Advice for Bottling a Sour Beer

[popgunandy]

I've got my first sour beer that's been sitting for a year in a closet and is ready to bottle. Normally I keg beer but this is something that will be around a while; it's not a style that lends itself well to home kegging in my opinion.

Any advice on bottling and conditioning with fresh dry yeast? I assume after a year the original yeast is not viable.

 

[microbusbrewery]

You probably still have some viable yeast in there, but it would take likely take a while to carb...like several months. I usually re-yeast with a neutral wine or champagne yeast, both of which are said to be more tolerant of acid/lower pH. Even doing this, it seems like it usually takes a good month for them to carb. Keep in mind your dissolved CO2 is going to be lower compared to a beer that has only sat in a fermenter for a couple weeks, so you'll need to use more priming sugar. I've used 10-15% more for mine and it's worked out well. That said, I've gotten the most consistent carbonation by force carbing in the keg, then bottling using my counter-pressure bottle filler.

 

[jgourd]

I add calculate the proper amount of dextrose based on the warmest temperature the beer sat at. Boil with some water and dump in a bottling bucket. I boil more water, let cool, and rehydrate Nottingham. I then rack my beer on the sugar and yeast and bottle. It takes three weeks. It's technically carbonated after two weeks, but Notty produces some slight diacetyl in sours that needs cleaning up. After three weeks, it's all gone and perfectly carbonated. I've done this with 15 gallons of lambic that sat in a barrel for one year and subsequently on fruit for 9 months.