Questions about souring

[Kobrew]

Hey guys!

I brewed a belgian pale ale that I'm going to sour over the next year or so with Brett and had a couple questions.

When I brewed it I put it in my Carboy for primary fermentation without thinking that I had to transfer it into a secondary to add the Brett after the primary fermentation is done. So I only have a bottling bucket left to transfer to. Will it be safe in a bottling bucket for a long time? Can I let it stay in the primary fermenter for the whole duration? Or should I purchase another Carboy?

I also want to add fruit to it at some point(the mad fermantationist says he does it around 6 months) so I was thinking about splitting the batch into two 2.5 gallon batches and adding fruit to one and leaving the other. So should I just buy two 3 gallon carboys and split it when I transfer? If so, how do I go about making sure split the Brett properly as well?

 

[armedcor]

Brett won't sour your beer. It'll add a lot of extra flavours/funk but it wont sour it.

I'd personally just add the brett to the primary carboy and let it go.

Just split the batch in half into the two carboys for aging/fruiting, the beer will be well infected with brett at that stage.

 

[mrgrimm101]

You probably want to reserve any carboys or buckets that have had the Brett in it for only Bretts/sour beers. You wouldn't want to use that equipment for a non-Brett beer and have the funk stick around.

 

[beergolf]

armedcor is right. Brett will not sour your beer. It will add some great flavors though.

If you want some sour you can always add some dregs from a few sour beers and give it time to work.

If you only have one carboy you should probably get one so you can age the beer for a long time. The bottling. bucket is not a good choice for long term aging.

Here is a great resource for a list of beers that you can use.

http://www.themadfermentationist.com/p/dreg-list.html