Bottle Conditioned Beers

I know that champagne producers riddle..but this is mostly for getting the yeast to get around the cork to be removed. Not sure if reinvigorating the liquid inside would make the yeast happy or angry or if they even care. In my opinion I think it's kinda a trivial concern.

 

some of us have to much time and inquiring minds.

 

I don't think anyone has done the experiment so I say you should go for it. Get back to us in 5 years when you have a substantial amount of data.

 

I'm no expert on bottle-conditioning, but I recently learned (here on BA) the process of bottle-conditioning runs it course not too long after the bottle is sealed...a matter of weeks, maybe a month. I don't know what Brett is or how it affects the bottle-conditioning time, but if you are going to sit on a bottle-conditioned beer for 6 months or longer you are for the most part aging the beer as opposed to bottle-conditioning it.

 

“I don't know what Brett is or how it affects the bottle-conditioning time….”

Brett is considered a wild yeast and depending on the particular strain used will create ‘different’ flavors. One of the flavors that gets discussed (but is strain dependent) is a funky barnyard flavor. Some folks use the terminology of “horse blanket” to describe this particular flavor/aroma.

How Brett will affect a beer is dependent on how it is utilized for a particular beer. For example, Orval adds some Brett during bottling. Over a period of time (e.g., 6 months onwards) the Brett will produce some of the funky flavors previously discussed. So, a fresh Orval will have little Brett induced character but a one year old Orval will have some Brett character.

I homebrewed a Belgian Ale using a combination of a ‘regular’ Belgian Ale yeast strain and Brett. That beer was very funky when fresh (once the beer was carbonated in the bottle). I have a couple of six-packs of that batch which are over one year old. That beer is just as funky today as it was in 2011. Aging that beer didn’t change the Brett character (which was large to begin with).

Cheers!

P.S. A related thread: http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/go-to-brett-beer.29905/

 

Thanks Jack.

 

I agree with Jack and would like to add:

Brett is a wild and unpredictable yeast, so it does not operate by conventional timelines as far as "it has been 6/9/12 months so we should see 6/9/12 months of change. Brett can either radically change a flavor of a beer in a relatively short time, or it will do so when it feels like it- slowly over years, or not at all until it suddenly blooms after some time.

To answer the OP's question: I don't see any benefit to rousing the yeast; you wouldnt do this in a fermentor unless fermentation was stuck, and a bottle is essentially a mini, enclosed fermentor. Yeast and other entrained particles naturally fall out over time, and resuspending them once they have fallen out in the bottle only makes the beer cloudy. Whatever active yeast there is will be doing what they do on the microscopic scale.

In short: set it and forget it.

I know some will argue that people turn wine as it sits in a cellar, this is only to ensure the cork stays moist in bottles that are sitting at an upright angle over the long term, and have lost some liquid due to evaporation over the long term. Capped beer does not need this, and really anything other than 30 year old corked guezes don't need it in the beer world. Don't try to make this hobby any more complicated than it needs to be