Making new beer from an old beer.

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kaips1

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So the story goes like this. I bought a couple cornie kegs off a guy and they still had beer in them, brown ales I'm pretty sure. Well I dumped the prettier of the two kegs the day I got them, the other less attractive keg I kept around with beer in it as a door stop. After having this door stop for about a year I decided to use it for a sour beer experiment, the idea came from something my friend did with his brothers infected batches. I dumped the beer from the keg into one of my bug buckets and it smells of lactic sourness and some malt. I added a house blend of sour dregs to it and 2 deseeded apples, then covered it with a bed of summit hops. After a month I added drie dregs and some second runnings from a hb batch. A week later I went to add more dregs and saw a nice pellicle. I let this ride for 4 months before I took a taste to see how it was going. Upon the taste I was advised that blending another beer like a blonde could help with the issues I noticed in the body. So after about 7 months total I brewed a blonde with the intentions of blending. On blend day my brewing partner and I did measured increments of both beers from 100% sour brown to 100%blonde with the 50/50 in the mix. The 50/50 blend was the winner by 3 different palates. So we blended 2.5 gallons of each into a bucket with the intention to meld for at least 3 wks before bottling. We bottled the remainder of the sour experiment by itself in heavy champagne bottles to 3 vols. with intention of waiting at least 6 months to open one. I don't expect it to peak till at least a year in the bottle and the same will go for the blended part to when it is bottled. I might take a gallon of the blend on bottle day and put it on blackberries and see how it goes. I know that it is said you can't make great beer from someone's else's bad beer, this is an experiment in playing with beer people think is bad. Plus this experiment has cost me maybe 10 to 15 bucks total and has been a blast.

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The first taste, the one that made the decision for a blend.


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The experimental batch and the blonde on the left.
 
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The experimental pellicle.

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Blending.

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Bottled unblended experimental and blonde ale.
 

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hahahah that... is amazeballs! May as well not waste beer :mug:

that pellicle looks effing disgusting though... i'd still drink it
 
Rivenin said:
hahahah that... is amazeballs! May as well not waste beer :mug:

that pellicle looks effing disgusting though... i'd still drink it

Ya the pellicle is hardcore but it shows that the Brett is working and doing what I wanted it too. The samples from are pretty good, nice sour, I can't wait till its a yr in the bottle to really see how it turns out.
 
This might be a good ide for a pair of bad batches that i've very slowly been drinking. So i'd just put them in a bucket and add some bottle dregs from a sour beer?
 
mikeysab said:
This might be a good ide for a pair of bad batches that i've very slowly been drinking. So i'd just put them in a bucket and add some bottle dregs from a sour beer?

That's basically what I did, there's no guarantees that you will make something better than what you did but if you have the time and space I feel it's worth a shot. This was an extremely cheap experiment for me and I had the space and time. One question, what makes those batches "bad"? That's probably the determining factor on what you may get as an end result. Brett isn't a fix all but it is a game changer.
 
I think the problem was i used hallertau leaf hops that i think went bad in my freezer. I think the bag opened up and they got freezer burned or something. After the second bad batch, i checked out the hops and they didn't smell very good. Maybe i'll give this a shot and see if it helps at all.
 
mikeysab said:
I think the problem was i used hallertau leaf hops that i think went bad in my freezer. I think the bag opened up and they got freezer burned or something. After the second bad batch, i checked out the hops and they didn't smell very good. Maybe i'll give this a shot and see if it helps at all.

If its potentially just the hops then I say hit it with some Brett and let it do its thing for like 6 months before you taste it or anything.
 
An update: the portion of this batch that wasn't blended has been in the bottles for 2 weeks and went into the cellar today for at least 6 months before one is opened.

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All the bottles have a pellicle, some extra thick.
 
smokinghole said:
The unblended beer is already old why wait six months to try some? Its not like it will change a whole lot for better or worse in six months compared to its overall age.

It's goes from what I heard from gabe fletcher about Brett changing under its own pressure after time in the bottle. I did an experiment with GI Juliet in a similar manner. I tried it at 6 months and it was ok but at a yr old it really started to show more Brett and body. This is all an experiment and I have enough bottles to do 6 month increments to see any if improvements.
 
The unblended beer is already old why wait six months to try some? Its not like it will change a whole lot for better or worse in six months compared to its overall age.

It's not the age of the beer, but rather the time in contact with brett that matters. That is why the ancient beer still needs to be aged.
 
smokinghole said:
I missed the Brett part. Oops. I saw the beginning of the thread and then the bottle. This whole 6 month thing makes sense now.

No worries. If it wasn't for the cellar idk if I'd be able to wait till November to try it because I would see them everyday begging to be opened.
 
Bottled the blend last. These will sit for 3-6 months to condition in the bottle.

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Finished bottles
 

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509inc said:
Looks delicously funky.

What's up man, ya ill be putting one of these in your box plus one of the unblended bottles, I can send them earlier than intended for consumption and let you sit in them till you may think appropriate to open. Ill be posting results when I open them.
 
fc36 said:
Sign me up. I got a whole big ol' bucket of berlinner weiss that is just begging to be given a new life.

