Bottling Sours! A question of timing...

If I were you Id bottle them now. Sounds like they are about the flavor you are looking for and gravity is stable. As you said they'll continue to evolve and potentially get more puckericious down the line.

 

Agreed, no reason to wait if the gravity is stable. You may want to rehydrate some wine yeast and pitch that along with the priming sugar to ensure quick carbonation (to avoid waiting a few months while the fruit continues to fade).

Next time, add some bottle dregs to get some more aggressive bacteria along with the blend. I also wait to add the fruit until the beer is almost ready to bottle, say 2-3 months out.

 

I'm totally stealing this and will use it as my own... Forever!

 

No reason I can think of that adding a second dose of fruit would be an issue. You might consider repitching some fresh yeast to speed up the renewed fermentation, but 15 months isn't that old for a sour.

 

Slightly off and topic but related to our past convos... how is your apricot sour coming along? I went with 2 cans of puree for my 5 gallon batch. I just kegged mine up and will likely bottle from the keg. It is tasting great from my samples... I cant wait for the carbonated version. I used ECY20 Bug County and to me it smells and tastes very much like a lambic I would expect to purchase from Belgium. Nice and funky and a nice strong acidity. Cant wait to be able to drink this!

Once I move (under 2 months), I will get a pipeline of sours going!

 

Thats great to hear that yours are turning out great too! Sounds like you already have a great pipeline going... very jealous, hopefully I will be there soon!

I used the puree you mentioned. Off the bat, I was not too impressed. I let it age about 3 months on the puree and I am loving what it turned into... a solid knock off Fou Foune (I can dream right???)

 

Any recommendation on type of wine yeast to use?

 

Haven't had an issue with any of the ones of tried. Usually I use Champagne, it's really well suited to getting the job done and dropping out in a compact layer.

 

Thanks. Do you rehydrate and use some sort of dropper? Or just rehydrate and mix in the bottling bucket ?

 

Here's a question.. Would one be better than the other?

Keg and carb a sour, then bottle gun off the keg, or just bottle it up and prime it with sugar/yeast and let it live like that?

Other than the obvious work of now, funkin' up your keg, lines, and beer gun.. curious more than anything?

I keg, but I've got some sours going, and was curious what others would do given the choice.

 

I rehydrate and then mix into the bottling bucket along with the priming sugar.

Bottling carbonated sour beers from kegs is certainly a viable option, but it won't avoid the risk of over-carbonation if there are remaining carbohydrates the Brett is capable of fermenting. I'd rather a bit of sediment to the additional effort personally.

 

Depends a lot on the beer though -- I've been offered a lot of homebrew fruit sours that were murky yeast bombs after the sediment on the bottom rose & circulated. Makes me want to try "Champagne Method" and remove the yeast plug after carb.

 

Maybe people adding fruit puree? I hate puree.

 

Any reason you don't like using fruit puree? I don't have much experience with adding fruit to my beers, but when I have I've used puree for the convenience.

 

Separating the beer from the puree is tricky when it is time to bottle. Whole fruit is much easier to work with in that regard. I’d rather walk over to the local farmers market, try a few samples, pick the fruit that suits the beer best etc. I pretty much only add fruit to sour beers, so sanitation isn’t a major selling point of puree.