Somewhere in the midst of the two months during which I didn't post any blog entries, I actually brewed a beer. A sour red beer.

In the Jan-Feb 2007 issue of BYO, there was an article on Flander's Red Ale. Among the recipes included in the story was one by Dan and Joelle Dewberry, two members of my homebrew club, the Austin ZEALOTS. Their beer had won Best of Show at the Homebrew Inquisition (the ZEALOTS annual homebrew contest) and I had discussed brewing a sour beer with them many times.

Well, we finally got together and brewed a sour beer -- the DewBrew Flanders Red recipefrom the story. We followed the recipe closely, with a slight adjustment of the amount of 2-row to account for extract efficiency. Dan and Joelle had a leftover package of Roeselare sour blend that they made two starters from. We made 10 gallons of wort and each got 5 gallons from the brewday. My bucket has been sitting behind my desk at home for weeks now. When I went to take it to my "sour beer conditioning room" -- an unused bathroom in our house -- I found a bucket containing a lambic I had made four years ago and had completely forgotten about.

I won't know how the red beer turned out until this fall, but I'll post an update when it's done -- or a month or so after.

I'll probably hold my breath and open the lambic bucket pretty soon now. If it's at all good, I'll probably add raspberries and make a "forgotten framboise."