Berliner Weisse - 1st Tasting

Plain

Appearance – Budweiser pale-yellow with bubbles coursing through it. Nice thick white head with audible crackling from the bubbles bursting.

Smell – Aroma has a strong wheat note and some sour/funk in the nose.

Taste – Plenty of smooth lactic acid. There is a remnant of the Pils malt (or possibly DMS) in the after taste, this fades after the first half of my sample. Not a particularly complex flavor, sort of like a sour hard apple cider.

Mouthfeel – Thin with prickly carbonation. Very quenching on a hot summer afternoon.

Drinkability & Notes – Very easy to drink, but that aftertaste takes away from it a bit. If I had it to do over I would probably give the beer a short boil to drive off some of the DMS/Pils flavor (or use a higher ratio of wheat to Pils malt).

Homemade Blueberry Syrup

Appearance– Deep purple/red with a pretty pink head. Head retention is not as good as the plain sample, but it still stays around for a bit. A few blueberry seeds are visible at the bottom of the glass.

Smell – Light blueberry pie, with just a hint of that wheat aroma coming through.

Taste – Much smoother flavor, almost none of the Pils malt character from the plain version. The blueberry is there, but it is not as strong as I expected. The sweetness really changes the perception of the beer.

Mouthfeel – Adding the syrup knocked out some of the carbonation and boosted the sweetness, particularly linger in the aftertaste. I liked the snappier, crisper finish on the plain one, but this one certainly has the edge in complexity.

Drinkability & Notes – Tasty and again very refreshing, but I would have liked more blueberry flavor and less sweetness. I think the fermentation of the raw blueberries that I'll be adding to my lambic will result in a more pleasing beer (but probably not as refreshing). I bet this would be a terrific gateway beer to give to people at a summer BBQ.

Raspberry Syrup (1 tbls)

Appearance – Looks like ruby red grapefruit juice, with a thin white head.

Smell – Light raspberries with some of the lactic sourness poking through.

Taste – Sweeter than the blueberry version, even with less syrup. Tastes rather flat/dull, there is some raspberry, but the sweetness deadens the rest of the flavors. The sweetness lingers leaving the tongue with a slightly unpleasant coated feeling.

Mouthfeel – Carbonation seems sharper than in the blueberry version, but the body seems a bit thinner.

Drinkability & Notes – Solid, but the not terrific. My Berliner Weisse with the raspberry syrup went over very well with people at a party a few weeks back, definitely a good option if you are looking to make something along the lines of Lindemans Framboise (sweet/sour, and fruity).

Woodruff Syrup (1 tbls)

Appearance – St. Patrick's Day green body with a touch of green in the head. Head retention is sub par.

Smell – It smells like childhood, some weird combination of Lucky Charms and Play-doh. Basically no evidence of the wheat or acid of the base beer.

Taste – Sweet Luck Charms marshmallows with some wheat and sourness. The sweetness seems less intense than the raspberry, but it still lingers unpleasantly.

Mouthfeel – Moderate carbonation, slightly sticky body, but it finishes rather clean.

Drinkability & Notes – It is a interesting flavor to be sure, but I'd be hard pressed to finish off a pint of this.

Overall thoughts
The commercial syrups are worth a try if you have never had them before, but neither of the ones I found at a local German Cafe really give you a great flavor and they will both add too much sweetness to preserve the quenching acidity. There are a world of other homemade syrups that might be good in this beer. Sure its a tasty/refreshing style on its own, but it is also a beautiful clean canvass for other homemade syrup options.

Lambic the Real King of Funk

Lambics are probably the most widely known and iconic of the sour/funky beers. Spontaneously fermented by microbes that live in the Belgian air and in the wood of the brewery, and then aged for years before consumption, they are to funk what the Double IPA is to hops.

In many ways it is the most unique style to brew, with nearly ever step diverging from standard modern brewing procedures. I certainly didn't follow the traditional methods as closely as some people do, but I made an attempt to at least carry on the spirit of each step.

The traditional grist is composed of approximately 70% pilsener malt and 30% raw wheat. I used flaked raw wheat because that is what the local homebrew store had, and I added a bit of Munich malt for some added maltiness because my shorter mash and boil would not develop the same level of melanoidins the traditional method would have.

