unintentional sour! Bottling Questions!!!

I recently brewed a strawberry wheat with 5-6 lbs of frozen thawed berries added to my secondary (plastic bucket). Went off without a hitch and bottled it on up since the kegs were all full.

fast forward to a coupla weeks later and I have increasing pressure in my bottles and the beer that went into the aforementioned bucket has developed a nice, and by nice i mean brett-looking, film on it.

The bottled beer tastes good, but has a sourness that could be from the berries themselves (early berries that were a bit tart were used) or from something that may have been living on them.

No pellicles were noticed in the bottles I looked at.

My main Q here is: is it kosher to cool then open all these bottles and pour them back into a carboy? Will this just mess up a good beer or will it allow the infection to run its course without oxidizing the beer too much?

Well, it could only be the priming sugar carbonating? Maybe taste one every week to see if they are getting more sour or any other signs.

Don't understand your second paragraph, Is some of the beer still in a fermentor?

The second paragraph references an oaked amber ale that went into the bucket after the strawberry wheat came out. My thought initially was that the funk in the oaked beer may have been hiding in the oak cubes, but I'm dubious given the status of the bottled ones.

You can't pour the bottles without oxidizing the beer. Your best bet is to test them often. The tartness may indeed be coming from the strawberries.

What if I were to take a gallon of unfermented wort and empty the beers on top of it? The available sugars would be fodder for the wheat yeast and the active ferment **should** destroy oxidation compounds, right?

No clue on that one... sorry.

If your concern is bottle bombs then put them in the fridge to cool them down. This will slow any fermentation if there are bugs in there. I had an all Brett Amber that must have been bottled too early because I had a bomb. I put the rest in the fridge and have had no problems and it has been a few months. They are certainly over carbonated but still drinkable.

ftlstrings said:

What if I were to take a gallon of unfermented wort and empty the beers on top of it? The available sugars would be fodder for the wheat yeast and the active ferment **should** destroy oxidation compounds, right?

Click to expand...

I have an experiment like that going now. Had 45 drastically over-carbonated beers from two batches (one with a lacto infection). Dumped into plastic fermenting bucket and left open in kitchen for a week. Mixed them with some new beer and added Roeselare Yeast. Left for 16 months and sampled. Nice sour, but not exactly what I wanted. Added another gallon of new beer, placed in 75 degree area and slow steady fermentation kicked back in. Will check in another month or two, then bottle.