Lambic fermentation

[DannyW]

I made a simple Lambic last week according to BCS, pitched a half pack of US-05 immediately, then a few hours later pitched a pack of Roselare. It's in a carboy with foil over the top.

Should this thing sit as-is for a year or should it be racked before being put aside? Seems like a load of yeast on the bottom and a lot of krausen on top, but if thats good to have around that long then I'll just leave it.

[ColdBraue]

I think that you shouldn't leave the beer on the S-05 for more than like a month. Once primary from the S-05 has finished out, you can rack to secondary and the bugs should still be there to do their thing. Doesn't it tell you how to do this in BCS?
Cheers!

[Brandon]

I dont have a copy in front of me but if you are doing the Flanders Red from Jamil the neutral yeast is used to drop the gravity by 30 or 40 points. So it would probably be a few days before you hit around 1.020, then it is racked to secondary and the bugs are pitched

[DannyW]

I think that you shouldn't leave the beer on the S-05 for more than like a month. Once primary from the S-05 has finished out, you can rack to secondary and the bugs should still be there to do their thing. Doesn't it tell you how to do this in BCS?
Cheers!

I will look again when I get home (where the book is!) but I recall it being silent on this, other than the section at the front about general fermentation practices.

[Brandon]

Which beer from BCS was it?

[ColdBraue]

Either way, since you already pitched the roselare and the neutral yeast, you will need to get the beer off of the s-05 yeast cake to avoid autolysis because you can't get away with that for one year unfortunately. You could always rack when you see that primary has stopped, then pitch another pack of roselare to be safe.
Anyway I think you may have enough bugs still in suspension to be ok if you didn't repitch, but I'm not an expert on the buggies.

[OldTree]

Either way, since you already pitched the roselare and the neutral yeast, you will need to get the beer off of the s-05 yeast cake to avoid autolysis because you can't get away with that for one year unfortunately. You could always rack when you see that primary has stopped, then pitch another pack of roselare to be safe.
Anyway I think you may have enough bugs still in suspension to be ok if you didn't repitch, but I'm not an expert on the buggies.

You don't have to be terribly worried about autolysis really. The critters that are growing in the beer should use/eat/take up/assimilate the products of the yeast autolysis. I think I'd find something else to worry about.

Cheers,
OT

[DannyW]

Which beer from BCS was it?

It is the Lambicus Piatzii on page 228-229.

Page 42 says "Specific instructions for secondary fermentation will be given in the recipe." In this case, though, specific instructions are not mentioned in the recipe.

We did this as part of a group brew, so we have 5 versions of this beer with different people. My variation was to pitch Roselare and pitch it early to give it a head start. Other people waited a week to pitch, pitched wyeast lambic blend, or pitched a homegrown bug mix from unpastuerized cherries that has produced some great beers. We have some in buckets, some in carboys and some in lexan.