Traditionally a turbid mash is used which includes up to ten steps that aim to preserve a complex blend of dextrins and starches which the various strains of yeast and bacteria will feed on during the long fermentation. I did a simpler procedure, called the Wyeast Mash from Wild Brews, which is a variant on a cereal mash, boiling all the wheat with 10% of the barley before adding the remainder of the malt and stabilizing at a high saccharification temperature of 158. In either method the sparge water is extremely hot to aid in the extraction (tannins and other unpleasant molecules which are extracted and would normally result in an unpleasant beer are either consumed by the microbes or fall out of solution during maturation).

Traditionally the long hot sparge results in such a dilute wort that a 3-4 hour long boil is needed to condense it to around 1.050. In my case I did not have the pot size or heat source required for such a long boil, so I collected 7 gallons and boiled for 2 hours. My original gravity was over 1.070 (with an amazing 90% efficiency), but I had to top off with boiled and chilled water a couple times to account for blowoff, evaporation, and sampling, so my effective OG is about 1.058.

Traditionally huge amounts (~1 oz per gallon) of aged hops are boiled with the wort. As hops age they loose the alpha acids that isomerize to give beer its bitterness, but their preservative power is saved. This preservative power allows them to fight off the more aggressive microbes that would make the beer harshly acidic or funky. I agree that this is a necessary part of the brewing process if you are spontaneously fermenting, but I don't see the point in an inoculated lambic like the one I brewed. When you are boiling the wort, quickly chilling, and then adding the microbes of your choice, it doesn't seem like there is any more chance of unpleasant "infection" than in any other sour beer (most of which do not use copious amounts of aged hops).

Unlike every other style lambics spend years in the same primary fermenter. The Brettanomyces uses the autolysing (rupturing) Saccharomyces cells for nutrition during the prolonged souring period. Traditionally the fermenter is a used oak barrel that has had most of the flavor stripped out of it already. The oxygen that slowly diffuses in through the wood aids some of their microbes as they slowly work. To mimic this I used a toasted oak peg stuck through the neck of the carboy, I found several problems with this method as I discussed in the past.

After the blender deems a batch of lambic to be complete, it is either blended with younger and/or older batches to make a gueuze, bottled alone to be an unblended lambic, or aged with fruit for months to make a fruit lambic (Cherries - Kriek, and Raspberries -Framboise being the two most popular).

I started my my first attempt at the style nearly two years ago, and it is still sitting in primary. The top photo is what it looked like in December 2006 with a nice thick pellicle, and the bottom photo is from April 2008 with the pellicle beginning to reform after it was damaged. I am planning on priming and bottling half the batch this summer and aging the rest on blueberries. I figure what better way to draw a distinction between it and the traditional Belgian examples than to use a traditionally American fruit (apologies to Cantillon Blåbær Lambik).

Lambic Mark 1

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.50
Total Grain (Lbs): 10.00
Anticipated OG: 1.059
Anticipated SRM: 4.2
Anticipated IBU: 12.7
Brewhouse Efficiency: 90 %
Wort Boil Time: 120 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
----------------------
6.00 lbs. Belgian Pilsener
3.00 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat
1.00 lbs. German Munich Malt

Hops
-----
1.50 oz. Czech Saaz @ 115 min.

Yeast
-----
WYeast 3278 Lambic Blend

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Wayland

Calcium(Ca): 31.0 ppm
Magnesium(Mg): 6.2 ppm
Sodium(Na): 20.0 ppm
Sulfate(SO4): 36.0 ppm
Chloride(Cl): 25.0 ppm
biCarbonate(HCO3): 61.5 ppm

pH: 7.00

Mash Schedule
-------------
Wyeast Lambic Mash: See Notes

Notes
-----
Brewed 9/2/06 with help from Greg F

Wyeast mash from Wild Brews:
Wheat and 11 oz of crushed barley mixed with 4.25 gallons of 143 degree water that had 2 g gypsum and 3 g CaCl. Mixture boiled for 30 minutes. 1 Gallon of cold water and remainder of the grain to get to 158 degrees. Rested for 105 minutes, heat applied and stirred several times to keep temp in the 150's. Grain strained into the cooler with 4 oz rice hulls and sparged first with the extra liquid from the mash, then 200 degree water with 1 tsp each gypsum and CaCl (scale's battery broke, so no weights). 7 gallons collected, final runnings were still 1.025 (not as low as tradition, but I didn't think I could take more wort and still get a good boil.)

