Shortest time for a lambic to age

Just curious what the shortest amount of time any of you HBTers have let your sours go before drinking them is.

I just read a thread about a 1 month Hefe-sour and it got me thinking. I have a Sour Blonde that is going just over 4 months now, it smells soooooooo delicious but I'm afraid of stopping it to early.

Anyone have any lambic recipes (that have been brewed several times) which they drink around the 5 month mark?

I have a brett beer I bottled after 5-6 months and sour mash beers that were bottled in the usual timeframe but anything sour should go a longer time to really develop flavor. That brett beer used orval dregs. When I bottled it had that funky, barnyard, leathery brett b taste but it's a little over a year old now and it's starting to develop an amazing cherry flavor. Makes me disappointed I have already sucked down half the batch.

About a year and a half age and oak are your friends here!

At least 4 months for Brett and at least 9 months for sours. I like to go more like 15. My Flanders seemed to go from good to great around 18 months

I got a mixed culture fermented saison able to drink in six months. That was a stretch though. I have a lambic going that is at 1.003 after just three 4 months of fermentation but it's NO where near ready for drinking. It just tastes unbalanced and weirdly bitter from the aged hops and their oxidized beta acid compounds.

H-ost said:

Just curious what the shortest amount of time any of you HBTers have let your sours go before drinking them is.

I just read a thread about a 1 month Hefe-sour and it got me thinking. I have a Sour Blonde that is going just over 4 months now, it smells soooooooo delicious but I'm afraid of stopping it to early.

Anyone have any lambic recipes (that have been brewed several times) which they drink around the 5 month mark?

Click to expand...

Keep in mind my recipe for that was using lacto and Brett only.... No pedio. In most true lambics pedio does the bulk of the souring, and it is slow and needs time because beers with pedio go through a "sick" phase where the pedio produces a lot of diacetyl that takes some time for the Brett to clean up.

With really active cultures you could possibly have something good in about 6 months, but that's after the culture is multiple generations old.

But really at the end of the day if it's tasting good for you then go for it. I wouldn't suggest bottling it at this pout though, keg only.

What would be wrong with bottling? I thought I could add a little yeast to the bottling bucket and bottle them.

I am not going to do it anytime soon but I was hoping to bottle so I could let the majority continue aging. I want to have 50 really tasty sour beers that I can pull one out maybe once a month.

H-ost said:

What would be wrong with bottling? I thought I could add a little yeast to the bottling bucket and bottle them.

I am not going to do it anytime soon but I was hoping to bottle so I could let the majority continue aging. I want to have 50 really tasty sour beers that I can pull one out maybe once a month.

Click to expand...

If your beer hasn't reached it's terminal FG, then bottling now could result in bottle bombs (or gushers). If the FG has been stable for a couple months you'd probably be OK to add some corn sugar/yeast and bottle it, but using heavy bottles would be recommended in case the brett is not finished.
Kegging is the safest option.

H-ost said:

What would be wrong with bottling? I thought I could add a little yeast to the bottling bucket and bottle them.

I am not going to do it anytime soon but I was hoping to bottle so I could let the majority continue aging. I want to have 50 really tasty sour beers that I can pull one out maybe once a month.

Click to expand...

Aging in the bottle is VERY different than time on oak.

I haven't used any, and wasn't planning on using any, oak chips. Is it so uncommon to not use them? What would I expect as far as a difference between using and not using them?

Just want to mention that certain lacto strains also create the "ropiness" which is an exopolysaccharide complex. It's the same concept as yogurt making. With out the polysaccharide complex the yogurt would be thin.

I also didn't use oak. 60gal oak barrels are used for the level of oxygen permeability and not for the flavor. Lambic barrels tend to be on the neutral end of the character spectrum.

Homebrewtastic said:

Keep in mind my recipe for that was using lacto and Brett only.... No pedio. In most true lambics pedio does the bulk of the souring, and it is slow and needs time because beers with pedio go through a "sick" phase where the pedio produces a lot of diacetyl that takes some time for the Brett to clean up.

With really active cultures you could possibly have something good in about 6 months, but that's after the culture is multiple generations old.

But really at the end of the day if it's tasting good for you then go for it. I wouldn't suggest bottling it at this pout though, keg only.

Click to expand...

my barrel just started to get nasty since it got hot out- my ferm station went from a nice 68 to a sweltering 74, but the barrel is on an outside wall, so it may even be a little warmer. The samples started not so good, and then were very good- until now. we'll see what winter brings... the plan is to dose with a little more brett and let it ride. if only there were a quick fix for patience.

I'm new to wild brewing (on #3 right now), but my first was bottled at the 9 month point. The base recipe was a Saison that I deicded to pitch brett and bugs into, around 5 months into it I put a pound or so of blueberries in and gave it another 4 months to work. I had plans of letting it go a full year but then I got to thinking that if I bottled at 9 months I'd be able to open a bottle this summer.

I opened a bottle a few days ago, at this point they've been bottled for ~2 months.
The brett aroma on it is incredible, however the beer is only mildly sour...tart more than anything. and for some reason the beer is a light red color (can't figure that one). the bottles have done it some good as the first sample I took wasn't nearly as flavorful.
So, I was able to make a very drinkable and balanced, although not very sour ale in just under 1 year.