Fermented Peach Golden Sour

In this hotel, in addition to the brewing fermentations, we also venture into other fermentations. We haven’t produced penicillin from yeast yet, but with time we will. A lot of bread has already been made (without ever letting it spoil), garlic fermented in honey, sauerkraut, kimchi, onions and we even fermented the tomatoes (the cherry ones, no pun intended). And of course… fruit. In this case, Peaches and its close relatives.

Peaches and their relatives are the main stars of this beer, like that boring family dinner. Combining these stone fruits with the beer world, especially with sour beers, has been a successful and long relationship. While the English and Germans traditionally ran away from this – on the one hand because the purity law did not allow it, on the other hand the desire to drink from ever larger cups and mugs did not make it any easier – in the case of the Belgian school the use of fruit in spontaneous beer, such as the cherry, is already historic. The incorporation of peaches is more recent, but nowadays is quite common. “Across the pond”, the modern American Florida Weisse and the Brazilian Catharina Sour made the fruit not an accessory, but a mandatory component. Taking this relationship between fruit and beer even further.

To do this, the simplest approach would be to go down some of these newer paths, but we wouldn’t be true to our sane brewing madness if we did so. And so, an idea was born, out of a fusion of fermentations. A true mixed fermentation mixture! Sorry for the redundancy, but it was necessary.

For this beer, we made the classic golden sour recipe. 90 minute boil (at home it gives us time to be probably engaged in fun activities) no big gimmicks, just a handful of old hops 30 minutes from the end and yeast nutrients near the end. After the wort was cooled, it was poured on top of the raw ale yeast cake that we had previously made, to carry out a new fermentation at 30º C. As you have already noticed, with the passing months we put less effort into the wort production, there are more important tasks.

As for the peaches, more than just using them in the beer, we are going to ferment them, an adventure already thought of for some time, which now found its space to be put into practice. We had two possible approaches for the peach fermentation, and of course, we couldn’t decide on either one. So we did both. Consider this sort of a mixed grill, or we would say, “mixed ferment”. Sorry for the pun of incredible bad taste…

The first batch of peach and its pitted relatives went for a lactic fermentation approach. In this fermentation process, the bacteria naturally present in the fruit consumes the available sugars and produces lactic acid during this process. The end result is super healthy (take advantage of this excuse to justify your beer drinking habits…), filled with probiotics and maintaining nutrients during the fermentation process. And it’s not difficult to make, a quantity of fruit, mixed with 2% of salt (2% of the fruit’s weight), put everything in a sealed container and give it time. In our case there were 7 kg of peaches of various species (Paraguayan, nectarine and apricots) cut into slices together with the salt in the container whose headspace was also purged with cO2 – it probably wasn’t, but it’s good to say so. White healthy lies, who never?

The other peaches went into a honey fermentation. This centuries-old food, which contains so much microorganisms and other properties that enhance fermentation. In bread, for example, it is often used as an accelerator for sourdough cultures. This approach is much simpler: just soak the sliced ​​peaches in a generous amount of honey, and let nature do its work. In our case, 1 kg. of peaches soaked in 1 kg. of honey. A few days later, some small bubbles are visible, the first signs of fermentation. By osmosis the peaches release liquid, the honey becomes thinner, allowing the microorganisms to work without the weight of osmotic pressure. The container they are in already makes a “pop” when its opened, a sound that now comes to signify the contentment of having a fermentation process going on.

Honey, sweet peach honey

After completing the 3 fermentations, it’s time to put everything together, putting all the beer and peaches in the same space, and leave them to be for a few more weeks. This give the opportunity for a re-fermentation of everything together to start. The idea is to get the lactic acidity component from the fermentation of the peaches, along with the salt and let the beer soak from there. In between, someone thought it was a good idea to add some dregs from a mixed-fermented beer that was drunk that day. Just good ideas…

Fast forward three weeks on and the end result is too salty… and so we have to blend the beer. And that’s why it’s handy to keep a solera Saison around, for those “opportunities” where it can easily solve a challenge. After some debate and experimentation we arrived at the final version of this beer.

Proper blending tryouts glassware

Packaging made with priming pointing to about 3 volumes of cO2 and packed in containers of not very usual dimensions for us, but this one was special and for special occasions… To those who drank it at a certain beer mecca in the North of Portugal, thank you and sorry for destroying your taste buds with so much salt, but on a celebration day it doesn’t hurt.

Perhaps one of the craziest beers we’ve had the opportunity to turn into reality. How about this style descriptor for the label:

Imperial Peach Fermented Honey Coupage Gose with Naturally Fermented Peaches, Nectarines & Apricots with Brettanomyces Randomenxis and local flora.

Don’t worry, around here it’s a new year but the madness continues.
Happy New Year!


Golden Sour com Pêssegos


Batch: 20L
Total Cereal: 4,91 Kg.
Original Gravity: 1.048
IBU: just a few
Boil time: 90 minutes

Cereal

75% – 3.7 kg. Pilsner
10% – 0.5 kg. Oats
10% – 0.5 kg. Wheat
3% – 0.15 kg. Aromatic
2% – 0.10 kg. Crystal T-50

Hops

Olds hops, fridge aged (pellet) @ 30 min.

Extras

Millions of peaches, peaches for me
Millions of peaches, peaches for free
Millions of peaches, peaches for me
Millions of peaches, peaches for free
Look out

Yeast

RawAle yeast cake, some Solera Saison, bottle dregs… You know, circular economy.

Water

Ca: 60
Mg: 12
Na: 21
Cl: 80
SO4: 40
SO4 to Cl Ratio: 0,5

Mash

Protein Rest – 15 min @ 52ºC
1ª Saccharification – 30 min @ 63ºC
2ª Saccharification – 30 min @ 72ºC

pH@30 min 5.36

Observações

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