Resurrecting bottled beer to mix with new wort in kettle?

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Baxter

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Resurrecting bottled beer to mix with new wort in kettle?
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Might sound crazy, but I heard of someone doing this with great results.

So, I have bottled milk stout that was delicious but they're all gushers sadly. What I want to know is: how feasible is it to brew a new small wort and blend the bottled stout in and re-ferment? I was thinking of making a fresh pale wort, blending and ending up with a brown ale.



I am well aware of the oxygenation risks here, however will the yeast scrub out the oxygen anyway when it's fermenting again?



My plan is

  1. Brew a new neutral-ish beer, boil for 60 minutes as per usual.

  2. After flameout and chilldown add in the bottled beer to the kettle (below boiling temps as to not boil out any ethanol, but at pasteurisation temps to kill any nasties and residual yeast from the bottled beer)

  3. After Blending ferment as normal.
An alternative idea was to add bottled beer to the boil and accept losing the alcohol content in order to decrease any oxygen.


Has anyone got any experience with this? :D
 
I could be wrong, but I think the overlap between pasteurisation temps and the evaporation point of ethanol are both around the 65deg mark so you might lose some of the ethanol there.

In regards to the other stuff I’m way to green to offer any advice I’m afraid.

Good luck
 
I could be wrong, but I think the overlap between pasteurisation temps and the evaporation point of ethanol are both around the 65deg mark so you might lose some of the ethanol there.

In regards to the other stuff I’m way to green to offer any advice I’m afraid.

Good luck

Thanks dude, it's around 78C for evaporation of ethanol, so there's an alright margin to play with to be honest :)
 
There's obviously a problem with your bottled stout (infection/over carbonation) that's giving you gushers. You may well have a bug in there that is able to ferment lactose giving you more CO2 in the bottle/some other bug that is able to ferment longer chain sugars.

I'd be inclined to chalk it up to experience, and would start again. You don't want to spend your hard earned/spare time making another batch of wort for it to be no good as well.

JD
 
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