2 year old hops 3.3 AA listed, adjusted down to 2.5 AA, left open to the summer air for 1 month prior to brewing. Boiled down to 4.5 gallons to allow for primary in a 5 gallon carboy, intended to do a longer boil, but got better evaporation than expected.

OG 1.072 (pretty high, but it will get topped up with water) Cooled to 70 degrees, strained out hops, hit with 20 seconds pure O2 and pitched a room temperature smack-pack of Wyeast lambic blend. Put into fridge at 65 degrees. No activity the next morning.

9/4/06 Gave it a shake to get the yeast moving, it worked with a thin krausen soon rising.

9/6/06 It stinks (sulfur), the brownish krausen is still at only a half inch or so and the temp strip reads 69 degrees.

9/10/06 Krausen completely fallen, so I topped up with about a gallon of boiled and chilled water.Topped with oak chair leg, toasted and soaked/boiled, then used to top carboy after primary hopefully this will transfer oxygen into carboy, let co2 out give the Brett a place to live and impart a small amount of flavor. Fridge left at 65 for extended maturation, lots of CO2 still being released, visible bubbles and audible hissing noise.

12/24/06 Looking good, except some more of the beer escaped through the wooden peg. Nice funky krausen going on in the carboy, the trub at the bottom appears to be smaller than before.

8/12/07 Took out the wooden peg to get a sample. It was so hard to remove that I decided to just go with an airlock for the rest of maturation. The flavor is still not very sour, but it is certainly funky.

12/25/07 Moved from the cool closet off the garage to the closet in my old bedroom. This broke up the remnants of the pellicle.

4/12/08 A new thin pellicle seems to be slowly forming.

My plan is to bottle half this summer, and age the other half on some blueberries.

Here is some info I dug up on the Cantillon Blueberry Lambic:
Cantillon Blåbær Lambik
"The beer has actually been made two times, first in August 2005 where 25kg blueberries were send to the brewery for the making of 110 litres of blueberry lambic. Unfortunately the berries were in the barrel for too long making half of the batch go sour (!). Only the part of the beer that wasn't in direct contact with the berries turned out good, leaving only 50 bottles..!!
Too few to put on the market. So in December 2006 Jeppe and his wife drove to Belgium with 50kg of blueberries for the making of the second batch (this time 225 litres!) The beer fermented for approx. 1½ month before getting bottled in January."

The volume to weight quoted translates to 4.66 lbs for my 2.5 gallons. I am hoping to put the beer onto blueberries July 18th, and bottle around a month later.

7/18/08 Blended the beer 4:1 with my 1 year old Flanders Pale ale to help cut the strong acidity. Then bottled half of it with 3/4 cup of light DME. I didn't add any extra yeast as the younger beer should have enough viable cells to carbonate the beer. The other half of the batch was racked onto 4.4 lbs of local blueberries that I briefly froze to help break down the cell walls.

8/11/08 The blueberry half is delicious, but still too sweet at 1.010 to bottle. It should be ready to go by this winter. The plain bottles haven't carbonated yet, but I expected it to take awhile.

9/06/08 1st tasting of the plain half.

12/26/08 Bottled the blueberry portion with 1/2 cup of table sugar and some 71B-1122 (wine yeast), looking for spritzy carbonation.

6/16/09 1st tasting of the blueberry half.

How often do you try to brew a BJCP classic style?

I don't brew - 2 (1%)

Never - 30 (23%)

Occasionally - 45 (35%)

Usually - 44 (34%)

Always - 6 (4%)

No surprises on this one, not many people who visit the blog are brewing style-guideline-conforming beer all that often. I’d put myself in the “Occasionally” category, I certainly do it, but on considerably less than half of my brews. I seem to go through phases, sometimes brewing a few in a row "to style", and sometime going off the beaten path for six or seven brews.

I think style guidelines serve a purpose, particularly in guiding new brewers towards making drinkable beer and in helping seasoned brewers sharpen their skills. That said, I think people generally do too much brewing to style, and not enough brewing to flavor. Many more commercial breweries are brewing to what they think their customers want to drink, than are brewing for styles/competitions, so why do so many homebrewers seem to be fixated on styles?

