Lambic, kriek, Brett advice needed

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Xhul

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Hi everyone,

This is my first new thread so I hope this is appropriate. I found suggestions for some of my individual questions but I'm hoping the particulars of my case justify the thread. I brewed my first lambic a year ago. After originally pitching with us-05 it has been sitting around through the seasons with White Labs Sour Blend I and dregs from several commercial lambics. It tastes okay at this point. Not as sour as I would like but it seems like that might not be an uncommon thing for beers with commercial sour mixes. I plan on letting it continue to develop for years. The current gravity is at 1.010, the us-05 took it down to 1.012, so the brett and bugs in the sour blend have kicked off 2 points.

Since it has been a year I am about to brew up another lambic to put on the cake from this beer, hoping that it gets more sour. I want to rack the original onto a bunch of cans of those Oregon Fruit sour cherries and basically just let it sit on there forever.

So, here is where I am looking for some advice. Should I just let the year old lambic chill on the cherries for another year and see what happens? Should I try to keep it at any particular temp? Am I okay putting my new lambic on the cake from the old one? I also have a vial of Brett B trois, WLP 644 (edit: I was wrong, I actually have 648, the "vrai" one). Should I do something with this? I understand that it is best for 100% brett fermentations but would it be terrible to throw it into either my year old or new lambic? If I pitch it in the old lambic do I need to give it more nutrients or something to eat? Should I build it up first (it is already a fresh vial)?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
 
I think you're overthinking it. Lambic likes to be left alone, and traditionally it doesn't really get sour until a year or so. I like to wait until the beer is ready to package before adding fruit, as aging too long on the fruit can cause some of the fresh character to fade.

Adding a new beer to the cake is a good idea if you want something more sour to blend later. Just rack the current one to a new carboy and toss in fresh wort, plus some fresh sacch. The sacch will be long since dead after a year.

Wlp-644 isn't actually Brett - it's a saccharomyces strain, so it won't do anything in your lambic. Id save it for a nice IPA or something.

Magic ingredient in this kind of beer is time. Making a more sour version on the yeast cake is a good idea, because then you can blend to taste later.

Good luck!
 
Thanks for the advice!

You are right about WLP 644 but I just looked and I misnamed the brett strain I have, it is 648, Bruxellensis trois vrai.
 
I dont think vrai will provide much character. In my limited use it is more of a neutral-ish clean brett. That being said if you build up a starter and pitch that on the cake with the new wort it could make an interesting replacement for using sacc. Taste as you go. Just because traditional lambics require blending and 3 years doesn't mean yours has to. Ive had lambics be ready and delicious at 6-9 months (although less bret forward). 1.010 should be plenty for brett to live off of. You could feed it a touch of wort and nutrients if need be to get it going.
Id also fruit at end for more flavor. Fruit is expensive and wont fix a bad sour beer. Keep your airlock topped off and purge w CO2 whenever you sample and you should be good. Sounds delicious. Please let us now what you end up doing and how it turns out.
 
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