bottle condition v.s. force carb for lambic?

How about splitting, half to bottle bucket and half to keg? That way you're safe and have a nice back to back comparison for future reference. Additionally, you can report back to add to the wealth of site knowledge.

 

Depends on when you want your beer. Force carbing is much faster, although priming with wine yeast can carb lambic very well and faster than the resident culture in the beer after such a long fermentation. One of the main reasons lambic Brewers blend with young beer is for the small residual gravity remaining after 1 year in the barrels to carb the beer as they age in bottles. That stage takes some time, and can be hard to predict in some cases according to Wild Brews. Good luck if you go that route. There are plenty of lambics on tap in Europe by the way. And they taste great on draught.

 

BOTTLE CONDITION!!! There is no way to achieve the explosive effervescent carbonation of a Gueuze off a keg. Besides, why spend a year plus on a beer to short cut it. Take the extra week with wine/champagne yeast warm.

I hate bottling... Which is why my sours are still aging...

@invetoveritas has a good idea too, bottle 1/2, keg 1/2.

 

Not a lambic but I have a soured Saison that I did the 1/2 keg and 1/2 bottled split. I can tell you that that bottled version definitely has more funk characteristic than the keg as the bugs continued to develop. I was thinking about pulling the kegged version out of the kegerator, adding a touch of maltodextrine, and letting it sit at room temp for 1-2 months to see if the flavor profile changes at all. If you're looking for that quintessential lambic funk, I'd bottle-condition the whole bactch.

 

Kegs CAN be left at room temp...my lambic brewed last April has been in a keg since Aug and at room temp the whole time.

 

I would recommend you find out how much residual sugar you have before you go that route. You could either end up with no carbonation or over carbonation.

I also recommend bottle conditioning. The only time I bottle is with my sours or saison because it makes a big difference (IMO) in the development of the product over time.

 

Watch your gravity for a few more weeks.....all my fruited lambics sit for at least 3 months with the fruit addition. I wouldn't bottle any lambic until your FG is below 1.010. Champagne yeast is fine but you only need a little bit of it as, from my understanding, the bugs can continue to chomp on the dead yeast that's carbonated your beer and potentially create bottle bombs.