Primary and age in the same barrel?
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othellomcbane
Well-Known Member
I believe most sour brewers don't bother racking to secondary. Brett ends up feeding on dead sacc yeast, so there's no real reason to disturb it.
DarthMalt
Well-Known Member
Really? Many of the sour recipes I see mention a secondary. A lot are from newer sources too. For example, JZ uses a secondary in a variety of his sour recipes in BCS. Many BYO sour recipes also mention a secondary and there's even a lot of recipes on this forum that indicate the use of a secondary. I was considering leaving my Oud Bruin in primary for the entire length of the aging process, but after seeing several recipes stating otherwise, decided not to. Perhaps it's style dependent?
nberk
Well-Known Member
Leaving the beer in the primary fermentation vessel (a barrel in most traditional breweries) on the trub is what is traditionally done for lambics.
This isn't the same as other wild beers however. I believe the common homebrew lore says that you should leave lambic alone, but rack most of the other wild beers off the primary yeast cake for longer term aging/maturation. So for the Flanders Red, Oud Bruin, etc. you transfer. Of course, you'll have people on the forums stating that they never transferred their beer and it tastes great for all of these styles. I'm just commenting on what I've read about the practices of the breweries in Belgium where these styles originated. Wild Brews is a great resource if you are interested in this kind of stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381861/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
This isn't the same as other wild beers however. I believe the common homebrew lore says that you should leave lambic alone, but rack most of the other wild beers off the primary yeast cake for longer term aging/maturation. So for the Flanders Red, Oud Bruin, etc. you transfer. Of course, you'll have people on the forums stating that they never transferred their beer and it tastes great for all of these styles. I'm just commenting on what I've read about the practices of the breweries in Belgium where these styles originated. Wild Brews is a great resource if you are interested in this kind of stuff.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0937381861/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
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dstar26t
If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing
Keep in mind that Lambic brewers use a cool ship and I would assume that a lot of the break material gets left behind in it when they transfer out of it into the barrels. I brewed 12 gallons of a spelt pLambic with ECY20 a few weeks ago and did an overnight no-chill in a half bbl sanke. The next day, I transferred off the break material into another keg and pitched. Lots of break material got left behind.
