Long term primary aging off-flavours

[Dehm77]

I brewed JZ's lambic recipe to the "T" in July 14, with the intention to bottle it at some point. This was my first sour beer. OG 1.055 for 2 weeks with S05 (yes, I know, I should have only waited until 2/3 of the sugar was consumed), then pitched a 1 liter dregged lambic stater from a Lambic Gueuze I bought while stationed in Italy. I forget the exact beer. The point I want to make here, is that after 5 months on the primary yeast cake (and lambic culture pitch), the flavor was not disappointing. No off tastes that I could detect (I'm no expert judge mind you). This came about because I ran out of beer one Saturday night, and tried some by ripping the 7.5 gal plastic lid off and dipping in a big handled glass mug. I had intentions to put the beer down the drain as I didn't want to contaminate my plastic ware (I keg). Long story short... I've read a lot about only keeping a beer on the primary for a max of 2 months for big beers (as per JZ, JP and others) before moving to keg or secondary. After this experience, I'ld say that that the many posts about the quality of modern yeast strains is correct, in that secondary aging is unnecessary in most cases. What do you all think?

 

[Sippin37]

For a lambic you can leave it on that same yeast for years, no worries.

 

[emyers]

Ive always done my long term storage in kegs or carboys. That plastic bucket may have allowed some o2 into your beer and skunked it?

 

[doug293cz]

Ive always done my long term storage in kegs or carboys. That plastic bucket may have allowed some o2 into your beer and skunked it?

Skunking comes from light exposure. Oxidation typically leads to wet cardboard off flavor.

Brew on

 

[morticaixavier]

In this case the addition of the lambic culture would void any worries about yeast off flavors because the Brett and bacteria will consume the sach yeast byproducts