Bottling a Kriek style beer

[Duchifat]

Hi friends,
In a couple of weeks I would like to bottle a Kriek style beer. The base is a Lambic style beer (30% raw wheat, turbid mashing) that matured for 14 months in a 3 year old red wine oak barrel. After that stage, the beer has been maturing with sour cherries for 4 months. When I bottle, should I:
1. add sugar AND fresh yeast (cider/wine yeast)?
2. just add sugar?
3. do a test on a couple of bottles?
Thanks in advance for any advice,
Michael

 

[HighVoltageMan!]

If your pH is below 4, which I'm assuming, and you waited 14 months to bottle, you will have to introduce more yeast. A lot of people use champagne yeast because it can handle the lower pH. As far as the sugar is concerned, that depends. Some lambics are sweet. I doubt you have any fermentables left, so adding some sugar would be required. I think you idea of a couple of test bottles is a good one. Add a couple of carbonation tablets to each bottle, fill and cap them. Lambic's are typically highly carbonated, so you may want to try a different level in each test bottle to get the carbonation level right.

Good luck!

https://www.morebeer.com/products/c...5gWNSArB8hG4O0xPQ_T6CTjXEFrszPEBoC0roQAvD_BwE

 

[Bubba Wade]

I have a few PET bottles from an old Mr. Beer kit. I have used them before to test carbonation. Since they're plastic, if they beer has carbonated, the bottle will become very firm due to the increased CO2 pressure. If you have one of these (or a clean plastic coke bottle), you could make a test bottle using sugar only.

On the other hand, adding sugar and a yeast like a Danstar CBC-1 is pretty much guaranteed to carbonate.

 

[Duchifat]

Thank you HighVoltageMan! and Bubba. Great idea with the coke bottle; so simple!