23B Flanders Red Ale
Flanders Red – 57L Barrel Project 2026
In fermenter OG1.053Grain bill
| Gladfield Vienna Malt | 2.25 kg | 30% |
| Gladfield Munich Malt | 2 kg | 26.7% |
| Gladfield Pilsner Malt | 1.5 kg | 20% |
| Unmalted Wheat | 0.8 kg | 10.7% |
| Gladfield Aurora Malt | 0.4 kg | 5.3% |
| Gladfield Redback Malt | 0.3 kg | 4% |
| Gladfield Dark Crystal Malt | 0.16 kg | 2.1% |
| Gladfield Shepherds Delight Malt | 0.08 kg | 1.1% |
Hop schedule
| Hop | 90 min |
|---|---|
| Pacific Gem | 11g |
Yeast
| Lallemand BRY-97 West Coast Ale | 16 g across the two Flanders Red batches |
| Matt's Mixed Wild Culture (the 'Other Half') | part of the ~22 L wild sour blended into the barrel |
| Rua Cultivar (Owen's Wild Workshop propagation) | part of the ~22 L wild sour blended into the barrel |
Water additions
| Calcium Chloride | half tsp in mash |
| Lactic acid (88%) | None added — post-chill wort pH measured 4.9 against a 5.2 target. |
About This Beer
Owen’s 57 litre wild sour barrel. A clean BRY-97 Flanders Red blended in the wood with the combined wild sour from his earlier split-fermentation project, then left to age long in oak.
Pre-used French oak whiskey barrel from Villard, via Dave Bell at Garage Project’s Wild Workshop, the same delivery that brought Matt his Lark foeder. Pre-fermented clean in all-rounders rather than run as a primary inside the wood, so the barrel is for aging and souring only.
Dark Crystal and Shepherds Delight stand in for Special B, giving the deep dark-fruit colour a red wants. Hopping is minimal, a single early charge, just enough bittering to keep the wort hospitable to the barrel culture without fighting the funk.
The souring blend
The wild character comes from Owen’s Wild Sour, Split Fermentation, which ran one Pilsner and wheat wort across two fermenters: half of Matt’s mixed wild culture in one, and Owen’s own Rua cultivar propagated from Wild Workshop bottle dregs in the other.
Once both halves had fermented clean and sour with good pellicles, each was tasted for off-flavours and then combined into a single fermenter, with a 1 L medium-DME charge added to throw CO2 and purge the oxygen picked up in the transfer. That combined sour, roughly 22 litres, is the souring engine.
Brew day
Two identical batches, step mashed with a protein rest before saccharification and mash out, on a 90 minute boil.
Post-chill wort pH measured 4.9 against a 5.2 target, so no lactic was added.
Pre-barrel primary
Six days each in a 30 L all-rounder on BRY-97, a clean cold-tolerant strain. No diacetyl rest and no cold crash, because a little residual BRY-97 activity is wanted to scrub oxygen once the beer is in the barrel. Trub from both all-rounders deliberately left behind, to avoid promoting too much Saccharomyces fermentation in the wood.
On the vessels: the “dirty” and “clean” all-rounders are both clean and sanitised. Dirty just means that PET all-rounder has previously held wild Brett and lactic bacteria, and since PET cannot be cleaned above about 55°C it can never be fully decontaminated, so it stays on sour duty.
Filling the barrel, 21 June 2026
Hot-washed at the Wild Workshop two weeks earlier. Filled with ~85°C water first to swell and rehydrate the staves, then drained. Every transfer a closed 2 to 3 psi CO2 push through a line into the bung.
| Source | Into barrel | Into reserve |
|---|---|---|
| Flanders Red, “dirty” AR | 24 L | 0 L |
| Flanders Red, “clean” AR | 14 L | 8 L |
| Wild sour | 19 L | 3 L |
| Total | 57 L | 11 L |
The wild sour went in last, topping the barrel to the very top. Airlocks on both the barrel and the reserve all-rounder, so activity can be watched in the all-rounder. Both left at least three to four months before the first check, against a typical 12 to 18 month mixed-fermentation age.
Rehydrating the staves before filling is worth noting against what happened on Matt’s Lark barrel, which went in dry, wept for weeks and took several litres into the wood.
Lineage
- Wild Sour, Split Fermentation (February 2026): the source of the barrel’s wild souring blend
- This brew: clean Flanders Red carrying the wild sour into long oak aging
- Matt’s Foeder Pale Sour, Lark Barrel: the parallel barrel from the same Wild Workshop delivery