Beer Forum

I recently had my first Sour Stout (Lagunitas Rueben and Brett Sour Imp Stout) and was really blown away by the beer. I have not been a big fan of sour beers. . .but this one really stoked me for some reason and now I am on a mission to make one. I have a stout sitting in the secondary that I made last year around this time and I think it is a perfect canidate for this experiment for it came out sweeter than I usually like my stouts (translation. . .it will sit till I am out of beer). I am trying to figure out how I should go about adding the brett (WLP650 - Brett & Bruxellensis) so any input would be appreciated!

The beer finished at 1.028 so there isn't a whole hell of a lot of fermentables left in it and I was wondering if I should add some lactose or corn sugar when I rack it into the keg to give the brett something to work with. If so. . .any recommendations on how much?

Also. . .once I keg it. . .how long should I let it sit? I have read about drying out your beer if you let it sit too long and I don't want to do that!

Cheers
Lope

So your stout is sitting in secondary right now at a 1028 gravity. That is more than enough residual sugars to give you a nice funkiness from the brett B. I have never worked with the WL version, only the WY, but I assume both are quite horsey, farmyard, musty and earthy. If you have space in your carboy, I would simply sanitize the vial, and carefully pour into the stout. I would try to keep the temperature of the stout around 65-68 degrees for faster results from the brett. If you keep it cooler like high 50's to low 60's it will take quite some time. Even at mid 60's it will take probably at least 3 months for the character to get where you want and more like 6 months for it to be awesome! Either way, don't rush it. Brett works veeeeerrrrrrryyyyy slowly.
If you want to rack it to a keg, simply add the brett after racking the beer and then purge to seat the lid. After a few wks., vent the pressure out a bit to see if the beer has fermented at all. Just be sure to be patient and you will be rewarded. I do not think you should add any extra fermentables to the stout as it has a high enough gravity for the brett to work on. I bet even after 6 mos, the brett will probably only get the beer down to maybe 1015 or so. Don't worry about it drying the beer too much , because with that high of a gravity it will take a while! Good luck and keep us posted on your experiment.