A dilemma

[joshrosborne]

So, in March, I brewed a sour brown with Roeselare and a month or so later found out my office was being closed and I would have to relocate. Fast forward to today and that beer is still in a carboy. My house sale closes in the middle of next month and I don't know what to do with this beer.

My options are:

1) Bottle it. It is only 1.01'ish right now, so I am very, very hesitant about this option. I took gravity readings in September, October, and today and the gravity hasn't budged at all over this time. It is sour and very complex already due to the Jolly Pumpkin dregs I pitched, but still. That's a lot of points left. The next highest FG of a sour I've bottled in the past was 1.006. If 1.01 is as far as it's going to go, I have no problem with bottling, but doesn't it seem awfully high?

2) Drive it the four hours up to my new residence. I also hate this idea since I don't have any kegging equipment or way to flush with CO2.

What do you all think?

 

[TNGabe]

I don't think 1.010 is unreasonably high, expecially if it's been constant for several months and there are no visible signs of fermentation. If you want to bottle, perhaps you could bottle it still and see what happens. I've done that with several brett beers that seemed steady at a similar gravity and over the course of 6 months or so, developed a nice level of carbonation.

I always wonder why people worry about moving beers. Any head space should be full of CO2 so I wouldn't worry about oxygen. Even if oxygen is introduced to the beer, perhaps the perils of oxyidizing wild beers are overstated. After drinking a geuze that was blended following a lecture a friend attended in Belgium several years ago, I watched a video of the event on YouTube showing that the lambics were transported in a variety of containers from casks to plastic water cubes to spiedel type vessels, blended using measuring cups, and then bottled straight from a tap like on a bottling bucket. Not that Flanders style beers are lambic, but the geuze I had wasn't oxidized.

 

[TimT]

It will super attenuate as it has pedio and brett in it. 1010 will result in ~5 volumes of CO2.

 

[TNGabe]

It will super attenuate as it has pedio and brett in it. 1010 will result in ~5 volumes of CO2.

Not true. Many mixed fermentation beers finish above 1.000. Russian River beers for instance. Extrapolating from OG and ABV listed on their website, Beatification (1.050, 5.5%) finishes at 1.008, Consecration (1.078, 10.0%) at 1.002, Supplication (1.060, 7%) at 1.007, & Temptation (1.062, 7.5%) at 1.005. Granted, there is no way the OP can know exactly where the beer will finish, but as it's been stable at 1.010 for months, it's a pretty safe bet the beer won't drop another 10 points in the bottle if bottled still. It's entirely possible the beer is stable at it's current gravity and if bottled still will never carbonate.

 

[TimT]

Every beer I have used Roeselare in has gone to zero. Many if not all of those beers are blended so could easily be off a few points, alongside that acid production (lactic acid is nearly as dense as sugar) and if they actually do test with lab and not with just OG and FG.