Gunslinger711

Recipes 

My wife and I both love La Folie and I'm thinking about making a clone. After a ton of research (including this thread: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f127/la-folie-pellicle-181430/ ) it looks like the last viable batch to harvest was 09 when it was still caged and corked.

My question is, before I hunt too long for this bad boy, is anything going to be harvestable from a beer released in 09?

Gritsak

Recipes 

I tried harvesting from a corked bottle a few months ago. My advice is to start with a really small starter and build it up. I don't think there's not much at all alive in there. After a month+ of decanting/adding fresh wort every week or so, I ended up getting a nice layer of of stuff going on the bottom of the flask. Liquid tasted slightly sour but mostly funky. I have it sitting in my fridge still, but will probably try adding it to a small beer sometime in the future to see what it does.

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Gunslinger711

Recipes 

Follow up question I guess, has anyone made a good La Folie clone without using dregs?

Almighty

Recipes 

I think the real trick to making an actual La Folie clone is to do what they do - BLEND.

You can use one of the La Folie clone recipes which I think was in a BYO article. But even if you had their particular bugs it would still be very difficult to get the same flavor. If you do want the bugs I think your best bet is to try to find a La Folie Barrel. Not sure how to go about this, but supposedly they exist.

Your best bet is to brew a bunch of different batches using commercial bugs from Wyeast or Whitelabs. You can add some other dregs if you want. But the big thing would be to age them all differently. Using different fermentors, use different locations in your house (for different temperature profiles).

I talked with Eric Salazar last year about La Folie and blending. He is a very approachable and really enjoys talking with homebrewers. I wrote up a little article about their process in a blog post:
http://jeffreycrane.blogspot.com/2010/11/sdbw-tasting-with-eric-salazar-of-new.html