Bottled my first sour beer

Ok, so I finally bottled my first sour beer after 1 year of fermentation/aging. The process was like so....

3/22/12 - Brewed a gigantic barleywine as the first runnings of the mash. Added a bit of wheat malt and flaked barley and "mashed" again for another 45 minutes for the 2nd beer. Got 23 liters of 1.036 which received a packet of Belgian Ardennes.

3/30/12 - Added 250 g of DME, 250 g of maltodextrin, and Wyeast Brett l.

8/22/12 - Added 50 g of medium toast French oak chips (soaked in Shiraz)

11/5/12 - Added ~750 g of tart cherries with juice and dregs from Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait, Rodenbach Grand Cru, Liefmans Goudenband, & Boon Framboise 100 % Lambic

3/25/13 - Bottled with fresh wort (from next sour beer) and American Al yeast (US-05). Some in champagne bottles and some in regular crown seal bottles

The problem is that the corks aren't mushrooming out like they should. I open one of the 375 ml champagne bottles after a month and it's not carbonated. Tried one of the regular bottles and it's not carbonated either.

Has it been long enough to carbonate, or is the environment in the bottle so acidic that the yeast were shocked and went dormant?

I was thinking about adding a cask conditioning yeast from Lallemand (CBC-1) to all of the bottles and re-corking/capping them, but that is a lot of work.

Any suggestions?

I hope you get some feedback on this one

rcsoccer said:

3/25/13 - Bottled with fresh wort (from next sour beer) and American Al yeast (US-05). Some in champagne bottles and some in regular crown seal bottles

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Have you done this method before? Did you calculate how much sugar was being added to the batch for priming?

You may just have to wait a bit longer for the bottle to prime. I have no experience with this, it only a guess but I would think it could take quite a few months for these bottles to carb up properly.

It generally takes my sours a few months to carb up and then I generally try to wait a few more months before drinking/sharing any. I would tend to agree with coff, that it just might take a few more months using fresh wort to carb.

rcsoccer said:

11/5/12 - Added ~750 g of tart cherries with juice and dregs from Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait, Rodenbach Grand Cru, Liefmans Goudenband, & Boon Framboise 100 % Lambic

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Not to be a downer, but I'm pretty sure only the Boon Mariage Parfait has viable dregs and that the other 3 beers are pasteurized.

dcHokie said:

Not to be a downer, but I'm pretty sure only the Boon Mariage Parfait has viable dregs and that the other 3 beers are pasteurized.

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I think that most of those have live bugs in them. The beer is plenty sour, so I'm assuming that. I don't know. Just worried about carbonation. Only time will tell, I guess....

dcHokie said:

It generally takes my sours a few months to carb up and then I generally try to wait a few more months before drinking/sharing any. I would tend to agree with coff, that it just might take a few more months using fresh wort to carb.



Not to be a downer, but I'm pretty sure only the Boon Mariage Parfait has viable dregs and that the other 3 beers are pasteurized.

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You were right. Oh well. The Boon Mariage Parfait gave it enough sourness.

I have some 2+ year bottles of sour that are plenty carbonated. The corks vary in degree of "mushrooming". I think this is in part to the varying depth that I put the corks in before caging. I would just wait. Mine weren't at the best carbonation until about six months. Now they just keep getting creamier, and more complex.

rcsoccer said:

You were right. Oh well. The Boon Mariage Parfait gave it enough sourness.

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Glad to hear, that BMP is a fantastic beer and I'm sure the dregs will lend some wonderful sour complexity to your beer.

It is a shame how many sour beers are pasteurized; if you ever have any doubts about which beers do have viable bugs, Mike's blog post below is an excellent resource:

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2010/06/harvesting-sour-beer-bottle-dregs.html