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Bottle conditioning sours?

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  • Bottle conditioning sours?

    Looking for some help/advice for bottle conditioning sours. Two of our sours are at the 9 month point(WLP650). They are at 1.008..would you prime as usual? Should I reyeast? Maybe champagne yeast? Any help here is much appreciated.

  • #2
    If 1.008 is your final, you should be able to add sugar as normal but there is a caveat. If your pH is too low, then you will have an issue getting yeast to be active so re-pitching can be unsuccessful. The "bugs" (pedio, lacto) should eat the sugar and give you some carb, however they can produce more lactic depending on the strain, and thereby less (sometimes much less) carbonation. They also take a long time. Brettanomyces should give you some co2 production, but can take a long time and may not achieve desirable levels.

    Usually you might add a concentration of your original culture. Ideally stepped up with nutrients in a diluted ratio of your beer, to "acclimate" the yeast to "rough" conditions. "Acid shock starter". You can try a good dose of the champagne yeast, although it is generally recommended to hydrate it properly first. Some wine strains may do the trick as well, but you will probably have to experiment.

    Check out sourbeerblog, milk the funk, and the mad fermentationist for good info on these styles. And remember some traditional sours are even still bottled.

    Hope this helps. I am by no means an expert on these styles.

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    • #3
      Thank you for your reply! ph was 3.9-4 last I checked. This was why I felt that champagne yeast would work well but my thought was it would consume more of the residual sugars. I'll look into the sites you provided. Thanks again!

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      • #4
        Originally posted by UnFermentable View Post
        [...] And remember some traditional sours are even still bottled. [...]
        Oh man, like this one from Ale Apothecary! http://www.bringonthebeer.com/beers/...ecary-be-still

        Regards,
        Mike Sharp

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Humulus16 View Post
          Thank you for your reply! ph was 3.9-4 last I checked. This was why I felt that champagne yeast would work well but my thought was it would consume more of the residual sugars. I'll look into the sites you provided. Thanks again!
          I don't think you will have any problems with the champagne yeast eating more residual sugars than the lacto or pedio, since they are capable of metabolizing more complex sugars in general. I would suggest you try the champagne yeast. Personally, I would probably pre-hydrate the yeast with a dilute ratio (maybe 1-1) of the original beer to try and give a bit of acclimation before pitching the bottles.

          Let us know what you end up with and if you like the results, I would be very interested to see how it comes out.

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