Blending

Back in January i brewed up 3 gallons of a Dawson's Kriek variation, pitched Lambic blend and away it went. I pitched various dregs in as well along the way. In May gravity was 1.012(OG around 1.06). i let this beast sit undisturbed until now, checked grav again and it's still at 1.012 and sour as all hell. Mouth puckering sour.

In July i brewed up a 4 gallons of a belgian pale and pitched only Brett L from a 2L starter. Thing took off and i let it sit for 2 and half months then added some oak which made it quite nice. It's almost wine like.

Anywho, i bottled half the All Brett as is and it quietly sitting in the basesment, with it's other half still in the bucket. I'm thinking of adding cherries to it soon and letting them do their magic for another month.


Question or mainly feedback. I'm thinking of adding cherries to the remaining 2 gal of brett then siphoning in about 1-2 gallons of my sour. My thoughts are this should blend nicely with the cherries adding more to the sour. and the brett beer to kind of mellow it all out. Meanwhile i'd brew up another 2 gal of say a brown and siphon it into my sour carboy on top of the other half of the sour. Confused?

What kind of a timeframe am i looking at for the 1/2 brett and 1/2 sour with cherries? The brett beer is at 1.01 now and i assume whatever is in the sour will continue to eat cherries/left over sugars. does that make sense?


Sorry for the rambling, just trying to rap my head around something.

Would it be safe to assume after 9+ months that the sour is done?

Sour beer plus not sour beer equals sour beer (for the most part). If the brett beer is fully attenuated, and it probably is, then it probably wouldn't get any more sour since there's nothing for the bacteria to consume. Adding new sugar is going to give the bacteria something to consume and produce acids with. So the beer will probably get more sour. The brown ale added to the sour carboy will add a lot of sugar for the brett and bacteria in the lambic blend to consume. I'm not saying any of those plans are necessarily bad but you're not going to end up with a sweet-sour blend, if that is what you were going for.

Since the cherries will add only simple sugars, you'll want to give it at least a couple months to dry out. It would benefit from extended aging. The brown ale will need at least six months but for full flavor development, probably 9-12 months or more. Taste and stable gravity (and to a lesser extent, texture) will guide when it is ready. Bottling too soon is likely to create bombs or at least gushers. No reason to turn beer into a suicide device or watch months of aging gush out on your counter.

Yeah i was just basically talking out load while going no where. Thinking i'll just cherries the all brett l, wait, bottle accordinly. I'll probably also cherry the sour eventually, but no rush. Looking to pitch a brown on the cake tho when finished.

Probably a better plan. You can always blend in the bottle with no additional aging or bottle bombs involved.

I find blending a very tricky part of brewing. You really have to know what flavor profile you are trying to reach and have all the right components to make it happen. You can't really just dump two beers together and hops it comes out ok. It's definitely more of an art than a science. I've only blended once and it turned out ok but not at all what I had envisioned. I'm about to try it again on a belgian stout and dark sour blend so I guess I'll see if my blending skills are any better this time.