The winning entry was a blend of seven beers. The recipe provided here is the bulk of the blend. My approach is to make several sour stock beers, age them 6 months or so, brew/ferment some fresh saison for the blending day, and then blend to balance/taste prior to adding any adjuncts.
My sour stocks finish so sour that I often need a considerable portion of non-sour beer to balance it out. I aim for final pH of 3.4–3.5 (definitely trying to avoid anything lower than 3.2), so I often shoot higher than that prior to adding fruit, as fruit may lower the pH even further.
Prior to adding fruit, this beer was a 10:1:1:1:1 blend of the Nelson Saison recipe provided here (pH 4.05, FG 1.005), a rye sour (pH 3.25, FG 1.004), two blond sours (pH 2.96, FG 1.004 and pH 2.89, FG 1.003), and a spontaneous sour (pH 3.2, FG 1.003). This blend resulted in a pH of 3.5 before the fruit addition.
I racked about 3 gal. (11.4 L) of this blend onto 17 lb. (7.7 kg) of fresh farmers market peaches (four different varieties, frozen, then thawed prior to adding) to achieve about 5 gal. (18.9 L) total. After six weeks on fruit, the beer pH had risen to 3.7, so I blended in some new blond sour stock and some sour stock that had aged on 4 cumaru seeds per gal., at a ratio of 1:.25:.25 to reach a bottling pH of 3.4 (the seeds had been crushed and soaked in Amburana-barrel-aged cachaça for a few weeks prior to being added to the sour stock). Using the Rare Barrel’s terminal acid shock starter method, this beer was then bottle conditioned with corn sugar in thick brown Belgian bottles to achieve 3.3 vol. (6.6 g/L) CO2. The beer was about 6 months old in the bottle when it was judged.
Making the Nelson Saison: Single infusion mash at 147°F (64°C) for 60 minutes. Target a mash pH of 5.4 and post-boil pH of 5.05. Begin open fermentation (foil on carboy, etc.) at 65°F (18°C), then after 3 days of active fermentation, slowly rise to 75°F (24°C) over the course of several days. Add sugar addition when beer is about 75% fermented (approximately 1.015 SG) and install airlock for remainder of fermentation.
Making sour stock: Sour stock is fairly forgiving. I typically do a 60/40 blend of Pils (or pale malt) and wheat malt, shooting for an OG of 1.045–1.052 and about 4 IBUs. Pitch any Saccharomyces strain and a sour culture blend (and possibly some additional Brettanomyces). The sour stocks used in this beer relied mostly on Bootleg Biology and Yeast Bay sour blend cultures. Fill carboy nearly to the brim with chilled wort, pitch entire mixed culture into primary, wait 6 months (without opening the carboy), then proceed to blending session. Do not let oxygen touch this beer until blending day (brew day oxidation is okay, though). Dump any beers that are acetic or failed to ferment (this should be very rare if you follow the directions here).
A note on the cumaru: I did not mention the cumaru in my NHC entry notes, as I was afraid judges would not know enough about the ingredient, and knowing about it might throw them off. The entry was entered as ‘33C – Wild Specialty (28C): aged w/Peaches.’ The cumaru accented the peaches nicely, making the beer even “peachier” to my palate.
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