t know if I could describe.  No one else who tasted the beer was able to detect it.  If there was anything I would describe it as, it would be like a burnt rubber or plastic, but very, very faint. 

The lesson I’ve drawn from this experience is one of blending, or you might call it portioning.  It might be the best way to create a sour beer.  Aside from making a separate acid beer and blending it with others, I think that splitting a beer like this makes it a bit easier depending on your system, process, and space available.  You don’t have as much control as you would blending an acid beer, but you could be pretty exacting once you worked the percentages out for your particular desires or recipe.  I will definitely do this again in the future, possibly leaving the sour portion un-boiled.  Maybe I’ll even do a cereal mash for all that raw wheat!