After judging at the Spirit of Free Beer competition last week (my first time), I was amazed just how poor most of the entries were. Not only did most have severe off-flavors (medicinal and fusel being the two most popular) but also plain old not to style (a pale/golden Dubbel for example). I took the combined Belgian and French Ale and Sour Beer category with my Berliner Weisse, and scored a 37 with my Alderwood Smoked Porter. The only stinker of the three I entered was my IPA, which I don’t think I am being delusional calling much better than a 26.

Aging Sour Beers in Better Bottles

About a week ago a bottled my first sour beer that had been aged in a Better Bottle. It was the Temptation clone that Seth and I brewed back in November. First I'll say the aroma of the uncarbonated beer was outstanding, deliciously funky in that magical Russian River way.

The interesting thing is that the wild yeast and/or bacteria formed tiny little colonies all over the plastic, it was difficult to see when there was beer in there, but once it was emptied it was clear. My assumption is that the microbes are acting just like when they live in the oak of a barrel, scavenging the oxygen as it diffuses in.

I think it is very good sign for the viability of this method, and if the aroma of the beer is any indication this may be one of the best batches I have done so far.

Don't expect a full tasting of this one for a few months, but it is going to be hard to wait too long before I crack one of these open.

Alternate Hopping Strategies with Basic Brewing Radio

James at Basic Brewing Radio was kind enough to invite me on his podcast once again. This time to discuss interesting ways and places to add hops to a beer other than the standard “hops at the start of the boil for bitterness, hops in the middle for flavor, and hops at the end for aroma”

Click here to hear the interview.

The discussion focused on three of my batches:

“No hops in the boil” IPA, which had hops in just about every conceivable spot except the boil, including the mash, sparge, wort heating, flameout, and secondary.

Hop-Bursted Barleywine, which had a healthy dose of a hop blend added every 5 minutes for the last 35 minutes of the boil.

Decoction Hopped Berliner Weisse, which had hops in the mash during the decoction, but was not boiled. This beer recently earned me my first ribbon with a category win at the 2008 Spirit of Free Beer last Saturday (It was the first time I had entered a big competition since September 2005).

We also briefly touched on hop teas, and bottle hopping.

The episode has a different feel from the ones I have done in the past because it was just James and I, not the whole gang. I probably won't be on again until this fall when we are planning a big episode on blending beers.

Group "Leftovers" Barleywine

Back in October 2007 a few friends and I got together to brew a “leftovers“ parti-gyle beer. We all brought along whatever partial bags of specialty grains and hops we had leftover from previous batches. We laid everything out on a table and went to work designing a recipe.

After a bit of haggling we came up with a grain bill that everyone was happy with, using a range of different base malts with a few different crystal malts for color and complexity plus some flaked wheat just because. We used just the first runnings from the mash. After the wort for this beer was out of the mash tun, we added sparge water along with some dark malts. After sitting for 15 minutes we ran out enough wort to make 5 gallons of a 1.055 Porter-esque brew which we hopped with English hops.

For the Barleywine we took all the American hops and mixed them together in a big bowl. Starting at 30 minutes we added a handful (~1.5 oz) of this hop blend every 5 minutes, a technique known as hop bursting. The idea is that with such a huge quantity of hops near the end of the boil the wort will be saturated with iso-alpha acids making a bittering addition unnecessary. We forgot the Whirlfloc tablet until flame-out, so we added it and boiled 5 extra minutes. That is the reason the hop schedule starts at 35 minutes and there is no 5 minute addition.

Below is the result, somewhere between a Doppelbock, an American Barleywine, and an English Barleywine. Fresh it almost tasted like a double IPA, but now with 6 months of age it tastes like an over hopped English Barleywine. Hopefully with some age it will mellow out into a regular English Barleywine.

Big Brew Day Barleywine

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 18.74
Anticipated OG: 1.092
Anticipated SRM: 19.4
Anticipated IBU: 149.2
Brewhouse Efficiency: 68 %
Wort Boil Time: 80 Minutes

Grain/Extract/Sugar
---------------------
4.70 lbs. American Pale Malt
4.25 lbs. Belgian Pilsener
3.00 lbs. Golden Promise
2.60 lbs. Vienna Malt
2.00 lbs. Munich Malt (dark)
0.65 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat
0.52 lbs. Crystal 120L
0.48 lbs. Special B Malt
0.28 lbs. Special Roast Malt
0.26 lbs. Crystal 60L

Hops
-------
1.50 oz. Mix @ 35 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 25 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 20 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 15 min.
1.50 oz. Mix @ 10 min.
1.00 oz. Mix @ 0 min.

