Bottling Blended Sours

The WHALES club has had pretty good success with oak barrel sour projects. The Flanders Red was excellent and from all indications, the Kriek is coming along wonderfully. One of my personal observations is that it's way to easy to kill a keg of this stuff and then it's gone forever. In order to keep some around for long term aging, some of it is going to be bottled.

Ok, assuming you get the bugs to attenuate down to something like 1.000 which is fine for beers like Flanders Red and Lambics of any variety, one would assume a normal priming sugar addition and a pinch of fresh yeast would be OK. I wouldn't have to account for any extended attenuation or anything right? Ok, maybe I'd back off to 3oz of sugar for the whole batch.

Where I'm getting confused is the next project is going to be an Oud Bruin which by style should be more malty/sweet focused and less sour. In a barrel aging schedule, it would really be hard to stop the bugs at the right level. Jamil suggests moving it to a keg during the souring phase and when it's right, chill it down to stop the bugs. OK, that works for kegging. If one puts it into a bottle, even a Belgian or Champagne bottle, it would probably explode if the bottle sits warm (right?). Let's suppose that the Bruin is allowed to attenuate to whatever in the barrel for a year. It would be out-of-style sour by then and the only practical solution would be a blend with some fresh beer. Great, but I still can't figure out how you'd bottle this safely.

Sulfite? Pasteurize? help!

You would either have to kill the microbes (chemical would be easiest) or bottle the beers separately and then just make a blend in the glass at serving time. I have stabilized funky beers by, chilling it down, hitting it with gelatin to knock most of the bugs out of solution, racking it to a clean fermenter with 1 campden tablet per gallon of beer. After a few days you can add fresh yeast and sugar and bottle.

The other issue to consider with barrel aged beers is that they will not have the residual CO2 from fermentation that priming calculators assume. Give it a taste and see if it tastes flat like uncarbonated beer or still like wine. If it is completely flat you will need to up your priming rate to compensate.

Hope that gives you some help. A group here in DC will be bottling/kegging a Flanders Red in a month or so that we have high hopes for. Should be a long day made longer by the fact that we are racking a Belgian Single into the barrel once it is empty.

I appreciate the input.

did you ever blend & bottle the oud bruin, bobby? did you take mr. oldsock's advice?? i'm being forced into blending since my sours are getting VERY sour and i really enjoy bottling these beasts for long term aging. gelatin, campden and cold crash sound like the 1-2-3 punch that might help this happen.

The Bruin is still in the barrel and sitting at about 1.012 right now. If you kill everything the bottle won't carbonate.

Bobby_M said:

If you kill everything the bottle won't carbonate.

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this is true, but you would add more yeast and priming sugar at that time. and add extra priming sugar as oldsock pointed out since you'll be lacking residual CO2 in the beer after long term aging. i'm definitely curious how it works for you so please keep us informed.

I agree you can get regular yeast back in but you are still limited with backsweetening because you can't tell the yeast when to stop fermenting.

If you fine, campden and then add k-sorbate, you can backsweeten although you will need to bottle off a keg though

Yeah, to be perfectly clear, you can kill fermenting organisms and backsweeten but you can't do that AND carbonate in the bottle. If you carbonate in the keg and counterpressure bottle it, you better hope you really did kill everything.

thats why its a good idea to fine, chill and add the k-sorbate, as it will stop any bugs from starting up fermentation again

Ive bottled several beers that I blended like this without problems. Ive even bottled a blended beer where all I did was campden the sour portion and allowed the yeast in the clean portion to carb the bottles

You have to be careful about doing this, but I dont think it is as hard or as risky as its made to seem

Filter (probably like .3 micron) and counter pressure fill into bottles. Or filter, and re-dose with sugar and saccharomyces (assuming they will not continue eating the leftover sugars).

If filtering is a dirty word or you don't want to invest the money, you could try filling with just a little sugar and letting the bugs go to work. Let them work on the remaining sugars too, then put them at 0C when the carbonation is about right. They will continue to work, but I would have to guess they will be OK for quite a while before they start to gush or explode.

ryane said:

thats why its a good idea to fine, chill and add the k-sorbate, as it will stop any bugs from starting up fermentation again

Ive bottled several beers that I blended like this without problems. Ive even bottled a blended beer where all I did was campden the sour portion and allowed the yeast in the clean portion to carb the bottles

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are we positive that potassium sorbate kills brett? i was under the impression they lived even when campden is introduced so i'd rather skip right past the campden and use Ksorbate if it works. and that's a damn good idea to just let the clean yeast carb, so simple it's brilliant:rockin:

http://home.comcast.net/~mzapx1/FAQ/Sorbate.pdf :

Please note that sorbate DOES NOT kill yeast! It only prevents the yeast from budding, and therefore prevents a colony from growing - it merely inhibits renewed yeast activity under the correct conditions. Although sorbate prevents Saccharomyces yeast refermentation, it may not stop an active (or sluggish) fermentation soon enough to prevent sediment in the bottle...
Zygosaccharomyces yeasts (often found in grape concentrate and wineries using concentrate) are NOT inhibited by sorbate, nor are Dekkera/Brettanomyces yeasts. Sorbate also encourages growth of malolactic bacteria, producing a geranium odor if Lactobacilli are the bacteria responsible. Sorbate has a distinct odor (like bubble gum or beeswax) and flavor, which some people do not appreciate though others find acceptable.

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The Mad Fermentationist AKA our own Oldsock wrote in his blog back in 2008 that:

I have started to play around with killing the Brett with potassium metabisulfite (campden tablets) to stop fermentation before the gravity gets too low, this is a good idea for high gravity beers that would otherwise get too thin. Heat pasteurization and sterile filtration are two other options, but ones I haven’t tried.

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So maybe he has some insight on the K-meta approach?

SumnerH

So I looked at the first link you provided, and checked into his sources, the sources do not discuss anything related to sorbic acid preservation

In fact brett IS inhibited by sorbic acid, as are Zygosacch

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/NR...-486A-AD16-778678B3E1CF/73968/SorbicAcid1.pdf

lacto, and aceto are not however, this is why the campden tablets are used, they will kill bacteria and knock down the yeast,

This is the way Ive had success

1. Chill beer down to ~32F (knocks down yeast and stops most all active metabolism)
2. Fine (further removes suspended yeast/bacteria)
3. Rack
4. Add campden tablets (knocks down remaining yeast/kills bacteria)
5. Add K-sorbate (inhibits active metabolism by disruption proteins involved http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC277315/pdf/jbacter00437-0161.pdf)
Additionally at the low pH most sour beers are at, adding k-sorbate is particularily effective because a majority of it will be present in the form of sorbic acid (the reactive species)

After adding the K-sorbate you can only bottle off a keg, even if you add sacch (which is far more suseptible to inhibition by sorbic acid) nothing will happen


I have talked with Mike aka Oldsock about using campden, and tried it myself after he did it on a brett stout, I blended a very sour batch that I followed steps 1-4 on, with a very malty brown beer, bottled as normal and a good 3gal is still in my cellar, luckily the carbonation has not changed at all

Im not saying this is a definitive way to do it, but in several of the batches Ive done, its worked without a hitch