Rood BugFarm 2016

Today I'm brewing up another take on The Rare Barrel's red base beer, so essentially the same recipe as my Rood Mélange 2016 a few months back. The main differences on this version is I'm mashing higher at 160F and for the yeast, I got my hands on some ECY01 Bug Farm. I've been wanting to try this yeast as well as ECY20 BugCounty, but they are difficult to come by. Whenever this blend pops up for sale, it usually sells out in a matter of hours. This time I didn't hesitate and managed to order a bottle from love2brew.com before they ran out.

6.0# 13 oz Dingemans Pilsner Malt

1.0# 3 oz Weyermann Pale Wheat Malt
7 oz Crisp Light Crystal Malt 60L
7 oz Flaked Oats (lauter)
7 oz Special Aromatic Malt
7 oz Spelt Malt
1.5-ish oz Carafa III (lauter, for color adjustment)
14.0g Aged Debittered Hops (60 min)
0.5 Whirlfloc
Wyeast Yeast Nutrient
ECY01 BugFarm

Mash at 160F for 60 mins, 90 min boil, ferment at room temp. Because of the lactobacillus in the blend, no aeration.

Brewing Notes
One issue today...at the end of the sparge, I emptied the little bit of unused sparge water into a bucket. I also disconnected what I thought was the hose from the mash, when in fact it was the hose for pumping the wort from the mash into the boil kettle. This siphoned a couple gallons of wort into the bucket with the water. So...I added that to the contents of the bucket back into the BK (along with the extra water). I ended up boiling much harder than normal in order to evaporate the extra gallon of water. I still ended up with a bit more volume than I was planning on (about 5.5.) but it got me in the ballpark. No other issues to speak of. I chilled to about 64F and pitched the BugFarm. I'll let it free-rise to room temp which should be right about 70F.

Update 4/3/2016
Pitched yeast yesterday afternoon at about 3:30PM and this morning fermentation is taking off with about an inch of krausen.

Update 7/18/2017
Pulled a sample tonight and the pH on this beer is down to 3.38. The acidity is a little different compared to some of my other sour reds...definitely seems more lemon-like than pie cherry. Flavor profile isn't quite as complex either...not bad, but I was hoping for something more. I think this one would definitely benefit from some blending.