Beer Forum

I have a Flanders Red ale that is about 11 months old and I am trying to plan ahead. What is the best way to package this beer? Ultimately I want this beer in bottles. Is it better to bottle condition this beer or keg/force carbonate and use a beer gun to bottle? Just looking for some advice from experienced brewers. Thanks.

bhaas wrote:I have a Flanders Red ale that is about 11 months old and I am trying to plan ahead. What is the best way to package this beer? Ultimately I want this beer in bottles. Is it better to bottle condition this beer or keg/force carbonate and use a beer gun to bottle? Just looking for some advice from experienced brewers. Thanks.

Depends if you are willing to dedicate beergun parts/tubing, and kegs to sour brewing. I have 2 setups for my beergun - 1 for sour and 1 setup for normal beers. I think your best bet would be to bulk age in a secondary carboy, then when you feel that the beer is ready to package, bottle it up.

You might want to consider adding some fresh rehydrated yeast to ensure a timely, proper bottle conditioning as the bugs may be a bit tired at this point. You could either add saccharomyces or a fresh pack of brettanomyces to help bottle condition. After waiting all that time you dont want to end up with an uncarbonated beer.

I am comfortable adding a second set up for a beergun. I have enjoyed making sour beers using just lacto and see myself brewing a lot more sours now using the vast array of bacterias and Brett. I just want to ensure my year of waiting isn't wasted by screwing up my packaging (looking for best results).

If i go the bottle conditioning route. Is it just like any other bottling day? Does the fresh yeast i choose matter that much? From what I understand the new yeast won't add to the flavor profile. With that in mind I am thinking US-05.

I think your bottling yeast will have to be pretty bad ass stuff depending on the alcohol level.

Would the 'bugs' get you carbonation on their own without adding more yeast?

I was working off of what brewinhard recommended, since the beer will be year old by the time i bottle it adding some fresh yeast just for insurance of proper bottle conditioning.

You will also need to add an unusually large amount of priming sugar at bottling time. You can search around for a number on the interwebs, but something like 6 oz instead of 4 may be required. This is because after sitting at room temp for so long after fermentation the beer loses dissolved CO2. Having bottled and kegged sours, I might lean towards filling from the keg just because you have so much more control over carbonation. Nothing sucks more than spending a year or more to make a sour beer and then having the carbonation wrong.

spiderwrangler wrote:Would the 'bugs' get you carbonation on their own without adding more yeast?

The bugs will eventually get you carbonated but it could take awhile (up to a couple mos). All the while your beer is mixing with the oxygen in the bottle getting oxidized.

Any dry yeast will work well, although I prefer Lalvin EC-1118 dry champagne yeast. It costs only $1, comes in 5 gram sachets (more than enough for bottling a 5 gallon batch), is alcohol, and low pH tolerant. All of this equals to a perfect yeast for bottle condittioning a sour beer.