bottling sour beers

[grubs18]

I have a belgian style sour beer going right now and have another one planned soon. I want to bottle condition these beers in champaigne bottles instead of force carbonating them. Do I still need to add yeast or will the bugs and critters carbonate the beer?

[Sent From My iPhone]

I don't know and I guess no one else does either .

[Brancid]

I'm no buggy beer expert...but I have stayed in a holiday inn. I would check out a book like Farm House Ales or Brew like a Monk to be sure.

That being said, I've been told that for a Gueze the brewers blend the 3 year with the 2 year to taste and only add enough 1 year to give the bugs enough sugars to carbonate the beer. No more yeast. My take would be to use a program like ProMash to figure out how much to use. I think it'll tell you how much DME to use. Maybe figure out the gravity of that and compare to the gravity of your beer and use that as a starting point.

Also, e-mail Vinnie. He has said several times that if homebrewers have questions about sour beers that he'd be more than happy to help you out.

Above all though, please report back here when you figure it out. I'm ramping up to a Lambic style program soon and would like to know as much as I can.

Hope I helped,
Cheers,
brancid

[HomoBrewer]

I'm about to bottle my Flanders red and haven't even thought about that... I was planning on just adding priming sugar and bottling without adding any yeast or anything else. Maybe I should look into this a bit further...

[Cuda]

just adding priming sugar and bottling without adding any yeast or anything else.

This is what I do. It will take longer to carbonate and and your beer may get sick again. I bottle condition my sour beers for 2-3 month.

[leyon]

Prepare to die or lose all your bottles if you do so.
I brewed a sour red (Flemish red) 6 months ago and this is what you should do:

for a sour beer, you probably use a blend of saccharomyces, S bruxellensis, lactic bateria (and some other)
If you know the action and behaviour of the sacch. you should be coautious with the others: the work slowly and eat unfermentble sugars (slowly....)

you should rack for a secondaryfermentation for about 2 months.
I wouldn't add more the 5g/l while bottling.

Make sure you use champagne-like bottles (heavier).
In my exeperice, what I did as dexribed was ok for normal beer bottles.
it will carbonate slowly and produce extremely thick head and small bubbles.

if you proceed this way, you will get a Rodenbach-like sour beer (but wait 4 months at least; before that time it will not have a pleasant smell at all.)

Well, you will need 6 months... thats's the drawback.
but don't try to go too fast, it's not beer, it not wine... it is something inbetween!

Spring is approaching: you can rack in secondary for one year with 3KG of whole cherries/10L(2.5gal)

[J.Brew]

If I was about to bottle a batch of beautiful sour beer that I had put all my love and hard work into and wasn't sure how to deal with it there is only one thing I would do...talk to someone who does. An expert even. Personally I would seek the advice of Vinnie Cilurzo from Russian river Brewing Co. He's very approachable and willing to help out the home brewer with information that might improve their beer, and some of the techniques he uses. He has spoken at my homebrew club meetings about sour beers and answered many questions on the subject. Check out the website and get in contact with him. He answers e-mails and I've even given him a call at the brewery and left him a message to give me a call at his convenience. Here's the link. Russian River Brewing Co.

[boobookittyfuk]

here's what i asked vinnie once:

"I am homebrewing an all brett beer inspired by your sanctification. I
just have a question about dosage of sugar. At what rate would you
suggest (weight/gallon...or i can convert metric)? Also, it appears as
though the brett and other bugs have all or mostly settled out of the
beer. Would it be important to add healty yeast along with the priming
sugar when bottling? I won't blame you if anything goes wrong. I
appreciate you taking time to help me if you can. "

and his reply:

"For bottling it is more about gravity than actual amount of sugar added.
You do not want to bottle with a gravity over 1.010 or so. For us, our
Brett doesn't ferment much below 1.006 so from 1.010 to 1.006 we get a good
carbonation and it still leaves a little room if the beer continues to
ferment slowly. Some Brett's in certain conditions will ferment lower
though so you have to be careful. If the gravity is above 1.010 you will
have over-carbonated beer. We do add a fresh pitch of Brett at bottle
conditioning."