Wyeast 3278/Kriek question

Guys,

I'm attempting my first lambic/kriek this saturday and wanted a little feedback regarding my fermentation plan.

I'm pitching w/ the Wyeast lambic blend off the bat and will primary ferment at 72 in my Johnson controls regulated chest freezer. My question has to do w/ whether or not to secondary after a few weeks. Most of what I've read is folks leaving it go for a few weeks then racking to secondary for a year or so then racking on top of cherries for 6months to a year for a tertiary fermentation.

I was wondering if the secondary is necessary or beneficial. I racked my Flanders red after 2 weeks to secondary about a year ago and have been questioning the wisdom of this since. I've read that the dying yeast are beneficial to Brett and Pedo so it would make sense to me to leave all that in primary but I have not read or seen anyone who is doing that.

Thanks for any responses.

I don't do any removal of yeast, in my sour beers. They stay right on the cake for years if need be. Lambic's need to be blended, to round out the flavors, I do one a year, this will be my third year, so I will be able to blend them and add the cherry's by the end of the year, I will also be able to make a Gueuze with the new one.

I have another question; I purchased a large can of vinter's harvest cherry fruit base http://www.midwestsupplies.com/cherry-vintner-s-harvest-fruit-bases.html to add for the secondary fermentation. I'm concerned that this will be way too much sugar therefore significantly raising my relative OG. When I purchased the can I didn't realize that this was not a purree but a juice.

Thoughts?

For a lambic you should leave it on the cake.

I have used cherry juice in the past. I'm not sure how different "base" is from juice, if at all. I wouldn't be concerned with adding too much sugar unless the product has a lot of corn syrup or other sugar sources added. You're probably going to add more water than sugar to the beer which will balance out any increase in abv from the sugar. Since you bought it at midwest I'm inclined to believe it's probably mostly actual juice, plus water, and probably not loaded up on sugar like many grocery store-type juices.

No, it's definitely juice; there is a recipe for turning it into a cherry wine so I believe it to be of high quality.

The beer is brewed and sitting in my 75 degree basement; no 'bug' activity that i'm able to see just yet.

I have another question though. I've read a few other post where people have done 2 weeks primary; Secondary to another carboy on top of the fruit for 4 weeks then bottle. Stated to bottle condition for about a year to allow the bret and lacto to 'do its thing'. This doesnt seem to make much sense to me since this would produce bottle bombs. Am I missing something or should I stick with my initial plan outlined above?