Add complexity to accidental sour?

I made an English Barleywine a couple weeks ago and went to rack it to secondary today. It's got a pretty strong sour character to it. I'm guessing it's acetobacter and/or lactobacillus. It's actually really enjoyable for being a 16 day old, accidentally soured, English Barleywine. It's attenuation is 1.091 -> 1.027 = 70.33%, so I imagine there is still some yeast-chewable sugar and a good bit of bug-chewable sugar left.

I've had a few accidental sours before, and some have been enjoyable and some have been terrible. So my question is: could I really drive the sour character of this beer by adding some specific bacteria/yeast to steer it? And what would you suggest, to that end? Maybe a Roselare Blend to inoculate it with a lot of different bugs?

I also have a 5 gal whiskey barrel that has a 3 month old Flanders Red (in which I pitched Roselare). I could throw this beer in there in the next 1-3 months or so and not interrupt my plans for the Flanders.

Lastly, I've been taking good notes, and it is very evident that this fermenter has caused some infection, so I'll be retiring it. No need for a sanitation lesson
[Edit: further note, I only subjected my 'wine thief' to the beer, which I'll also be replacing (more accurately, relegating to sour beers from now-on). So no other equipment was compromised.]

 

...anyone?

 

You could add different bacteria but it's hard to say what to add given that even you're not sure. it'll be a total crap shoot.

I'd just let it ride out for a month or two and see what happens, then decide.

 

your fermentor may or may not have a some wild bug in it but it is by no means unusable if you clean and sanitize it. the infection could have come from somewhere else; hands, clothing, mouth, dust or whatever. i don't know of many sour beers that are high alcohol but that does not mean it wouldn't work.

 

I'd rather not take any chances with the fermenter. They're cheap, and I can always use extra "utility" buckets.

If I "ride it out" for a couple months, there will be far less sugar to contribute to the additional complexity that I'm looking for. That's why I want to act quickly.

I could just toss a bit (a couple oz or so) of my Flanders Red in there...

 

you are misunderstanding sour beer fermentation.

 

Well that's largely why I'm here asking a question. Perhaps you'd like to elaborate?

My concern is the remaining complex sugars in the beer which can't be metabolized by the yeast. My understanding is that the sour character is derived from a few different bacteria/yeast:

Lactobaccilus
Brettanomyces
Pediococcus
Acetobacter

I know that Acetobacter converts oxygen and alcohol into acetic acid, but some of these others must thrive on the remaining unfermented sugars. If I have a strong infection of only one of these (and I must if it has a noticeable flavor after only 2 weeks!), and it eats the majority of remaining sugars, there would not be sufficient food left for others to contribute their character to the beer. Is this not logical?

 

if yours is an accidental infection then it's not really certain what is fermenting the beer; wild yeast, bacteria or a combination of the two along with whatever yeast you pitched. the time frame for sour fermentation is long 1, 2, 3 yrs. the yeast and bacteria involved are active for periods of time depending on temps, ph and type of food available among other things. when the wort no longer tastes sweet it does not mean all of the sugar is gone, there is no hurry to do anything to ensure complexity in a sour, they eat each other, the wood or byproducts the other produces. even the masters in belgium and elsewhere do not fully understand the complexity of the interplay between the bugs, or the wort and the bugs (i certainly don't either). what is clear is that time is the critical ingredient. again, with your beer having unknown bugs in it everything about the fermentation, flavor or complexity of the resulting beer is also unknown; it might be great or it might not be so great. i ferment all of my sour beer in the same fermentors as my clean beer and have yet to encounter an accidental sour. i recently bottled a yr old flanders red, washed/sanitized the better bottle with a bottle brush then poured an american lager into the fermentor. that lager went into a keg that previously had an all Brett pale ale in it, no problems. star san is tough sh*t. i'm not saying anyone else should do this, i'm saying it's very easily possible to do. anyway, i'll be interested to see how your beer turns out.