Culturing Yeast from Bottles

I'll begin by saying that I've never made a yeast starter. But I do love some commercial wild ale out there and really want to use some of that awesome yeast in the bottom of the bottle.

Once I've made my mini batch of wort and I've pitched the dregs from the bottle, how long will it take to grow up enough yeast for a five gallon batch? Three days, two weeks? Brew day is two Fridays from now, and today is Tuesday.

Should I grow it up as soon as possible, or wait to start growing the yeast a few days prior? And if I start now, do I have to keep adding DME to the slurry up until brew day?

Any advice would be awesome.

When you say "commercial wild ale" do you mean ale with wild yeast?

If so, you don't neccesarily need a starter. I believe the best method is to ferment the beer with a regular ale yeast, and then later add dregs from commercial brews.

I also believe that volume (or the pitch rate) of wild yeast isn't neccessarily as important as the total contact time is. I.e. a small amount in 5 gallons will propgate it self to sufficiently 'sour' the beer.

I might be wrong about the last part though. Let's see what everyone else says.

>When you say "commercial wild ale" do you mean ale with wild yeast? <

I mean Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere Farmhouse Ale. It's got to have house bugs in there for their secondary fermentation, and I don't know what their primary strain is.

I want to primary a saison with the Bam Biere dregs and see what happens, but I'm not sure if I need to grow up a bunch of yeast in order to do this. I kept about a half inch of dregs/beer in the bottle to use for this very purpose. I had considered using the Wyeast Saison Dupont strain for primary but I want to go full-on with brett in primary...all in!

Apologies, maybe I should have posted this in the wild brewing section...

OK, I haven't made any yet, but I've researched extensively and it seems highly recommended to to ferment first, and then add bugs. You will get much more control. That said, most of the wild lambic guys in belgium do not do that. But they have like 500 years more experience than us.

I'm not familiar with this beer, so I don't know the strain. But for what you said, you will need a starter and you should be able to grow more yeast right from the bottle. There are threads on here about the best methods for doing so.