My first sour project is just about sour enough to pull a portion from my 15 gallon oak barrel. I had planned to pull about 5 gallons and replace it with fresh beer. However, I don’t have a batch ready. What I do have is about 15 pounds of frozen plums from my tree from last season. I’m thinking about pulling just the volume that I can replace with plums. Does this seem feasible? I suppose the plum detritus would be in the barrel indefinitely, but I’m not sure that would be a problem. Any thoughts?
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The leftover plum fruit would be in there until you clean it out, which means it’s also occupying space that could be used by more beer. The fermented plum juice will also always be a part of the solera. That may not be a bad thing but fruit flavors age with time and it might contribute less over time than adding in more beer.
Why not just wait until you can brew another five gallons to replace what you pull? It’s not like the sour beer in the solera is going to go bad or pulling five gallons will arrest any further development in what you take out.
Or wait to until you have more beer to add back to the solera and then add the plums only to 5 gallons of your pull?