Culturing Dregs from Jolly Pumpkin

On Sunday my wife and I had a Bottle of Oro de Calabaza for lunch, and i took the bottle home to make a starter from the dregs. I got a little surprise after the first day, I stopped the sir plate and let the yest settle out and low and behold a pellicle formed over night.






I think I will pour a plate and streak out the bugs and see what is in there. But the plan is to step this starter up one more time and pitch this into a golden strong batch.

Ive had pretty good luck with the dregs in their beers, probably because they are a lot more fresh than your typical sour

I made a culture from JP as well...LaRoja for me. Definitely didn't get a pellicle, I'm surprised by that.

Unfortunately, I used the seemingly healthy culture as a primary yeast and got less than desirable attenuation. After 3 months, the flavor is coming along nicely though. Very reminiscent of the commercial beer.

I wonder if using a yeast from a sour beer as a primary yeast is a bad idea. Too tough to guarantee healthy yeast. Obviously, it was unnecessary since I could have gone and bought some WLP550, which is what JP uses.

Sixbillionethans said:

eI made a culture from JP as well...LaRoja for me. Definitely didn't get a pellicle, I'm surprised by that.

Unfortunately, I used the seemingly healthy culture as a primary yeast and got less than desirable attenuation. After 3 months, the flavor is coming along nicely though. Very reminiscent of the commercial beer.

I wonder if using a yeast from a sour beer as a primary yeast is a bad idea. Too tough to guarantee healthy yeast. Obviously, it was unnecessary since I could have gone and bought some WLP550, which is what JP uses.

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This is some thing I was thinking too,to Use a good primary yeast like 530 or 550 with the dregs. I'm planing on doing a 10gallon batch and splitting it. One will be all dregs, and the other will be 530 + dregs.

Wow. I'm curious what you find. There has been a bit of a debate going on here as to what's in it since there isn't a strong brett character yet the sour character is nice.

Saccharomyces said:

Wow. I'm curious what you find. There has been a bit of a debate going on here as to what's in it since there isn't a strong brett character yet the sour character is nice.

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The "Can You Brew It" show on the BN has 2 really great interviews with Ron Jeffries. He says right out with no reservations that he uses WLP550 as his primary strain. No concrete info on what additional organisms are present.

Sixbillionethans said:

The "Can You Brew It" show on the BN has 2 really great interviews with Ron Jeffries. He says right out with no reservations that he uses WLP550 as his primary strain. No concrete info on what additional organisms are present.

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He also said that he uses open fermentation, and keeps the windows open at night to cool the fermentation and allow for the wild yeast of Dexter to get in there. I think Maraz did that brew and he pitched it two ways, one with cultured dregs and one with WLP550. If I remember right they liked the 550 batch.

I think the tough part with the dregs is the Ratio of Bugs:Brett:Sacc that you get when you culture will be different than His inoculated barrels. I think by isolating them on a plate and growing them up individually would allow me to play with these ratios a little.

Yeah, they liked the batch with the WLP550 better, but I thought the results were confounded by the fact that they drank the beer so young...only a couple months.

If you're able to do the isolation, that's great. More advanced than I am currently.

By just adding dregs, I agree I'm at the mercy of what I get from the bottle. I guess that's similar, though, to using a blend from WLP/WY. You're going to get a product that is the result of that lab's blend, not any conscious decision of what individual organisms to add and when they are added.

I spoke with Ron from Jolly P about this several years ago (actually I was trying to get some of his yeast but the answer to that is listed above!) Likementioned above, he said the best thing to do is use commercial yeast (I like using Wyeast 3463 & 1388) then pitch the dregs after primary is finished. So I took his guidelines from B.L.A.M. and did just that. The Big Bitter Blonde is now a regular visitor every summer! This summer will be her 4th year and I think I am going to add some lemon flavors this time......

tszetela said:

I spoke with Ron from Jolly P about this several years ago (actually I was trying to get some of his yeast but the answer to that is listed above!) Likementioned above, he said the best thing to do is use commercial yeast (I like using Wyeast 3463 & 1388) then pitch the dregs after primary is finished. So I took his guidelines from B.L.A.M. and did just that. The Big Bitter Blonde is now a regular visitor every summer! This summer will be her 4th year and I think I am going to add some lemon flavors this time......

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I looked at my plates I streaked out last night, One was incubated at 25ºC, and the other at 37ºC. It was a little early for the room temp(25ºC) plate but the 37ºC plate had some good cultures growing on it. From my quick inspection I could see two distinct colony types, one smooth and the other had Pseudomycelia reminiscent of that seen with Brettanomyces. I did not see what looked like Bacteria, but I will have to look again tonight, and pick a few colonies to grow up and analyze better. I imagine that the bacterial component might be really small, and they will be not as fit after being in a predominately yeast culture, so they might take a little longer to develop a colony.

