brewing, storing, blending Flanders red...

[dcbeerboy]

the scenario...

i have about 4.5g of 18 month old flanders red that i will be transferring into a 5g better bottle for aging, later to be blended with younger flanders red. i will be using the slurry to ferment the 10+ gal of flanders i will be brewing on monday.

so, i'm going to brew 11g, using about .5g to top off that first flanders up to 5g, then use that slurry in each of the carboys to ferment the new flanders.

got all that?

anyhow, i was thinking i'd siphon the old beer into the better bottle, then pump the new beer directly into the carboys. then, i *was* going to pump that .5g on top of the old beer, but then i thought about aeration... will i be putting too much O2 back into that beer and get some unsavory characteristics?

i'm trying not to confuse myself, hopefully you're not confused.

 

[ryane]

I would probably advise against using the whole cake, I did that a couple times when I was first starting out brewing sours and it made those beers far too sour for me with minimal fruit/funk, and I really really enjoy sour

I would suggest pitching a half packet of yeast along with a quart or so of the cake into each fresh beer

 

[dcbeerboy]

a quart of cake seems like a lot, in comparison to the entire cake.

 

[ryane]

Really? did you rack off the original yeast cake earlier in the process? mine are generally quite thick but I dont rack

How sour is the red on it right now? If its soundly sour I would suggest using less of the cake, as pedio in particular can very quickly over sour a beer very quickly

 

[dcbeerboy]

i haven't racked it off the bugs yet, but i would think from just a typical fermentation, the yeast cake wouldn't fill an entire quart jar. maybe i'm way off.

 

[ryane]

Im not talking about a very thick sludge, youll want to mix it up pretty good to make it easy to work with, I would suggest using no more than 1/4 of the cake in each subsequent batch

In my sours there tends to be quite an accumulation of trub, so the cake is fairly large, and I dont like to get any suspended yeast into my bottles so I leave a large amount behind, this all gets mixed up and distributed between new batches and old

 

[jessup]

the scenario...i have about 4.5g of 18 month old flanders red...to be blended with younger flanders red...i thought about aeration.

i just put about 10 lbs of sour cherries in 6 gal of my 18 month old (3.09) and just said fluck it and tossed them into the secondary without racking on them. splash, splash. i too am wondering what the outcome will be, but i'm pretty sure it's not going to ruin anything. in your case i wouldn't worry about a little aeration from the mixing. while i'm not winning any awards with my sours (haven't tried) they turn out acceptable imo. i'm still learning too, though...

i haven't racked it off the bugs yet, but i would think from just a typical fermentation, the yeast cake wouldn't fill an entire quart jar. maybe i'm way off.

i missed something. did you rack it off the primary fermentation from the saccharomyces and then add brett/bugs? if you racked off primary then you prob won't fill a full quart jar. if you didn't then there might be a lot of trub!

I would suggest pitching a half packet of yeast along with a quart or so of the cake into each fresh beer.

what half packet of yeast are you referring to? sacch?

In my sours there tends to be quite an accumulation of trub, so the cake is fairly large, and I dont like to get any suspended yeast into my bottles so I leave a large amount behind.

do you rack off your primary?

I would probably advise against using the whole cake, I did that a couple times when I was first starting out brewing sours and it made those beers far too sour.

since pedio is the feared bug in this scenario, why not just add fresh brett, stepped up of course, so that the brett X colony has a larger starting yeast count than from the cake alone.

 

[dcbeerboy]

sorry for not being clear... i mashed at 154, pitched a half pack of us-05 into 1.062 wort, racked 5 days later into glass at 1.022, and pitched he roselare. so, there *shouldn't* be a lot of trub, just the bugs.

make a difference?