Earliest I can bottle a sour?

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bierhaus15

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Problem: I recently got a hold of the dregs of about 15 sour ales (everything from brett, lambic blend, pedio...) and dumped it into a batch of a medium gravity Belgian Pale Ale that I had hopped at 15ibu. It has formed a large pellicle and is already pretty sour/funky, though it's only been about a month.

When is the earliest I can bottle this? I'm moving out of state/maybe country by the end of December, so I'd rather not have to dump the batch out.

Any suggestions?
 
Have you taken a gravity reading? With that many different microbes I would guess it will get dowwn lose to 1.000. Bottling it at less than 6 months is pretty risky (a drop of .002-.003 is all you need for full carbonation). You can buy a keg to move the beer, you don't even need the rest of the kegging system.
 
You can buy a keg to move the beer, you don't even need the rest of the kegging system.

Definitely your best bet.

Or, bottle them with no priming sugar and you'll probably end up alright if the gravity isn't very stable now.
 
if your gravity is high and have reason to believe it will drop down then the previous posters are definitely right about kegging as your safest bet. on the other hand, if you bottle with champagne bottles you won't have bottle bombs (imo). this probably means cork & caging which is easy if you have wine bottling equipment around. if you really are moving out of the country then you had better start saving thick belgian style bottles now since you'll never be able to wait the full 2-3 years you're otherwise facing for a fully mature sour.

to answer the thread question of "Earliest I can bottle a sour?", i bottled a sour mashed berliner weisse w/ roselare yeast cake after only 1 week @ 1.011 and had 0 incidents using only 12 oz bottles. some bottles made it as long as 6 months and no bottle bombs!
 
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