Refilling Lambic Solera - add yeast?

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Atvar

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I have a ~10 gallon lambic solera (Wyeast 3278) that is 1 year old. I am about to remove half to age on fruit, and brew another 5 gallons to top off. Should I pitch a packet of US-05 to help primary fermentation, or let whatever is alive in solera eat all the new sugars?

My longterm plan is to pull and replace 5 gallons every year. It will be split into a pair of 3 gallon carboys with black raspberries, blackberries, or other fruit to age another year before bottling. Might also try blending as well.

Also, at some point I may need to pull off some of the solera trub as well to prevent it from ever increasing? Is there anything major I'm not thinking of that may bite me later on?
 
Soleras tend to get more sour as they go, and will build up quite a bit of trub if used as a primary. A common way around all that--assuming you want one--is to clean-ferment the beer separately, then add it to the solera when the sacch has finished its work. It doesn't have to be 100% finished, just most of the way along.
 
+1 to what kingwood said. I would ferment the top off beer with a belgian strain (I use wlp 530) to produce the chemical compounds that the Brett turn into funk though.
 
I have always re-yeasted with a Belgian strain, I am looking for a funkier/barnyardy end result though. As for fermeting it out first or not thats up to you, I would depend that answer on how sour the Soleras already is, if you want it more sour then dump your wort in and deal with the trub extraction later. If its already quite sour you may just want to ferment it out and top off. Cheers.
 
I'll echo the comments above and also tell you that 1 year on fruit is way too long. Most lambic producers are 2-6 months on the fruit. I just bottled a bunch of fruited lambic from a solera pull at 10 weeks and was very happy.


If you do plan to primary in the barrel id suggest you do some yeast/ trub removal with your pull.
 

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