Any safe way to unbottle a batch of beer?

Homebrew Talk

Help Support Homebrew Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

phuzle

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
108
Reaction score
0
I harvested a yeast from a bottle of commercial belgian beer, hoping to make a nice belgian beer. I let the beer ferment for a month, and due to circumstances I won't go into, I had to bottle it ASAP. So I didn't get a gravity reading until I was all set to bottle and there was no turning back, and the reading was about 1.020, and the beer was really sweet. Well, I figured that either the yeast went dormant or whatever I harvested just wasn't that good. I've opened a few since I bottled 3 weeks ago, and they've been sickly sweet and undrinkable, and just a little low on carbonation.

So my assumption is that the yeast wasn't great (a friend suspected it was lager yeast, not sure if that is consistent with my details or not). I've got a sour beer in a carboy, and I was considering unbottling all of the remaining beers and adding them to the sour beer. My questions are 1) does this sound like a good idea, and 2) how would I go about unbottling and pouring into a carboy with the least oxygenation?
 
It would be extremely difficult to transfer the bottles of beer to another vessel without oxidizing the beer. Rather than do this, I would recommend blending the sweet beer with another beer, your sour beer for example, in the glass right before drinking.
 
Interesting idea I hadn't thought of. The sour beer isn't ready yet, the idea would be to add the sweet beer as extra food for the bugs to work on. But I could blend the sweet beer with another dry beer. My only concern is that if the yeast keep eating, the bottles will explode. So do I have to just toss them all in a cold fridge when they get to be the right carbonation?
 
Back
Top