I popped a bottle of Wicked Weed Bretts and Briars a few weeks ago and after I poured it into a couple of glasses I took the dregs to the keg fridge and filled it back up with my 10% Pumpkin Ale and capped it. I popped that bottle last night and enjoyed a Pumpkin Sour that was pretty nice, but could see how aging it would make it better. Anybody ever do this style of single bottle homebrewed sour before? Haven't seen much while searching for any info or mention of it, but cant imagine I'm the first to do this. I'm familiar with using dregs to innoculate an entire batch but I haven't used dregs to brew an actual sour yet...but plan on harvesting some Wicked Weed and Cascade bugs before too long and giving an entire batch a try.
It sounds like a great, low-risk test for a beer or style you think you might want to sour, but don't know how it would come out. Cheers for a good idea. I have only pitched dregs into existing sours, but I like the idea of the 1 bottle test batch.
Did you enjoy the B&B? I thought it was good, no funk, slightly tart, and the gin barrel was pretty interesting. It's an interesting idea, I wonder how it would age and change in the bottle over time. Perhaps even blast the bottle open if fermentation takes off again? I've harvested some dregs from various WW bottles myself. They have a pretty potent and diverse brett house culture, and their souring bugs are vorocious. I put two bottle dregs into a saison I did with ECY single strain culture.. It got BONE dry. It's got too much alcohol because I didn't think ahead of making it a funky beer, but the WW stuff soured it really fast.
I liked the B&B, but I like many of their other sours much better. I was worried about it blowing the cap off, that's why I tried it after only a few weeks in the bottle to kinda get an idea of how much fermentation the dregs would stimulate and how long I can age them in the future. The few weeks definitely dried the Pumpkin out a little and converted some of the leftover fermentables...the flavor changed slightly and the gin started to come out for sure.
That's actually a pretty cool idea. Never tried it, but might need to. I have fermented a beer on only cultured dregs though. I built up the dregs from my first sour, my Best of Show Lambic. Fermented a 10 gallon re-brew with it, then took it to a brewery where we brewed 10 barrels worth. Ripped through the wort in 2 weeks, 83% app att.
Yup. The whole thing was to recreate the original beer as best as possible. I built them up to pitch to 10 gallons, and fermented my 10 gals with it. Took the slurry to them, and they pitched just about 1 barrel of wort on it a few days prior. Brew day we pumped the fresh 10 barrels of wort into the fermentor adding it to the 1 barrel starter. It was already ripping in only a few hours. They just moved it into 4 wine barrels last Thursday (13 days).
Ha! I have gotten a bit tight after bottling, but try to avoid making too much of a mess of things before...
I am surprised to see this thread hasn't exploded with more responses. So, would it be possible to brew a clean beer, let's say a wheat beer, and on bottling day, bottle the beer in commercial bottles that have sour dregs to make the wheat sour? Bottles that were re-sealed and stored in the fridge until bottling day. If bottle-bombs were a threat, would belgian-style bottles that have to be corked be a better option? Edit: My reasoning for this idea (if it's not the exact idea you already described in the original post) would be to see how a clean-yeast fermented beer tastes after it comes in contact with different breweries' yeast -- and of course to create sour beers without taking up equipment for 12+ months.
Not sure what you mean? As the discussion centers on adding fermented beer to bottles that once contained a sour/wild beer that still has dregs in it and capping the beer, letting it sour/funk/carb from the dregs, I would not suggest adding unfermented wort to the bottle containing dregs and capping it. That would surely result in disaster.
If you were to bottle unfermented wort or even a fermented beer with higher FG with sour dregs they would ferment the beer in the bottle until overcarbonated and exploding. I have had bottle infections and had bottle bombs from them in the past. I have also bottle soured. Honestly the 2 batch that I bottle soured were less funky even after 2+ years in the cellar than if I had let them go in a secondary for 6 months or so first. The pressure in the bottles seemed to inhibit the lactic acid bacteria.
