2 Jokers Double Wit Sour Ale Clone

Two Jokers Double-Wit

I used the grain bill above for a partial mash, and the end product was VERY close to Boulevard's original (and now discontinued) 2 Jokers. Even with a kettle sour step, I ended up adding some lactic acid to the secondary to approximate brewhouse results. All-grain instructions follow.

Malt:
Pale Malt – 50%
Wheat – 21%
Malted Wheat – 24%
Flaked Oats – 5%

Mash Schedule:
50 C – 31 minutes
63 C – 60 minutes
73 C – 15 minutes
Mash off at 78 C

Here’s where things get interesting. To create the acidity in Two Jokers, we brewhouse/kettle sour the wort. We lauter off the grain like normal, but then cool the wort down to 35 C and pitch with lactobacillus in a CO2 purged vessel on the brewhouse. We allow the wort to acidify over the weekend and come in and boil it like normal after we’ve confirmed we’ve dropped to the desired pH (3.7). Since we’re brewing multiple batches into the same fermenter, we’ll sour 25% of the total volume of the tank and treat the other brews like normal. If we were brewing into a 600 bbl tank, 1 150 bbl batch would be sour while the remain 3 would be normal.

We’re targeting a beginning of boil gravity of 16 Plato and are looking for 17.3 at the end of our 70 minute boil. We see an increase of .8 Plato from an addition of dextrose midway through the boil.


Hops:
Magnum – 8.1 IBUs at 10 minutes after beginning of boil
Perle – 4.9 IBUs 55 minutes after beginning of boil

Spices:
The following are added to the kettle with 5 minutes left in the boil:
Coriander – 25 g/hl
Orange Peel – 50 g/hl
Peppercorn – 4.9 g/hl
Cardamom - .2 g/hl
Lavender is added during whirlpooling at the rate of 4.9 g/hl

We cool the wort to 19 C and pitch with our house Belgian strain. I’d suggest going with a high gravity Trappist strain to closely approximate the yeast strain we’re using. We ferment at 21 C until we reach 7 Plato at which point we temp up to 23 C for the remainder of fermentation. Final gravity should be 3.8.

Specs:
ABV – 8
IBU – 15
EBC – 15.8
#4JeremyDanner, Nov 19, 2014