I recently bottled a sour stout, but 10 days later it still tastes completely flat. For a 5-gallon batch, I added 4oz of table sugar and one packet of rehydrated S-04 dry yeast.
The sugar is still in the beer–the gravity of the sample was 1.014, up from around 1.008 at bottling.
My question is, what should I do?
I could add more yeast and recap, but I think that the acid might have killed the S-04 the first time around. Should I use some red wine yeast? Or am I being too impatient–maybe the S-04 will eventually get the job done?
The beer is delicious in case you’re wondering–even flat!
I never got good carbonation with s-04 until 4 or 5 weeks. I think you should give it more time. Sours test your patience, that’s for sure. How did you sour it?
I used The Yeast Bay’s Melange (I think it’s a couple of Sacch strains, Brett, Lacto, and Pedio), plus the dregs from some Jolly Pumpkin Madrudaga Obscura and Hanssen Gueze. Should be quite the bug ranch in there!
I usually don’t start drinking my sours until they’ve been in the bottle for 3 months.
Part of the reason for this is that it’s common for me to develop off flavors as part of bottle conditioning that take a while to be broken down further by the bugs.
The brett will be able to carbonate it. No worries, just give it time. Brett works on its own schedule. At this point I think you’re asking for trouble by opening them up and adding anything else.