Extras
---------
1.00 Whirlfloc Tablet @ 5 Min.(boil)

Yeast
-----
WYeast 1028 London Ale

Mash Schedule
-------------
60 min @ 151

Notes
-----
Brewed 10/11/07 With Scott, Josh and James @ Scott's

Recipe made on spot from all our leftover grain and hops.

This was the first runnings, hop bursted with a mix of:
2.50 oz Chinook [13.00 %]
0.25 oz Simcoe [13.00 %]
2.00 oz Summitt [17.00 %]
0.80 oz Warrior [15.00 %]
0.37 oz Cascade [5.50 %]
0.37 oz Nugget [13.00 %]
1.00 oz Amarillo [8.50 %]
2.80 oz Centennial [10.00 %]

12/01/07 Bottled aiming for 2.5 volumes of CO2. It has a huge hop flavor and a solid malt backbone. FG around 1.028, just under 70% AA.

Very hoppy for the first few months, almost like a very malty DIPA, then around February it took on a much maltier/smoother flavor.

5/12/08 Tasted as part of the Alternative Hopping Basic Brewing Radio Episode.

11/03/08 First tasting for the blog.

5/28/17 Scott and I drank the bottle I'm aware of. A bit of oxidation, but it was a nice rich aged-out American barleywine. The hop aroma was long gone, but there was still a balancing bitterness.

3rd Year Hops are Sprouting

I just got some photos of my third year hops (Cascade on the right, Willamette on the left). It looks like they are both strong and healthy, with the Cascade pulling out to an early lead. I am hoping for enough of a harvest to do a full batch this fall (which really means that I am hoping that my parents take the time to water them occasionally).






Willamette
















Cascade

With the re-re-release of Wyeast's Roeselare Blend

Wyeast has released their excellent Roeselare blend as part of their spring (April-June) VSS lineup. I'm excited because I have already started hoarding bottles of my first batch of Flanders Red that I brewed 18 months ago.

My only major complaint about the first batch was that it never got sour enough. To remedy that issue this time around I am going to pitch a starter made from the blend into primary instead of adding clean yeast in primary and waiting until secondary to add the blend. Bacteria grow faster than yeast so the only risk with adding a slurry of them early is that they will make acid so fast that it will hinder the brewer's yeast from completing its alcoholic fermentation.

While pitching the blend earlier should increase the lactic acid content of the finished beer, I'll still need to get some acetic acid if I want that authentic flavor profile. Instead of playing around with an even more oxygen permeable vessel than a better bottle, which would risk overshooting and getting too much acetic acid, I am going to try blending. I am planning to do a 5.25 gallon batch, after primary I will take 1 qrt of the wort and put it into a growler with aluminum foil over the mouth. After a year this malt vinegar will be blended with the main batch to taste. Acetobacter needs lots of oxygen to convert ethanol to acetic acid, as a result once the beer in blended and bottled there should be no risk of the vinegar flavor getting out of control.

Over on the BBB Baums posted his calculation that you can multiply the numbers given for vessels in terms of cc/L year of oxygen by 2.8 to get the maximum ppm of acetic acid that can be produced per year (assuming 100% of the oxygen is used to make acetic acid). Wild Brews says Flanders Reds range from 1,500-2,500 ppm acetic acid, and have a flavor threshold of the molecule is around 300 ppm. With the 0.86 cc/L number Raj Apte gives for Rodenbach's giant foudors, it would take something like 1,000 years of aging to get Rodenbach to those levels. Since we know they age for a much shorter time than that, we can extrapolate that their containers must be much more oxygen permeable than the math suggests.

According to these numbers you'd need to age in a vessel that lets ~238 cc/L of oxygen a year (a 5 gallon bucket lets in ~220) for 3 years to get up to 2,000 ppm. I'm not sure if these numbers are spot on, but between them and my experience I believe that .86 just can't be right. My theory is that the lids of those big tuns are much more permeable than the sides. A new barrel has to by hydrated before it will hold a liquid without leaking, those big tuns are made in such a way that the beer does not touch the lid, so it is not hydrated, which means it is probably extremely permeable.

