Kriek questions

[Brewddah]

I brewed a kriek in August of this year and it is finally growing a nice pellicle. This was my timeline for this beer:
Pitched US-05 and wyeast lambic blend at the same time
1 year in primary carboy
Rack on to 5# sour cherries
1 year on cherries
Bottle

After a month of primary fermentation, I moved it to a closet to make room for other things in my fermentation fridge. Recently I read a thread on here where someone moved a lambic, and in doing so, oxygenated it and made it get too estery and vinegary. Was moving it a mistake? The pellicle didn't really appear until about two weeks ago. This also makes me worry about when it comes time to transfer it.

 

[sweetcell]

1 year on cherries is too long. 2-3 months should be more than enough to extract all the flavor and to ferment out any sugars. after that, you're just giving the fresh fruit flavors time to fade.

moving it was not a mistake, per se. did you slosh it a lot? do you have a lot of headspace in an aging vessel that doesn't seal well?

don't worry about the pellicle.

 

[Brewddah]

Okay, good to know. I was careful to not slosh it. I just moved it across the room, not down stairs or anything like that.

 

[Brewddah]

Can I keep the total duration of the proposed timeline the same, but just reduce the time on the cherries? The reason I'm asking is, I brewed this beer with the intention of drinking it to celebrate getting my PhD...which is about two years down the road. I'm assuming it would also do well aging in bottles if the two year plan is too long.

 

[Agate]

In general, wait until the beer is done and ready to be packaged before you add fruit, and then give it 2-3 months as sweetcell says. 2 years is a good amount of time for another batch to develop nicely, so give it as much time as you can, and when it tastes right like a nice lambic, rack it onto fruit.

 

[sweetcell]

Can I keep the total duration of the proposed timeline the same, but just reduce the time on the cherries?

indeed you can. for a 2-year cycle i would age for 18-20 months, on cherries for 2-3 months, the 1-2 months to carb. carbing time would be less if you pitch some wine yeast at bottling.

another thing i would consider doing ASAP is getting some dregs in there, or a more hardy source of commercial bugs from a small lab (The Yeast Bay, Gigayeast, Omega Yeast, East Coast Yeast, etc). the White Lab and Wyeast mixes are underwhelming.

I'm assuming it would also do well aging in bottles if the two year plan is too long.

the problem is that the cherry flavor will fade in the bottle too.

another cautionary tale of n=1 is that my last batch of kriek was amazing for about 8 months, then fell off a cliff. i'm kicking myself that i didn't enjoy more of it while it was at its peak. i'm certainly not saying this will happen to your kriek, who knows maybe mine got infected... just' sayin.

 

[Brewddah]

I've actually been trying to isolate the brett strain that Allagash uses. Was planning on making a brett only beer with it once I get a big culture, but perhaps I could toss some into this one as well?

 

[sweetcell]

that would be good, although a true kriek needs some lactic acid bacteria (lacto and pedio) to create the sourness. brett brings the funk, but won't contribute to sourness.