I have a kegged Oatmeal Stout that I dont care for, the dark lme I used left the beer way too sweet. It has been on tap for 4 or 5 months and I dont want to waste it. So I though MAYBE I could rack it to a glass carboy and pitch some commercial dregs. Let the bugs funk it up and lower the residual sweetness. And also make room for my Galaxy APA. Is the risk of oxidation too high? Other concers? Thanks
If you can get your hands on a few 1 gallon glass jugs, you can purge w/ CO2,, then fill each one. Pitch different dregs in each one to see what they do on there own, then blend in 6-12 months. Less oxidation, and you get a better feel for how RR sours will act over JP over a Oud Beersel, etc. You can also oak some as well. Try some w/ French Oak and wine, and some w/ American Oak. You could pitch straight Lacto into one of them to mix back in as well. You can add fruit to one like figs or dates.
I don't keg, so I may be wrong. You should be able to close off your CO2, disconnect your gas line from the pin lock, and the insert the open line into each jug and turn on the gas low. You may not even need to purge. With the beer already carbed up it will release CO2 into the head space on its own.
You can rack it to a glass carboy and sour it. I did that a while ago to 5 gallons of a 15 gallon batch of English brown that I had already carbonated in kegs. Racked it to a carboy and hit it with a pack of lambic blend.
You can add brett directly in the keg and just let it sit a few months-that's pretty much standard practice for me. brett is just a yeast and the keg can later be sanitized with Starsan or iodophor just like any other keg.
I was mostly hoping to free up the keg. I am leaning towards racking kegged beer into a 1 gallon container and pitching Orval Dregs (Brett). Leave it in the container with an airlock for a year or so. Hope for the best or write it off as a failed experiment.
I just did this with a kolsch I accidentally fermented a bit too warm. (I took it out of the fermentation chamber to grab something else and forgot about it there for two days -- big oops!) I dry-hopped with Cascade and that helped a bit, but it still wasn't something I wanted 5 gallons of. I removed the keg and just put in some lambic dregs. Hopefully this works out well. I've never done it before, though this seems to be in line with the experiences of others here, so that's promising.
You're a homebrewer, do it and see what happens. Disconnect one of your air lines and sanitize it, then shove it in the carboy and blast it with CO2. Then push the beer into the carboy using your Co2 system, pitch bugs and boom: good to go. Let it sit a good long while as it'll take awhile. You may have issues with foaming, so pull the keg a few days before and let it warm up. Every 1/2 day or so pull the gas pressure relief valve and blow off as much CO2 from the keg as you can.