Hit it with a chunk of fruit and Brett and let it do its thing again
 
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First bottle of the unblended batch, it's not bad. Different, nice acidity. I think it will gain more complexity with time, I'm looking to see how it is at Xmas. Over all, success so far.
 
Subbed. I've got three almost full kegs that were pulled out of my fridge during a recent move. They've been sitting in the garage under pressure for six months and I haven't had the heart to check them (much less dump). Maybe I should say F it and give them a potential new lease on life ;)
 
gwood said:
Subbed. I've got three almost full kegs that were pulled out of my fridge during a recent move. They've been sitting in the garage under pressure for six months and I haven't had the heart to check them (much less dump). Maybe I should say F it and give them a potential new lease on life ;)

Check them, if they haven't soured they may be fine. I they have soured and you enjoy sour beer, I say dose them with Brett to eat any by products and attenuate any sugars left. You won't be guaranteed any results but it could be awesome. I'm very amazed at how my experiment is turning out and I'd say the guy I got these kegs off of has no idea I took beer, he probably wrote off not long after brewing, since the kegs were almost full.
 
Did a side by side tasting of the unblended and blended batches, last week. Everyone was pleased with the tastes and aromas. The blended batch was obviously less acidic, both batches seem to be ready for some extended aging to really see how they turn out but so far this has been nothing but a success.
 
Would roselare need oxygen to do its thing? I put my bad beer into a better bottle with roselare two months ago with some raspberries. Theres a big nasty raft of raspberries and mold on top of the beer. I was wondering if i would be able to transfer the beer and yeast to a corny, hit it with co2 and let it ride.
 
mikeysab said:
Would roselare need oxygen to do its thing? I put my bad beer into a better bottle with roselare two months ago with some raspberries. Theres a big nasty raft of raspberries and mold on top of the beer. I was wondering if i would be able to transfer the beer and yeast to a corny, hit it with co2 and let it ride.

Mold? Are you sure it's mold? If you have mold, that's bad news but may still be salvageable. If its just a pellicle, then you're safe. Roselare is a blend of yeasts and I think also lacto so o2 would help just a little. You need to taste it to determine what the next step is. What made it a "bad beer"?
 
Heres a couple pics of what it looks like. The raspberries just floated on top and thats a pic of the raspberry raft. Looks like mold. Maybe i'll try to get a taste

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mikeysab said:
Heres a couple pics of what it looks like. The raspberries just floated on top and thats a pic of the raspberry raft. Looks like mold. Maybe i'll try to get a taste

That's not mold my friend, that's the pellicle. You see those bubbles trapped in there? Mold don't do bubbles let alone produce co2 like that thing is doing? How long did you say it's been with the roselare and raspberries? And what was wrong with it initially?
 
Cool, thanks for the help. The only problem was it had a funky peppery taste that i didnt care for too much. Its been on the raspberries and roselare since 7/7 so 7 weeks only. I'm figuring on it being on the yeast for close to a year, so i dont want vinegar. Figured a corny and co2 woukd be better for long term than a bb.
 
mikeysab said:
Cool, thanks for the help. The only problem was it had a funky peppery taste that i didnt care for too much. Its been on the raspberries and roselare since 7/7 so 7 weeks only. I'm figuring on it being on the yeast for close to a year, so i dont want vinegar. Figured a corny and co2 woukd be better for long term than a bb.

Leaving it on the yeast cake won't prevent acetobacter from forming. I would leave it alone till its been on the fruit 3 months, take a sample to taste and determine what you feel about it then. If you like it, I would say bottle it but do it at a low vol of co2. Let the bottles sit at least 3 more months then try one.
 
Update on the blended part of this experiment. Cracked a bottle open tonight and as you can see its pitch black with a small white head. Smells of sour apples and fruit. Taste has a nice sour bite not a lot of complexity but I can see it getting deeper. Very drinkable and still a success so far.
 
Gothic_Horror said:
Any updates? Been a month. :cross:

Nothing more than what I posted last month hen I had one, I may open one around Xmas or NYE but its not a concrete time table. It is very drinkable every time I try it though.
 
I did something similar, I had a hoppy APA that for done reason wouldn't clear and was too acidic, I couldn't put my finger on what went wrong. It just wasn't 'right'. So I threw it into my soured barrel with a little top up wort, threw some belle saison yeast in it and now letting it ride. I tasted it a 2 months and it's really cool, it's tropical fruity funky. Now to try to collect more bottles to bottle it.
 
boswell said:
I did something similar, I had a hoppy APA that for done reason wouldn't clear and was too acidic, I couldn't put my finger on what went wrong. It just wasn't 'right'. So I threw it into my soured barrel with a little top up wort, threw some belle saison yeast in it and now letting it ride. I tasted it a 2 months and it's really cool, it's tropical fruity funky. Now to try to collect more bottles to bottle it.

Good luck, it sounds tasty. Ya heavy bottles are the hardest to find if you don't wanna buy them. Luckily I scored a lot from the last zwanze day and I have a friend that drinks brooklyn local 2 and those bottles take a 29mm cap.
 
Small update, let a buddy have a bottle and he said it was ****in amazing. I might try and crack open a bottle around the 25th to see how it is myself. It seems to be only getting better with age in the bottle.


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