Roeselare Wyeast and Golden Base issue

Ingredients
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Hey All! So I brewed up a batch based off a Rare Barrel golden sour base clone that I found. There were some issues getting the mash temp up and holding which I think was the reason the FG came out rather low with the ABV ending around only 2.7%. Given it was a sour base, I had hoped that by pitching the Roeselare blend into a 5 gal batch the bacteria would eventually eat up the sugars that weren’t converted during primary and bump the alcohol up to about 4% which is fine with me. However, it’s been 4 months and I just tasted it yesterday (yes, I know it’s kind of early to see any real lambic development). As far as I can tell, there has been no more conversion of sugars (FG is the same) and there is just the slightest hint of funkiness to it.

So, my question is, do you think this batch is just not going to develop flavor/bump up in ABV or should I hold tight and see? I planned eventually to do a 3rd fermentation on berries or fruit.

The only reason I would be hesitant to pitch the berries now (they’re a couple pounds of hand-picked huckleberries) is that I read that the best way to retain the flavor is to pitch them about 5 weeks before kegging. Have you found otherwise? Would tossing in some straight sugar help get the bugs moving?

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What happened with the mash?

If you have a lot of unconverted starch in that beer then you’ll eventually see brett break that down and ferment it but we’re talking a long time. Like check on it a year from now. You could add extract to increase the fermentable sugar but you’re still going to have all that starch. I don’t know if it tastes starchy but if it does you probably don’t want to drink it now anyway.

You definitely don’t want to add fruit until you’re 4-8 weeks out from packaging. At four months in you’d still be too early to keg even if you didn’t have the problem with low ABV.

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Yeah, ok that’s where my head was too. I had an issue with a burner so the mash temp was all
Over the place blowing up to 165 then taking forever to get back down to 155ish based on the clone recipe I found. Yeah, it’s super starchy. Good to know the Brett will eventually convert it, I have no issues waiting for that sucker to go just wasn’t sure if there was a way to jumpstart it or if the really low abv was a sign of a bigger issue for the bugs.