After all that I'm not a big fan of acetic acid, so I'll probably try to get it just over the flavor threshold. I have talked a couple of my friends into brewing their own, each using their own recipe and methods. After 12-18 months we'll all get together for a blending session. Whatever is left over after making the "perfect" blend will have fruit added to it.

In the photo on the left is my Roeselare blend starter, on the left is a culture from the dregs of Red Poppy from The Lost Abbey. I am going with a very similar recipe to the one I used last time, just a few tweaks to get it a bit darker:

Flanders Red Again

Recipe Specifics
----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5
Total Grain (Lbs): 12.50
Anticipated OG: 1.068
Anticipated SRM: 18.2
Anticipated IBU: 18.6
Brewhouse Efficiency: 71 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
------
3.75 lbs. Vienna Malt
3.00 lbs. Munich Malt
3.00 lbs. Pilsener
1.00 lbs. CaraMunich Malt
1.00 lbs. Flaked Soft White Wheat
10 oz. CaraAroma
4 oz. Carahell Malt

3 oz. Crystal 40

Hops
-----
1.00 oz. Crystal Whole @ 75 min.
0.50 oz. Crystal Pellet @ 75 min.

Yeast
-----
WYeast 3763 Roeselare Yeast

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington DC
Profile known for: Where I live

Calcium(Ca): 45.2 ppm
Magnesium(Mg): 8.0 ppm
Sodium(Na): 13.8 ppm
Sulfate(SO4): 49.0 ppm
Chloride(Cl): 28.0 ppm
biCarbonate(HCO3): 86.3 ppm

pH: 7.60

Mash Schedule
---------------
90 min @ 154 F

Notes
------
Brewed 5/11/08 with Nathan

Used 1/2 a campden tablet to dechlorinate the water before brewing.

Collected 7 gallons of 1.055 wort. Chilled to 70, gave it 60 seconds of pure oxygen, and placed it into a 65 degree freezer. I then pitched a partially decanted ~2 qrt starter of Roeselare Blend that was a couple weeks old. I am planning on adding a culture of the dregs from Red Poppy to the secondary to increase the number of microbes in there.

Overshot my expected gravity (1.062) and undershot my planned volume (5.25 gallons) a bit, but I am planning to top off with some deoxygenated water when it goes into secondary. I am also planning on pulling off 1.5 quarts to leave uncovered to make some strongly acetic beer to blend with the batch.

Still no activity after 36 hours, so I upped the temp to 68.

After another 12 still nothing, so I added some of the Red Poppy starter.

5/15/08 Still nothing, and no change in the gravity so I pitched a rehydrated pack of US-05 and some more of the Red Poppy starter.

Good activity after 12 hours

5/16/08 After 24 hours I dropped the temp to 63 to prevent the yeast from getting too hot.

6/06/08 Down to ~1.014 light funky flavor starting to develop.

6/15/08 Racked to secondary (5 gallon better bottle)

6/16/08 Added 2 siphons full of Big Funky, right after it started fermentation, hoping to feed the bugs a bit since the gravity was on the low side.

7/04/08 Slight pellicle already starting to form, aging at 65 degrees.

8/20/08 Some sourness has been created, but the pedio is making it buttery at the moment. Still needs plenty more time, but it is progressing.

10/02/08 Update, down to 1.009.  It is starting to develop some nice sourness and a cranberry fruitiness, and the buttery flavor that I got last time I took a sample is gone. This is shaping up to be a good one if it doesn't dry out too much.

11/09/08 Racked into a 60 gallon red wine barrel from Crysalis Vineyards.  Mixed with 50 other gallons, from a similar recipe.

10/24/09  Bottled the whole barrel, aiming for 2.5 volumes of CO2.  Great sourness, cherry, wine, complex etc... Added some whole Amarillo/Simcoe/Cascade  to 6 bottles.  4 gallons racked onto 2 lbs of sour cherries I froze last summer.

7/17/10 Bottled the sour cherry half (~3.75 gallons) with 3.5 oz of cane sugar, ~1/2 cup of Brett B slurry.  Gravity down to 1.007, nice cherry character, still plenty of sourness.