23B Flanders Red Ale
Flanders Red – Barrel Project 2025
Grain bill
| Gladfield Vienna Malt | 2.25 kg | 30.1% |
| Gladfield Munich Malt | 2 kg | 26.8% |
| Gladfield Pilsner Malt | 1.5 kg | 20.1% |
| Unmalted Wheat | 0.8 kg | 10.7% |
| Gladfield Aurora Malt | 0.36 kg | 4.8% |
| Gladfield Redback Malt | 0.36 kg | 4.8% |
| Special B | 0.2 kg | 2.7% |
Hop schedule
| Hop | 90 min |
|---|---|
| Pacific Gem | 11g |
Yeast
| Wild Culture - Baby Grand | Barrel inoculation (250L shared oak barrel) |
Water additions
| Calcium Chloride | 1.5 g |
About This Beer
The Flanders Red Barrel Project is a Valley Brewers brew club collaboration. Ten brewers each contribute 23L of wort into a shared 250L oak barrel on a yearly cycle: on barrel day each brewer retrieves their portion of the previous year’s finished beer and replenishes with fresh wort.
The barrel is inoculated with the Baby Grand wild culture — originally captured on Kapiti Island by North End Brewery, who named it after their commercial Baby Grand Sour Red Ale. The culture is maintained collectively by Valley Brewers (Lower Hutt) and North End Brewery (Waikanae), passed between the barrel and the brew club year to year.
This is the 2025 fill. The wort is currently conditioning in the barrel; the finished beer will be retrieved on the next barrel day in December 2026. Note FG and ABV are esitmated not measured.
The Wort
The recipe is designed for long barrel conditioning with mixed cultures: Vienna and Munich Malt for depth and colour, Gladfield Pilsner as the clean backbone, unmalted wheat for protein structure and body, Aurora and Redback Malt for fruit and toffee character, and a small Special B addition for deep dark fruit and colour. The hop rate is minimal — 11g Pacific Gem at 90 minutes — providing just enough bittering to discourage spoilage while leaving the environment hospitable for the barrel culture.
Brew Day
Step mash on the BrewZilla 35L Gen 4: protein rest at 54°C for 30 minutes, ramped to 69.5°C over 15 minutes for a 60-minute saccharification, then ramped to 80°C and held 10 minutes for mash out. Mash pH 5.3, sparge pH 5.6, sparge 21L at 75°C. Post-boil wort transferred into a sanitised cube for transport to the barrel venue, then transferred to the shared barrel on 21 December 2025. OG 1.067 with 23L into the barrel.
The Previous Year’s Batch
On barrel day, the 2024 fill (17–18L) was retrieved and tasted alongside the commercial Baby Grand Sour Red Ale by North End Brewing. The comparison was very close: funky, deep red, good malt character, and smooth sourness. The barrel culture is producing the right result.