Fruit additions and bottling my first sour

[ardyexfor]

So I have been sitting on a Flanders Red and sour stout for almost two years now. I want to bottle half of each and add fruit to the remaining half of each. I plan to let the fruited half sit another 2-3 months. I have never bottle conditioned a beer before because I keg and when I have bottled I use a beer gun.

1) How much priming sugar for ~2.5 gallons of two year old sour beer? If I'm off slightly on volume will it make a huge difference?

2) After the fruit additions on the second half, what do I do different to bottle these? Will there be residual sugar leftover from the fruit which will require me to use less priming sugar?

3) Any other suggestions or precautions? I don't want 2 years of waiting to go down the tubes.

 

[zep805]

Sour beer takes more priming sugar since the bugs have eaten all residual sugars. Be sure to add a fresh neutral yeast (like 001) when bottling since your yeast/bacteria could likely be dead after 2 years.

1)About 5.5-6oz dextrose per 5gal seems about right. You can figure the dme equivalent. Depends how sour/sharp your beer comes out. I personally like sours less carbonated as you get a bolder taste/smell IMHO, but for very sour/thin-bodied beers extra carbonation seems to help take the edge off the bite.

2) Fruit will add sugars but they will mostly be eaten over time as well. I recommend frozen fruits like raspberry, blueberry and cherries purchased in bulk (costco). Freezing breaks the cell walls so flavors/sugars will extract a little easier. Prime basically the same. You may want to pitch fresh bugs when you rack to the fruit too just in case.

3) Sours are fun and vary wildly. Just try to appreciate your batch for what it is. I've made many batches and enjoy some more than others but I really like the unpredictability based on time/temps/fruit, etc. My other advice is brew 3 of these ASAP. Lambic/Flanders red/light roast stout and pick different bugs for each. Fruit half the batches like you mentioned. In only a year or so time you'll have 6 kinds of different sours that all keep developing (for better or worse) for cheap compared to what you'd pay for sours elsewhere. I've never made a bad sour batch, they're just all different. Have fun and good luck!

 

[sweetcell]

beers as old as yours require a little extra priming because they have lost all their carbonation. most priming calculators assume that a beer has 0.8 volumes of residual CO2 when bottling. i've read that an aged beer only has 0.4, so you need to compensate for that missing 0.4. my experience generally bares this out.

use a priming sugar calculator like http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/ to figure out what weight of sugar to add. don't forget to aim for 0.4 volumes higher in the calculator than what you actually want.

after the fruit, you likely won't need to assume the 0.4 lower CO2 because the fermentation of the fruit by the brett will have generated some CO2 and thus replace what was previously lost.

souring/funking bugs should still be alive in there. certainly doesn't hurt to pitch more but might not be necessary. the sacch should be pretty much dead, tho. adding some yeast at bottling is a good idea, if you can. i like to use a champagne yeast, as it is more tolerant of low pH environments (like an aged sour!) than a brewer's sacch.

 

[ardyexfor]

Bottled these up two days ago. Forgot about adding yeast until half way through bottling the first batch. Pitched some Wyeast 3726 Farmhouse ale for the rest since I had a starter I had just put in the fridge.

Do you guys think the first six bottled without extra yeast will be duds? Will the yeast I did add be able to tolerate the environment for the others? Do you typically see signs of bottle fermentation? This is my first time bottle conditioning as I've always kegged...

 

[kadozen]

Subbed as I have similar questions

 

[sweetcell]

Do you guys think the first six bottled without extra yeast will be duds?

nope, the brett will carbonate them. will likely take a little longer than the others. solution: save those bottles for last, drink the sacch'ed bottles first.

Will the yeast I did add be able to tolerate the environment for the others?

hard to tell. did you take a pH reading of the beer? how high is the ABV?

regardless, either the sacch or the brett will carbonate the beer. might take a longer than the traditional 2-3 weeks, but you'll get there eventually. letting those bottles sit for a few months isn't a bad idea anyways

Do you typically see signs of bottle fermentation?

sometimes. i've had bubbles rise in the beer, just like primary. i've seen pellicles form in the next of the bottle. and i've had no signs at all. so keep an eye on those bottles but don't panic if you don't see anything.

 

[Brett3rThanU]

EDITED: Wrong thread.