Will bottling stop the souring process?

[SATXbrew]

Hi everyone. I just ordered several ECY20 Bugfarm yeasts and plan to use them throughout the year. I bought a few more than I really wanted to because of the shipping costs. I'm now planning ahead for the year and thinking about how I will manage making like 5 sours this year. I dont necessarily have the space nor that many carboys so I'm thinking I will bottle a few batches.

My question is, when is the earliest I can bottle without impeding the souring process? I have read that you should not bottle before the gravity reaches around 1008 and doesnt change for a month for safety concerns of bottle bombs. Let's say that happens in 3 months. Can I bottle then or will I risk not reaching my full sourness level that I'm going for? Thats pretty much the reason why I bout these ECY20's is because of their known heavy souring capabilities. I plan to use all belgian bottles and corking for these.

Thanks for your input!

 

[Dogue]

The souring process will continue once you bottle as long as there are sugars left that the yeast and other microbes can eat. As these yeasts and microbes can eat longer sugar chains than saccharomyces, the gravity should be not only low but steady over a long period of time. I haven't used ECY blends before, but I have several saisons and sours that have finished below 1.000, so I'd be wary about bottling at 1.008 unless I was confident that it wasn't going to drop much more. Also note that even once the gravity is fairly stable, flavor development will continue in the bottle as there will now be priming sugar for the microbes to feast on.

 

[ross_daly]

Depending on the bugs, they may or may not produce co2 so you generally don't want to bottle before they are done working.