Bottling a sour

When I bottle my sours I usually add some dry yeast directly to the bucket as well as my priming sugar, mix well, and then bottle. I use enough priming sugar to achieve the level of carbonation I am desiring (usually around 3). I have bottled a couple w/o fresh yeast and they carbed much slower than the batches with yeast (same beer, split secondaries, different fruits, one oaked, one DH) bottled at same exact time.

 

If it were me, I would use champagne yeast + priming sugar.

 

whats the gravity at? the bugs will keep eating so you want to make sure they're done before you bottle, otherwise you'll get inconsistent carbing at best and bottles bombs at worst. if you can, a lot of people keg and force carb and then counter pressure fill or beergun it in bottles.

 

I use this yeast for bottling: http://www.midwestsupplies.com/red-star-wine-yeasts-5-grams-premier-cuvee.html

1 gram, rehydrated for a 4-5 gallon batch.

The bottles carb up really quickly (within a week). Also, you'll have to add more priming sugar than normal because the priming sugar calculators rely on a decent amount of residual CO2 in solution. Beermail me your email address and I can send you a spreadsheet I made up to calculate priming sugar weights for sours.

 

carb and refrigerate to slow it down

 

Use a wine yeast with the usual amount of priming sugar. I usually use the better part of a whole packet (~5 gms) without rehydrating. I'm too lazy and what is one going to do with the extra 3-4 gms of wine yeast?

 

You made a RR Consecration clone, might as well condition with the same yeast they use to condition Consecration: rockpike or rockpile / brettanomyces combo.

 

Personally, I don't think it matters what yeast you use so long as you have hit FG and your bret/lacto is finished--And that will be lower than just about any other yeast you can throw at it. The 04 will be fine. You're overpitching by adding half a pack, but it won't contribute any flavor anyway. I'd do the whole pack and not rehydrate. If you want to use champagne yeast, that would be fine too.

As for your equipment an soak in 1:10 solution of bleach should do fine with lots of hot water to rinse.

 

[quote="inchrisin, post: 1536294, member: 252749"As for your equipment an soak in 1:10 solution of bleach should do fine with lots of hot water to rinse.[/quote]

To be absolutely sure that other beers don't get contaminated, I'd recommend keeping plastics/wood/non-stainless steel or glass equipment separate. I use red duct tape to mark my stuff and I keep it in a separate area of my garage away from my brewing alcove. As for glass or stainless steel, a hot PBW soak and scrub is good. Just don't use the same scrubbers/sponges to clean your regular stuff.

I find that doing this is better for my peace of mind rather than mingle equipment.

 

I agree, my understanding is wine/champagne yeasts purpose is to not impart flavor. Brewers usually pick them for their endurance under high alcohol and/or acidic environments. They shouldnt do much for your flavor, we just want them to keep tooting. At least thats how I explain brewing to my daughter, yeast toot CO2 and pee alcohol

 

Yeah but the OP brewed a RR Consecration clone. Consecration is conditioned with brett, which will most definitely impart flavors. If he wants to clone Consecration, he should use the rockpile / brett combo at bottling.

 

True, though he pitched some brett back in September...

 

What is the gravity at? I'd be pretty surprised if a giant sour was done after less than a year.

100% this. Your old-ass beer needs more sugar to carbonate correctly.

 

How long did you have it sitting? When I bottled my sour I used the same amount of sugar as I would normally. It had been a year since it was moved and I added some extra Brett prior to bottling. If you're worried about bottle bombs then use thicker bottles and you'll be fine. As far as hoses and lines go, I use separate equipment, some people don't. To me its not worth 'ruining' a later batch of beer to save $25 on a hose, racking cane, and bottling wand.

 

You could also do what I do. Set the temp and find residual CO2 then add that to my desired level of carbonation. (I use HBDs calculator that tells you the assumed residual CO2 in volumes making life easy)

 

The problem I found is that most only go up to ~83 degrees, which assumes something like a 0.7 vol residual, rather than 0.4 volumes (the amount the mad fermentationist suggests).

 

Do you have a link to something that might explain that a bit more? Im interested....

 

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator/carbonation.html

All I would do is if I wanted a beer with 4 volumes of carbonation, I would add the assumed amount based on the temperature to it (assuming 0 remains, or if as you suggest about the mad fermentationist assumed 0.4 add that.

So if I want 4.0 and the website says 1.0 remains (based on whatever temp I picked) I would actually tell it that I want 4.6. 4.0 + the assumed 1.0 - 0.4 I assume is there