Lambic/sour bottling ?

Have a lambic/sour that was fermented with straight roselare blend and is at a 1.003.....looking to bottle this within the next two months been sitting close to a year.....any suggestions on bottling for this? Goin to use champagne bottles bit curious as to how much yeast and sugar to use

A packet of champagne yeast with enough sugar to get to 3 volumes

Additional yeast is probably not necessary as the Brett should be alive and well. However, it will take a long time if you don't add additional yeast.

I usually go 3 volumes (about an ounce of table sugar per gallon). Standard bottles are fine at that level. At 1.003 is should be finished; if for some reason it is not, it's not going to add much to it.

Do you just add the champagne yeast to the bottling bucket along with the sugar syrup? Or do you need to do some sort of a starter to up the population first?

monkeybox said:

Do you just add the champagne yeast to the bottling bucket along with the sugar syrup? Or do you need to do some sort of a starter to up the population first?

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Yup, just add the champagne yeast with your choice of priming sugar. No starter needed. Cheers!

Can you also put some surly in there to keep the beer developing as it ages in bottle???

bastump218 said:

Can you also put some surly in there to keep the beer developing as it ages in bottle???

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That's not needed. Plenty of cells in the beer. No one has mentioned that depending on how long you have aged the beer, it may need some additional sugar as it will have lost more residual carbonation over time. If you do choose to use champagne yeast, you only need a gram at most. It's best to rehydrate it in my experience. I just rehydrate in the priming sugar once it has sufficiently cooled.

Calder said:

I usually go 3 volumes (about an ounce of table sugar per gallon). Standard bottles are fine at that level. At 1.003 is should be finished; if for some reason it is not, it's not going to add much to it.

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use an online priming calculator, like http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/, to determine how much sugar to add. you'll probably need to add a pinch more than what they estimate, since as someone else pointed out the beer has been aging for so long that there is little to no residual carbonation left.

i believe that 3 volumes is the upper limit for standard beer, i've read numerous times that you should stick to 2.7 or 2.8 to allow for some margin of error. most bottles will take 3.0, some won't. and if fermentation isn't 100% complete, you could easily go over 3 vols... boom.

TNGabe said:

I just rehydrate in the priming sugar once it has sufficiently cooled.

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you'll get a higher survival rate if you rehydrate in water only. rehydrating in sugar is hard on the yeast - while rehydrating they can't control what goes inside their cell walls. unwelcome sugar can kill a cell.

sweetcell said:

i believe that 3 volumes is the upper limit for standard beer, i've read numerous times that you should stick to 2.7 or 2.8 to allow for some margin of error. most bottles will take 3.0, some won't.

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Most bottles will take well over 3 volumes. If that was all they could take, there would be a lot more bottle bombs being reported. They are just guaranteed for about 3.5/4.0 volumes.

I've had one bottle break in the last few years. I bottled to almost 3 volumes at 1.016. It was a big stout and that was roughly where I expected it to be.

After the bottle broke, I poured one and measured the gravity. It was down around 1.010. My estimate was the beer was around 6 or 7 volumes. Only 1 bottle broke. I did put the rest of the bottles in the fridge and drank quickly. Most (if not all) were gushers.

heya calder,

Calder said:

Most bottles will take well over 3 volumes. If that was all they could take, there would be a lot more bottle bombs being reported. They are just guaranteed for about 3.5/4.0 volumes.

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i'm pretty sure i've seen on several occasions that your typical, run-of-the-mill 12 oz bottle shouldn't be carbed above 3 vols. lemme go find a source or two....

Calder said:

I've had one bottle break in the last few years. I bottled to almost 3 volumes at 1.016. It was a big stout and that was roughly where I expected it to be.

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you carbed a stout to 3 vols?!? that... original! belgians often clock in at ~3 vols, stouts are typically down around 2.0-2.2.

Not all bottles are the same when talking standard longnecks. Different glass weight will have an impact on bottle strength, well obviously. Weigh bottles though and you will see a difference between certain breweries, where they source their glass, and what they are bottling.

well, i'm going to have to partially take back what i wrote. after a quick search here, seems there are plenty of people who have successfully primed to 3 vols in standard bottles. there were some stories of bombs, but far fewer than the success stories. there are some smart sounding people (like him saying keep it under 3 but seems like going to 3 is a safe bet.

personally, i have enough thick glass bottles stored up that when i want to go to 3 vols or over, i can do so without needing to use regular ("thin"?) glass.

smokinghole said:

Not all bottles are the same when talking standard longnecks. Different glass weight will have an impact on bottle strength, well obviously. Weigh bottles though and you will see a difference between certain breweries, where they source their glass, and what they are bottling.

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interesting, didn't know that.

to check this out i weighed a bunch of bottles. here are their weights, in grams. name of brewery included when known/identifiable. these are single data points, i wouldn't extrapolate too much.
193
198 (New Belgium)
192 (Kalibur non-alc)
299 (Duvel)
220 (Hoogaaden)
216
176 (short like Sierra, thin collar)
195 (short like Sierra, thicker collar)
230
213
214 (Deschutes)
198
205
196.
(average: 210.4 with the Duvel; 203.5 without it - i.e. "regular" 12 oz bottles)

I recently bottled a Frombiose after a year in the fermenter and another 5 months on wild raspberries.

See here for more - http://alphawolfbrewery.blogspot.com/2013/10/bottling-michigan-lambic-framboise.html

Considering you used Roeselare blend, medium to medium high carbonation is closer to style. 1g of dried yeast is fine, there is no point in putting extra yeast in the bottles.