lag time with roselare?

i brewed my flanders yesterday, using probably about a pint of roselare slurry in each 5 gallons. i was expecting a typical fermentation so attached blowoff tubes. this morning, i saw no activity.

i assume the bugs work slower than regular yeast?

Where was the slurry from? There IS regular yeast in the blend, so assuming it is healthy you should see fermentation about as quickly as a regular beer. I tend to pitch a clean primary strain along with the blends to ensure there are enough healthy cells to get off to a quick start (propagating a mixed culture is risky because the bacteria will make acids the Saccharomyces doesn’t like, and the yeast make alcohol that the bacteria doesn’t like, and they all have different preferences for temp/oxygen/gravity etc&#8230

i had racked my previous flanders into a better bottle, then dumped the slurry from that fermenter into a sanitized quart jar. after i chilled to about 62, i pumped the wort into the first carboy (with slurry in the bottom), and into a clean carboy. i then added half of the slurry to the clean carboy.

What was the timing? How long had the previous batch been on the yeast? etc... Assuming it wasn't more than a few weeks I'd be surprised if it wasn't going strong after 24 hours.

about 12 months.

of course it's only been about 16 hours since i pitched. we'll see what happens when i get home.

dcbeerboy said:

about 12 months.

Click to expand...

So, you just pumped your wort on to year old yeast without creating a starter or anything?

well, i suppose you could say that. i just kinda assumed that a lot of these sour brewers keep them going by taking some beer out an adding new wort, so i'd probably be okay.

You said this was sitting on the yeast cake for 12 months. Roselare has Sacc in it. My guess, and this is purely speculation, would be the original sacc is dead and eaten by the other bugs already present. You probably have viable brett, lacto, and pedio, but no sacc to kick start this.

Either let it sit and see if a pellicle forms or gravity starts to drop, or pitch fresh sacc and see if a pellicle forms after that the krausen falls, and gravity keeps dropping.

The guy who won Best of Show at NHC this year with his Flanders adds a cup of slurry from his previous year's batch to his new batch in addition to fresh yeast. After a year with alcohol/acid the Sacch you added was in really rough shape. It will start fermenting eventually (the Brett ensures that), but If you have a pack of dry yeast I'd toss it in to make sure you get a healthy primary fermentation.

pitched some us-05 last night in each fermenter. had the startings of some krausen this am.