Bugs and wine

Guys, I have a question/thought. I have a flanders red in primary sitting on some oak cubes for several months now. Nice pellicle, looks like the bugs have found a home on the cubes. I am planning on using the cubes in future batches of funky beer.

Recently, I had a thought that I could 'store' the cubes in a bit of pinot noir in between batches. Thinking this may give a bit of complexity to future batches. My fear is the Potassium Metabisulfite in the wine will kill my precious bugs. I made the Pinot so there should be less meta than a commericial wine. Any ideas or experience w/ this?

I think Lacto and Pedio have an alcohol limit of about 8%. Might not be a good idea keeping them in wine.

Why not make a quart of starter wort (no hops), and keep them in there

Calder said:

Why not make a quart of starter wort (no hops), and keep them in there

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I was hoping the wine would give a bit of complexity to the next batch. Kinda like how the big boys use old wine barrels to age their sours.

Bert1097 said:

I was hoping the wine would give a bit of complexity to the next batch. Kinda like how the big boys use old wine barrels to age their sours.

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You could dilute it with cooled boiled water to get the abv down to around 8%.

Calder said:

You could dilute it with cooled boiled water to get the abv down to around 8%.

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That's a good idea. That would also dilute the meta which was my initial concern.

there is a journal article that was recently published on brett brux. The entire genome was sequenced, and in the article they mention that in wine for whatever reason the brux ends up producing bandaid/medicinal esters, while in beer they produce more clove and spice.

My concern would be two fold. Making the brett more likely to produce the medicinal flavors, and potentially knocking them down with sulfites. As in my experience with brett, a very good way to essentially stop further fermentation is to rack and then hit it with campden

As far as wine complexity, Ive added two bottles to a beer and didnt notice much wine character after about 2mos in the bottle.

I wouldn't bother with the wine. You wouldn't get any "complexity" out of it. There are multiple gusy in my homebrew club that store infected oak cubes in quart size jars and feed them with PBR. Yup, that's right .. good ol' pirate beer .. pb-RRRRRRRR!!

jusware said:

I wouldn't bother with the wine. You wouldn't get any "complexity" out of it. There are multiple gusy in my homebrew club that store infected oak cubes in quart size jars and feed them with PBR. Yup, that's right .. good ol' pirate beer .. pb-RRRRRRRR!!

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Now I know what to do with the pbrr's I have in the basement! On a side note though, you guys don't think Russian River gets more added bang from using the old wine barrels? Do you think it's simply a matter of availability due to location, etc?