can I stop it early to bottle if I want? New to brewing with wild cultures

**DirtyBrew** · 11-20-2011, 09:32 PM

Im sure this has been covered. I searched but have not found what Im looking for. So can you guys help? So far I have been able to pull what I want from the air, built up a healthy starter, and brewed a brown beer, innoculated and fermented a great tasting beer. No upsets. I pithched with a "clean" yeast at the same time. In the primary it went from 1.068 to 1.012. I racked to the secondary where its been for nine weeks. Took a sample today. Its down to 1.008 and tastes great. Im happy with it where it is. Now I have little known about whats actually in there since it didnt come from a lab. Would it be safe to bottle? Do I have to knock out whats in there to stop it from changing too much? Its sour enough and I like it how it is, but I know most sours are left up to and past a year and also blended. Any info would be great. Thanks!

ReverseApacheMaster · 11-21-2011, 04:05 AM

If you can keg that's really the easiest way to avoid changes, since the cold will keep everything from growing or feeding.

You could pasteurize the beer after bottling and giving it a couple weeks to carbonate but typically pasteurization ruins beer flavor so it's generally not advised to try bottle pasteurizing.

I have had success using campden to stop brett growth when I have blended brett beers into clean beers. Now campden will kill off the bacteria and stop further brett propagation but the problem is that it won't affect the brett already in the beer. They will keep chomping away at sugars until it's dry, which will not only change the flavor but produce excess CO2 which might cause bottle bombs. You are probably ok going this route as long as you are willing to drink it within 2-3 months. The beer I did this to was 4:1 clean beer:brett beer and although it started off correctly carbonated and mildly bretty, after 5 months in the bottle it is intensely bretty and overcarbonated. Still good beer but obviously a risk had I not bottled in champagne bottles as a precaution. However, if you are not going to drink the whole batch in a couple months and you do not have the fridge space to store the whole batch I would not bottle and just let the beer run its course.

**smokinghole** · 11-21-2011, 10:22 AM

Campden should kill the brett in the beer off. If it kills saccharomyces yeast it will brettanomyces. You just need to give it the time it needs to work.

ryane · 11-21-2011, 05:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smokinghole

Campden should kill the brett in the beer off. If it kills saccharomyces yeast it will brettanomyces. You just need to give it the time it needs to work.

Sulfites dont kill yeast, they only knock them down, and fermentation will restart. They do kill bacteria though so that isnt a worry

Ive successfully bottled a sweet base beer blended with aged lambic, and its been stable in the bottles fro 2yrs now

What I did was

1 - Cold Crash (hard) and rack the soured beer
2 - Fine it using gelatin or something similar
3 - Rack and add sulfites to 50-75ppm
4 - Allow the beer to off gas 24-48hrs (swirling helps)
5 - Bottle with a wine yeast (more tolerant of sulfites and can potentially kill other yeast if they are susceptible)

**DirtyBrew** · 11-21-2011, 09:05 PM

This kinda bums me out. I was hoping to have a few now and keep a few for later down the road.

Thanks for your input guys.

I may just abbandon what it is and ferment something "clean" to blend with it in a keg and hold some back to feed, let it run its course.

ryane... is there neutral wine yeast? Using finnings seem complicated,are they a big deal? I have no experience with them. Your method seems worth a shot.

**smokinghole** · 11-21-2011, 10:43 PM

I was under the impression that S02 kills bacteria and wild yeasts. Many wine cultures and some beer cultures are S02 tolerable. With brett being considered a once wild yeast I think it would fall under the kill category.

ryane · 11-22-2011, 01:41 AM

In the types of conditions we provide (adding campden tabs, usually no more than once) sulfites will only kill bacteria, the yeast are left unharmed but will go dormant

However if you provide a constant supply of sulfites eventually the yeast will die due to inactivity. However providing that much sulfite to a beer would cause issues of its own

**smokinghole** · 11-22-2011, 03:02 AM

Is this from personal experience? I'm inclined to do a little methylene blue viability test on some brett that got a little SO2 dose that would mimic what someone would use in their beer. My controls will be an untreated culture, and a heat killed culture. All will have a viability test performed with the S02 having one done before and after. Methylene blue is notoriously unreliable below 95% viability, but I think i'll have alkaline methylene violet to use before too long. Well see how motivated I am during the winter break.

**DirtyBrew** · 12-04-2011, 07:02 PM

I took a look at it again today. Its pretty one sided, kind of acetic. Its not as great as I thought it was. I was very excited being my first attempt. Still its very drinkable so I went and put it in the keg. I still have another carboy full with a different beer but the same micro. I will let that one go as long as it needs and try blending.

ryane · 12-04-2011, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smokinghole

Is this from personal experience? I'm inclined to do a little methylene blue viability test on some brett that got a little SO2 dose that would mimic what someone would use in their beer. My controls will be an untreated culture, and a heat killed culture. All will have a viability test performed with the S02 having one done before and after. Methylene blue is notoriously unreliable below 95% viability, but I think i'll have alkaline methylene violet to use before too long. Well see how motivated I am during the winter break.

yes

I have a couple blended sours that have been in bottles for over a year now that have stable carbonation. At least one of them was blended with an unsoured beer with a relatively high FG (~1018)