yeah, I pitched some additional lager yeast into it a few days ago, it's been warmed up to 68F/20C for a couple weeks with no change. Hopefully the fresh yeast will help, if not I can try adding some glucoamylase.
MuteDog
unless you pitched a shit load of infecting bugs (like your dog barfed into the fermentor or something) there's no way an infection would show up so dramatically after just 16 hours. Sounds like your yeast is just really happy and filling your headspace up with foam.
Are there any you'd like some help with in particular?
I brewed a bock and some wild yeast saison last month (combined mash, separate boils). I mashed way too hot and underpitched the lager yeast so the bock is kinda stuck with way too high a FG. The saison has been slowly plugging away as the yeast is (likely) diastaticus so it should at least eventually finish...
if you're kegging the beers and are going to keep the keg cold for the entire time, you can probably just sweeten the beer without pasteurizing or sorbating, the residual yeast in the beer is probably not going to be very active at fridge temps (though I have had some wild yeasts keep on fermenting stuff in the fridge).
Alternatively you can also mash hotter to produce a wort with fewer fermentable sugars which will result in a sweeter finished beer, you can also reduce the bitterness of your hopping to swing the balance of the beer flavor towards the sweeter side of things.
I'd try all of that before attempting to low temp pasteurize your beer.
why are there leaves or flower petals in it?
with wines, you generally use sorbate (prevent the yeast from being able to reproduce) and sulfite (kills yeast) to prevent refermentation when you back sweeten and then you wait a week or so to make sure it doesn't start fermenting again before bottling.
Did we learn nothing from the late 90s??
The salt definitely phased what was already there, it stopped yeast activity, that's why this ferment remains sweet. If yeast was active it'd eliminate all the sugar quickly.
I've used it in a number of beers and it's always been a hit.
Wood chips work well, you can also get cubes, that impart the character a bit more slowly, and a lot of people swear by them over chips.
I've had varying luck with bottles like that, sometimes they don't hold pressure and you end up drinking flat beer. Using those lids on standard wine bottles and carbonating in them is a recipe for creating high velocity glass shrapnel.