Seeking Solera Advice

[Helms]

Greetings,

For a little while now I've been keeping my eyes out for a used 15 gallon wine barrel to fill with Flanders red, pulling off an annual 5 gallons. I'm getting a little tired of searching, so this weekend I'm picking up two 15.5 gallon Sanke kegs instead so that I can get this started. If I find a nice barrel later, I'll just make more beer.

Around five weeks ago, I brewed up four identical 5.5 gallon lambics. Two of them were done with Roeselare and the other two with Wyeast 3278. I'm really tempted to just transfer three of these into one of the kegs. I don't really feel like brewing any more lambics at the moment as I have other beers that need to be done. Can anyone give me a reason not to mix the two yeast/bug blends together? Thanks.

 

[Oldsock]

Can't think of one, in fact I'd encourage you to add more microbes in the form of dregs from a few bottles of your favorite gueuze!

 

[Helms]

Great news. I assumed that this was the case, but wanted a second opinion before going ahead with this. I've been brewing regularly for a number of years but am totally new to brewing sours. The initial plan for the four lambics was to leave two of them "clean" and add various dregs to the other two. I figured that I'd get a good idea of how 3278 and 3763 are on their own and see if they're much better with other bugs added in. Consequently, one of the batches has already has dregs from a St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition and a one-off Brett beer from a local brewery added.

Regardless, once I started reading up on soleras I got much more excited about that. I also just found out that I can get products from The Yeast Bay nearby so I'm eager to free up some carboys so that I can try some of their strains.

I appreciate the reply.