Souring at bottle time?

[stevehollx]

I'm thinking about taking a handful of bottles from a batch of a tripel, and souring a portion of it just for kicks.

Has anyone done this? I'm thinking about throwing some brett in some bottles and hiding them for a while, or maybe even lactic acid, just to experiment without committing to a 3/5 gallon batch.

Thought? Experience?

 

[carnevoodoo]

I'm thinking about taking a handful of bottles from a batch of a tripel, and souring a portion of it just for kicks.

Has anyone done this? I'm thinking about throwing some brett in some bottles and hiding them for a while, or maybe even lactic acid, just to experiment without committing to a 3/5 gallon batch.

Thought? Experience?

My thought is that if you get brett in there, you could be asking for some bottle bombs. Brett can superattenuate when pushed and you could very easily end up with way too much carbonation. The other issue is that brett isn't sour. Just funky.

Lactic acid might be ok. I wouldn't ruin too much of a batch on it, but you never know.

 

[DregAddict]

I agree that you might have some bottle bombs if you're not careful. The Brett will eat up a lot of the sugars that sacc left behind, so it will take some tricky calculations to determine if you need to prime those bottles, and how much priming sugar to use if needed. And the other response was right that Brett won't add the tart type of sourness you may be desiring. Lacto will add that, but may not carbonate the beer as well. Additionally, lacto will need O2 and relatively high temps that may cause off flavors to develop in you beer. Your best bet is to make a fresh batch and sour a very small portion(maybe 0.5 gal) of it with lacto at high temps for a few days. Then add that small sour mash to another small volume(maybe another gallon) of the overall wort that has been fermenting with sacc or a combo of sacc/Brett. That way if you made 5 gal of wort, 1.5 gal would be experimental and the other 3.5 gal would be fermented in a way you're familiar with.

 

[jtakacs]

you could add lactic acid itself - all the conversion is done, no O2 needed... that kind of sounds like cheating to me... lol.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

Some commercial breweries add lacto at bottling to avoid souring, the time involved or the lack of uniformity from organic souring.

 

[El_Exorcisto]

Lactobacillus does NOT require oxygen and does NOT produce CO2. It is a facultative anaerobe that produces only lactic acid. However it cannot deal with AA above about 10 IBU, and it can't tolerate a super low pH so it has limited capabilities when it comes to souring. If you want to try souring at bottling time, you can try adding a combination of pediococcus and brett. However this will in all likelihood cause the brett to superattenuate even with the low amount of residual sugar left in your tripel. If you really, really want to try it you should do it in champagne bottles and put them in some type of wooden or metal box to contain any explosion. Check them in six months and see what shakes out.

 

[stevehollx]

I agree that you might have some bottle bombs if you're not careful. The Brett will eat up a lot of the sugars that sacc left behind, so it will take some tricky calculations to determine if you need to prime those bottles, and how much priming sugar to use if needed. And the other response was right that Brett won't add the tart type of sourness you may be desiring. Lacto will add that, but may not carbonate the beer as well. Additionally, lacto will need O2 and relatively high temps that may cause off flavors to develop in you beer. Your best bet is to make a fresh batch and sour a very small portion(maybe 0.5 gal) of it with lacto at high temps for a few days. Then add that small sour mash to another small volume(maybe another gallon) of the overall wort that has been fermenting with sacc or a combo of sacc/Brett. That way if you made 5 gal of wort, 1.5 gal would be experimental and the other 3.5 gal would be fermented in a way you're familiar with.

I seems like a sour mash with lacto sounds like the way to go. Then I can boil the mash to kill it, and blend it @ bottle time to taste.

I know it's a kludgy way to go, but I think it would be an interesting experiment before I commit to a 5 gallon sour batch.

 

[DregAddict]

Yeah, a lot of people go for the sour mash approach. Go check out some of the threads on the lambic forum. You'll find a lot of info.

 

[smokinghole]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/dosing-bottling-234609/

I've been experimenting with the very same idea. So far my bottles with brett in them are just as carbonated (maybe a tad less) as the others. I am keeping them in a safe place in case of a bomb though. As said in my thread I'm linking to, the brett bottles have a smoother less estery flavor so far and it's only been two months in the bottle. Another thing to note my brett bottles are done in a corked champagne bottle versus a crown cap bottle.

 

[blizzard]

This is an ongoing question that I have about many Orval clones. They often require a dose of brett at bottling time, but no one mentions super-attenuation or bottle bombs.

 

[ReverseApacheMaster]

This is an ongoing question that I have about many Orval clones. They often require a dose of brett at bottling time, but no one mentions super-attenuation or bottle bombs.

Part of the question is what the FG is when Orval goes into the bottle. Part of the question is also whether Orval primes when it bottles with brett or lets brett use the remaining sugars to carbonate.

Orval bottles are also thick and designed to withstand the necessary pressure of the bottle carbonation. So all other issues aside you cannot compare the bottle bomb issue with a standard 12oz long neck and a Orval bottle because they are designed to support different levels of pressure.

I've never seen a beer dosed with brett at bottling that wasn't in an Orval-like bottle, a champagne bottle or a Belgian 750ml bottle. Those bottles all support greater pressure than the regular longneck but even all of those have their limits.

 

[smokinghole]

The champagne, orval, or the 375ml belgian bottles that RR and Lost Abbey come in should hold up. The chimay/ommegang bottles don't compare to champagne bottles in my opinion. There's a big difference especially when you weigh them in glass content compared between ommegang/chimay and champagne bottles.

Orval seems like a combination of residual sugar providing carbonation and possibly priming. They probably change up priming sugar based on what sort of terminal gravity they reach. If it's low they add more if it's higher they add less and let the microbe cocktail do the rest.

 

[phished880]

In the past year or two I have done this with almost every beer I make. I have a mason jar with " house bugs" that I use to dose bottles and then fill from the keg. I've found some beers have been gushers ie a smoked porter with a FG pre bugs of 1.020.

My only problem is I never seem to bottle enough or just lack patience to get them to a year or more.

Next due for some bugs, about 10-12 bottles of arrogant bastard clone.

due to my orval problem I have a good amount of recycled orval bottles to do this in.