Flanders Red - Blending? So confused!

Hi,
I brewed up a flanders red ale almost 18 months ago now, using the dregs of a Cantillon geuze.
Its got some great sour notes to it, but it needs to be blended to add back a bit of sweetness to make it more drinkable.

I'm just not really sure how to go about blending.
I was going to brew a similar recipe, but should I ferment it out with an ale yeast? or inoculate it with some of the existing beer to get the same bugs?

I'm just weary that when it comes to blending and bottling the sour bugs will chew through all of the sugar from the new batch and I'll end up with lots of sour beer and none of the sweetness. Plus this may also lead to bottle bombs.
Do I need to do anything to knock out the bugs in the sour? Would adding a camden tablet work?

I'm not really sure how to approach this, so any help would be awesome.

You probably made a Lambic style ale if you (only) used Cantillon Gueuze dregs to inoculate your wort.

As far as blending, it depends on what your goals are...
Lambics are supposed to be dry and tart/acidic with some alcohol sweetness coming through along with a bevy of familiar sounding aromas (cherry pie, barnyardy, fruity, etc. etc.)

The easiest way to blend this sour ale is to make a nice malty, sweet, big bodied beer (use caramel malts, mash super-high 158+, think English ale), ferment at the lower Temp end with a low attenuating/flocculant yeast (WLP002 for instance) and take your graduated cylinders and blend until you like the result.

You can bottle as usual (secondary ferment in bottle) but you'll need to be careful. Use thick bottles that can handle lots of pressure.

or you can do the above, let it carbonate and pasteurize the beer but I would personally never do that. The beer is a living organism and I'd rather drink something with life than dead.

It's up to you, good luck.

Thanks for the quick reply Andrikos.

hmm interesting, should I have fermented with an ales yeast before pitching the dregs?
I'd read somewhere that the geuze dregs would be similar to the WYeast Roselare Blend, which people had been using for Flanders Red's. I might be wrong though

I think I might split what I've got and try a couple of different things.
Brewing a big malty beer sounds like a good idea. After the primary fermentation of this has finished is there any way to guess how much further it will ferment when I blend it? Would I expect the gravity to end up similar to the batch I've already fermented, or maybe a couple of points higher?

You're right, I would prefer not to pasteurize. I just want to make sure I dont get any bottle bombs.

I've got some ingredients on order, so will be able to brew up a big malty batch to blend. I'm looking forward to working out the ratio to blend. Do you think I should start with a 1/3 old to 2/3 new and work from there?

I have a load of old lambic and geuze bottles around. Is there any advantage to corking and capping like the Belgians do? Does this help extend the life in the bottle?

Personally I think you can brew either a Lambic style or Flanders style from any mix of bugs. I think the Flanders generally has more caramel malts (Special B), while Lambics have none. Flanders have more acetic taste (from O2 exposure) while Lambics have more Brett character being left on the cake.

In both cases the sour is the dominant component, and the styles are dry and sour.

I'm sure I'll get some comments for what I have just written, but I don't care.

It sounds like you are true to style, and made a great beer. I'd just bottle rather than messing with it. If you want it sweeter, you can get some fruit syrups from the grocery store and sweeten in the glass. Far easier and you can get lots of variety. Who knows, you might come to like the original dry beer.

Cheers Calder. The recipe I followed was for a Flanders Red (I think I used Jamil's recipe, but I really cant remember).

I took a gravity readling last night, for the first time. I was a bit surprised, as it was only down to 1.012, which after over a year seems really high to me. Is it likely to still be fermenting, or should I try rousing the bugs / pitching something else?
I had another taste, and its got a kind of slick mouthfeel to it, which may be due to the higher gravity?

I wonder if I should just leave it a bit longer....

1.012 is on the high side, but I would not say unusual. I don't know I've ever had one super-dry. Mine usually end up around 1.007 to 1.011 if I remember correctly. I'm using some new bugs on my latest; interested to see how low that one goes.

Slick mouth-feel. That could be from the Pedio, if it is, it will go away. What was the viscosity like? If it was a little thicker, it is probably 'sick' from the Pedio. Sounds bad, but it is nothing to worry about. Leave it 2 to 3 months and see if it improves. If you really need to space, you can bottle, but I'd like to see any signs of sickness go before bottling (so I know I'm not wasting my time).