Sour blending

[wildmancurry]

I have found one answer to my question but I wanted to follow up but the contributor that posted it has been banned (possibly for making bad beer). I am going to make a Flanders red. After I barrel it, I want to blend it back with fresher beer. My thought was to kill the sour blend yeast/bacteria with campden tablets, then mix it with the fresher beer which would in theory just be made with sacc. My questions are

1) Is this plan advisable?
2) Is campden the right tool for the job?
3) Can I use campden (or anything else) to kill the one batch and then expect the living yeast from the second batch to carbonate the final product in the bottle?

 

[Nosybear]

Risky. Overdose with Campden and you have no yeast left to carbonate. But you can wait a day or so after dosing and your metabisulfite will reduce to sulfate. Add back some yeast and you're back in business.

 

[thunderwagn]

Why not let it ferment out?

 

[Nosybear]

I think he's worried about the bugs in the sour. I really don't see a problem with just blending them and as our Aussie friends say, letting her buck.

 

[Mark Farrall]

Have you got any feel for how much gravity drop is left in your fresher beer? If you do then you can calculate the amount of carbonation you're going to get from the fresh beer to avoid the bottle bombs.

If you're going to use campden/metabisulphate I'd rack however much of your old and new reds into a different container and murder the microbes in that one. Leaving the barrel and whatever has the younger beer in peace. Then you can use a conditioning yeast for the carbonation that should leave the maltose in the young beer alone.

And some of the cider people will pasteurise in the bottling container (generally a cornie keg) before back sweetening and bottling. Probably more effort than it's worth, but it would work here as well (backsweetening = priming sugar).

 

[wildmancurry]

Another thought occurred to me. What if I were to make a hoppier version for the young beer? Won't the higher hops kill/inhibit the bacteria? Admittedly, that seems really sketchy.

 

[oliver]

Another thought occurred to me. What if I were to make a hoppier version for the young beer? Won't the higher hops kill/inhibit the bacteria? Admittedly, that seems really sketchy.

yes as long as you know exactly what bacterias you're dealing with. Lactobacillus will be averted and cease in the presence of hops.

 

[wildmancurry]

Wyeast Roeselare Blend.

 

[oliver]

Wyeast Roeselare Blend.

Roselare has a lotta bugs in it from what i understand, definitely Brett in there. Hops might inhibit some of the bacteria in there but the Brett in time will still do its thing, harder to kill that. I don't even think Sorbate will kill Brett, but i could be wrong.

edit, doing some reading, i think a healthy dosage of potassium sorbate will inhibit even Brett, but isn't as effective against Lacto or Acetobacter

 

[wildmancurry]

Roselare has a lotta bugs in it from what i understand, definitely Brett in there. Hops might inhibit some of the bacteria in there but the Brett in time will still do its thing, harder to kill that. I don't even think Sorbate will kill Brett, but i could be wrong.

edit, doing some reading, i think a healthy dosage of potassium sorbate will inhibit even Brett, but isn't as effective against Lacto or Acetobacter

Campden should though.. The only other option is to pasteurize. I'm scared to do that since we know heat is bad for beer. TBH, the whole process make me nervous. I have only made two sours and this one is the most style specific.

 

[thunderwagn]

If you use a roeselare blend, you're doing your beer a disservice by cutting it short imo. I'd really let it do it's work if possible, especially if you're wanting it to be as good as you're expecting it to be...jmo.

 

[Mark Farrall]

What thunderwagn said.

I'm really enjoying my red with that yeast blend. Let it sit for 16 months, packaged half the keg and then added half a keg's worth of young beer that I'd fermented out separately (high mash temp to leave plenty for the various bugs to eat). I'll look at that in six months and take the spunding valve off to see if it's still creating enough CO2 to delay any packaging.

 

[wildmancurry]

If you use a roeselare blend, you're doing your beer a disservice by cutting it short imo. I'd really let it do it's work if possible, especially if you're wanting it to be as good as you're expecting it to be...jmo.

I had planned to leave it in the barrel at least a year;; is that not enough time for the magic?

 

[Mark Farrall]

People go on about leaving it at least 18 months. I was ready to package at 10 months but life got in the way. Can't remember it being obviously better when I got around to it six months later.

 

[oliver]

The longer it sits, the more the Brett character will develop and you’ll get all sorts of acidity paired with funk. I personally wouldn’t kill it, because you can keep that blend going with a new beer after it’s racked off, and the yeasts will continually evolve and become uniquely yours. Just have some dirty equipment that is ok getting infected with Brett.

If you are certain you want to kill it, try using both sorbate for the Brett and campden for the other bacterias together, but with campden you might need to de-gas or wait a little while to get the sulphur out of solution.