Racking my sour to secondary

I have a Flanders Red that has been in the primary for almost five weeks. I plan to rack this beer on to some oak cubes for long term aging. I had planned to brew a Tart Of Darkness Clone and rack that on to the Roeselare yeast cake.

Long story short, I had planned to do the new brew and transfer at three weeks but I've gotten too busy at work. I should have time to finally get this done this weekend but I'm worried about the lack of any active fermentation to create a co2 blanket in the secondary. Will it be ok, or should I add some sort of fermentables to kick off a slight enough secondary fermentation to prevent oxygenation?

RDWHAHB. If you are really worried about it you could purge your secondary with CO2 before racking.

if you don't have CO2, it's easy enough to toss in a little DME (boiled in water for a few min to sanitize) if you're concerned. plus, this will give the bugs something to munch on and help with the funk.

I was pretty sure it would be fine, but these are my first two sours. After this I plan to keep the pipeline full, brewing one every 4-6 months. But it will take some time to build up some experience with the extended fermentation times.

If I did throw in some DME, what amount would you suggest? 1-2 L?

new to sours, but I read a bit.

if you like the acetic character of Rodenbach the Oxygen is good. It helps the Lacto-Bacillus. If you are going to rack to glass, it would probably be good/to style.

if you are going to plastic it will probably get enough Oxygen during secondary that you don't need to add more.

My Red w/ Roeselare & Orval dregs is only a month old though, so this is not from my experience but what I've gleaned from reading here and elsewhere.

I'll second the RDWHAHB

edit: Acetobacter? maybe not Lacto... funny thing I wasn't interested in this during school

Trust me, I'm usually the first one to preach/practice RDWHAHB. But with this being a one to two year commitment, I'd like to be as edumacated as possible.

I will be racking to a better bottle, which I've also read is more of a middle of the road option for oxygen permeability.

Rjd, sounds like we both brewed our first sours at roughly the same time. We should keep in touch and compare notes, etc. How long have you been brewing for total?

I went with a better bottle also

I'll PM ya

ardyexfor said:

If I did throw in some DME, what amount would you suggest? 1-2 L?

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a few tablespoons in a cup of water would be plenty. you don't need a lot, just enough to kick up a little activity and produce that blanket of CO2

rjd said:

edit: Acetobacter? maybe not Lacto... funny thing I wasn't interested in this during school

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Acetobacter is the correct bacteria. Easy way to remember? Acetobacter produces acetic acid (akin to vinegar) while lactobacillus produces lactic acid.

So is that Acetic acid I taste in Rodenbach? and it is living in their wood? It's not part of the Roeselare blend and I'm guessing if you wanted some of that character it'd be safer to add some vinegar at packaging time. -OR- is the vinegary taste that I get from that beer something else?

slightly off topic, but the OP and I are making near identical batches concurrently and I'm curious.

and thank you for sharing your BOS Lambic recipe and notes AK.

rjd said:

So is that Acetic acid I taste in Rodenbach? and it is living in their wood? It's not part of the Roeselare blend and I'm guessing if you wanted some of that character it'd be safer to add some vinegar at packaging time. -OR- is the vinegary taste that I get from that beer something else?

slightly off topic, but the OP and I are making near identical batches concurrently and I'm curious.

and thank you for sharing your BOS Lambic recipe and notes AK.

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Yes. The reason Rodenbach (IMO) is so dang good is the complex intermingling of acetic and lactic sourness with the oak/fruit/malt flavors. Based on this source, I would say it is in their wood. I get it from bottle dregs since Roeselare doesn't have it. I don't necessarily want it, but it's in some of my favorite beers, so it goes in. I just have to be mindful of any oxygen sources during aging/transferring/bottling.

I would not , however, use vinegar itself to get an acetic character. That would be like souring with straight 88% lactic acid. Yes, it will be sour, but it will be boring. (Mike over at the Mad Fermentationist did a 'quick sour' experiment with lactic acid and Brett, I believe...)

OT, but you're quite welcome! I hope to post the results of the blending I did once my score sheets come back from the UMMO and another comp.