Moving With Bretted Beer

statseeker · 11-30-2011, 06:51 AM

Alright, my wife and I got a good deal on a place here. It's not far away from where we are now but I get concerned about moving and oxygenating a bretted beer. I have a bretted brown ale and a bretted saison. Both are aging in the primary. I havent racked off them yet. I probably wont in this case. I have a couple of options. 1. I can transport them in the primary very carefully and risk oxidizing them. 2. I can keg them and transport them under pressure and simply allow them to age at cellaring temps but this could kill the brett happiness for me. So needless to say I'm torn. I like the idea of easy transport. I hate the idea of no bretty happy flavor.

Thundercougarfalconbird · 11-30-2011, 08:41 AM

I would move to a keg, pressurize, purge, move it, depressurize, take off the relief valve, jam in an airlock, and let it roll until your happy.

killian · 11-30-2011, 09:20 AM

I agree with rumblekittysparrowstork, that seems like your best bet.

Almighty · 11-30-2011, 03:35 PM

Agree that a purged keg is the way to go. If you don't want to use an airlock you can just vent every once in a while or even better is to use a pressure relief valve. Might as let it carbonate while aging.

Thundercougarfalconbird · 12-01-2011, 07:08 PM

Yea, I just wasn't sure about pressures effect on brett. I didn't want it to inhibit the maturation of the lil bugs (if possible) so I figured it'd be better to remove that variable.

rorygilmore · 12-01-2011, 07:19 PM

I recently moved and had to deal with moving my bulk aging sours. I assumed that since they were sitting for a while that they didn't have much residual co2, so a few days before the move I added some concentrated wort to get some co2 production going again to protect against oxidation. This seemed to work out fine, but of course you need to have some available headspace in your containers.

statseeker · 12-01-2011, 08:18 PM

Isnt there a possibility of changing an already good thing though? I just want it to continue to age as it is and do as little damage as possible to the flavor. Maybe I could add table sugar to prime it in the keg and then release that excess CO2 before the move. I think I have a plan.

rorygilmore · 12-01-2011, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by statseeker

Isnt there a possibility of changing an already good thing though? I just want it to continue to age as it is and do as little damage as possible to the flavor. Maybe I could add table sugar to prime it in the keg and then release that excess CO2 before the move. I think I have a plan.

I should've clarified in my post that I only meant to add a few gravity points. Both DME and table sugar would probably do the trick.

statseeker · 01-04-2012, 10:22 AM

UPDATE: Well, I decided to just move them under pressure, then let the pressure out of the brown to let it finish its conditioning. The saison is at serving temp and pressure right now. Delicious as I could have asked for. I think the move was a success.