I'll post some pictures tonight, The plates look really cool!

This is sounding more like what I will be doing, doing the primary fermentation with WLP550 ( White labs is just easier to get here in SD) and then pitching a culture of the isolated Brett. colony into the secondary with some oak cubes that have been soaked in water for a couple weeks.

I came across this thread and wondered if you finished your isolation plates. I have a month old clone of the Bam beer going right now, used a starter from the dregs, no other yeasts, and it fermented pretty decently. I over shot the starting gravity, but went from 1.050 to 1.012 in about 2 weeks. It started to form a pedicle about 2 weeks into the process as well. I am going to let it sit for a few months, but the taste changed dramatically, going from more cherry/dark fruit notes to more pineapple, and getting tarter. I would love to know what bugs/yeast you found in this.

I have a chance to get some Jolly Pumpkin beers next week when I visit the USA. Might be my only chance, and I'd like to maximize the use of these legendary dregs. Should I build up a culture in say a mason jar to use in multiple batches? or if I just pitch the dregs directly.. can I use the dregs from my homebrew in the same way?

I did up some DME and maltodextrine. I threw that in a mason jar with a vapor lock. The way I maintain some of the cultures I have (in a non pure manner) is to keep adding DME/ MD. The other thing I do is toss some high FG beer in a jar that is left from the bottom of my bottling bucket. Then I can grow and split the microbes into two jars sort of thing. When I finally toss some in a batch I will throw a whole jar in at the beginning of fermentation.

I have intentions of using pure culture techniques to isolate individual organisms. My internship this semester made that difficult. I will see what I can do in the fall/spring this next academic year. I have jars of JP La Roja microbes, RR Consectation, RR Supp, RR Temp, and RR Santification, Lindeman's Cuvee Renee, and Leipziger Gose (at least I think the sediment in the bottle was some sort of microbe). I have my work cut out to isolate all this stuff.....

I made a Bam biere clone, my funky blond, from the dregs, and got pretty good attenuation as I said above. The beer has really changed over time, getting lots of lemony tartness. I love it, my favorite beer I ever made.

Anyway, I just took the dregs from a bottle of Bam biere and poured them into a flask and put them on a stir plate like I do any other starter, and let it spin for a few days. I know the bugs tend not to like that, but it worked for me. I then decanted and pitched, no other yeast. My beer tastes nothing like the Bam Biere I drank from the bottle. Mine is much more sour and funky. In the brewery, the beer hits the wild yeasties in the barrel after primary, obviously in mine they are there at the front. I had a chance to go to the brew pub in Ann Arbor this past fall, and having Bam Biere on tap, it is completely different then the bottle conditioned version. Most of the difference is likely age, as the kegged beer was obviously fresh, much less funky, and much more hoppy. My bottle was probably pretty old, sitting on a shelf in a small town here in Maine, I was shocked to see it, and I think the owner was shocked I bought it.

I have since plated out the dregs from my brew, and I have isolated a yeast strain. I don't have the proper media to check to see if it is really brett, but the liquor from decanting sure smells and tastes like a strain of brett. Very...blue cheesy early on, but now getting more lemony/horsey and tart. I plan to slant some of the yeast to come back too if I have too, and I will keep the culture rolling and add it to secondaries here and there.

smokinghole said:

I did up some DME and maltodextrine. I threw that in a mason jar with a vapor lock. The way I maintain some of the cultures I have (in a non pure manner) is to keep adding DME/ MD. The other thing I do is toss some high FG beer in a jar that is left from the bottom of my bottling bucket. Then I can grow and split the microbes into two jars sort of thing. When I finally toss some in a batch I will throw a whole jar in at the beginning of fermentation.

I have intentions of using pure culture techniques to isolate individual organisms. My internship this semester made that difficult. I will see what I can do in the fall/spring this next academic year. I have jars of JP La Roja microbes, RR Consectation, RR Supp, RR Temp, and RR Santification, Lindeman's Cuvee Renee, and Leipziger Gose (at least I think the sediment in the bottle was some sort of microbe). I have my work cut out to isolate all this stuff.....

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Is there any method to your DME/MD madness? Do you have any idea what sort of gravity you used?

I do it based on making a starter so a 10:1 ratio of water to grams DME/MD. So if I do 500ml of water I do 25g of DME and 25g MD. It just made sense this is not based on any scientific culturing practices. I just figured since the sediment is a mixed bag of microbes I'd feed them all and using the MD give them some long term food.