secondary/aging sours in kegs

I've got 3 different 10 gallon sour batches going right now. They are all coming up on the 2-3 month mark and I was hoping to free up some of my fermenter real estate by racking them into kegs and let them sit in there for the remainder of the time. I have many more kegs then carboys/buckets and its logical in my situation to put them in there. But I'm worried about haulting or slowing down the aging process of the beer if I do it.

If it is a safe practice, should I purge the keg/beer with Co2 once I rack it? Leave it alone? Or, Preferrably, is it okay to Carb the beer up so I can take samples out here and there to check how its coming along?

Bump, hoping someone has some thoughts/experience with this

Not sure if this answers your specific question but it pertains to aging and adding bugs to the keg. This is a quoted reply a friend got from Ron Jeffries of Jolly Pumpkin.

Generally speaking acetobacter needs O2 to create acetic acid. Without it, it won't. Generally Brett can produce acetic acid with or without much O2. So if you would like to minimize it's production, purging is the way to go. Acetobacter is in some of our beers, but we try to keep it at low levels.

All the best, it sounds like fun.

Cheers,
Ron

I believe that brett and lacto don't need O2, Not sure on that though.... One of my beers is a Berliner weisse. I'm hoping that the Lacto doesn't need it and I can transfer... I also toyed with the Idea of taking the intake ball valve off my keg and putting an airlock on it, and using it as I would a carboy. However I will loose the ability to push beer out the output for sampling. I suppose I could just open the top, but then I'm exposing it.

Putting them in kegs is ok, purge the headspace and slap on an airlock onto one of the posts

Do not force carb and continue to age until the beer has a bit more age on it, as the increased co2 in solution can alter the way the microbes in the beer work

tpbc said:

I believe that brett and lacto don't need O2, Not sure on that though.... One of my beers is a Berliner weisse. I'm hoping that the Lacto doesn't need it and I can transfer... I also toyed with the Idea of taking the intake ball valve off my keg and putting an airlock on it, and using it as I would a carboy. However I will loose the ability to push beer out the output for sampling. I suppose I could just open the top, but then I'm exposing it.

Click to expand...

Brett needs some O2, but lacto and pedio are microaerobic/faculative anaerobes. That all means that a tiny bit of oxygen is used but high levels stunts their growth. You can grow pedio/lacto on anaerobic plates but it grows very poorly if at all.

So longer term aging in the keg will be good. I'd just throw some oak cubes in there depending on what the beer is so the brett can metabolize some of the cellubiose sugars in the wood. It's a valuable food resource for them during a very long term fermentation.

Thanks for the advice guy's.

As far as adding oak to the beers with brett in them, should I bag the oak chips/cubes up and hang them from the top of the keg? I'm worried that oak at the bottle near the pickup might cause issues once the beer is ready to be served?