Anyone experienced with bottling wild/sour beers have issues carbonating after it's been aging for 6-12 month's? Do you typically add fresh yeast to the bottling bucket or is the brett still vigorous enough to complete full carbonation without adding anything extra? Any help would be great, Thanks!
I brewed a sour that aged for a year. I don't know that I needed to, but I did add a half pack of yeast at bottling time to make sure I had carbonation.
Hopefully you guys find this thread informative, it helped me bottle an Oud Bruin that had been aging for 15 months. Carbonation ended up on the lower side just like I was looking for. http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/bottling-an-oud-bruin.247647/
Add more yeast. It won't hurt anything. Not using more yeast is a gamble. An aged beer has less CO2 in solution compared to a fresh beer, so you will need more sugar than usual to achieve the desired level of carbonation. Make sure the FG is stable before bottling.
Generally speaking, you rack over to a secondary and pitch your bugs when your gravity is stable. The Brett, Lacto etc will eat sugars that regular Sacc yeast won't. The gravity itself won't go down all that much more for most beers.
In my experience, adding 5g of yeast at bottling is not a bad idea. It ensures that the beer you've spent months/years working on will carbonate properly. The gravity can continue to slowly drop for months. This is completely dependent on ingredients, mash temp, yeast selection, etc. In my experience, most homebrewers are using sour yeast blends like Roselare, Bugfarm, and Melange to make sours. I have had better experience pitching sacch and bugs at the same time, only augmenting with bottle dregs at a later date if the complexity or sourness aren't where I want them. I would definitely wait until you have consecutive stable gravity readings (month to month) before bottling.
1-2 grams of dry yeast per 5 gallons of beer at bottling is more than enough. It's cheap insurance and I recommend doing it.
I've been brewing sour beers for about 8 years and have never had a problem carbonating and conditioning them just like "normal" beers. There is, however, a good section on it in American Sour Beers, if you have it handy.
I had a 7% sour that had been aging for about 18 months. No extra yeast at bottling and carbed up fine within a month.
I've done it multiple ways. They will all carbonate eventually, some methods just take longer then others. I'm switching back to using champagne yeast for carbonation because I don't like waiting.
I just add sugar to the finished beer. Had beer in secondary up to 2 years that carb'ed up fine with no added yeast.
Champagne yeast costs 50 cents and carbs your wild sour beer in two weeks. I've had a few sour brett beers take 3 months to carb without a fresh dose of yeast. Ain't nobody got time for dat!
I should clarify -- by sugar: sometimes coopers carb tabs, sometimes fresh wort, sometimes fruit syrup, etc...
Not a problem for me since I don't use homebrew dregs that contain wine or champagne yeast. However, I've used dregs from pro beers that contained wine or champagne yeast. The results weren't bad.
