Sour beer starter - prepping for first lambic

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mmonacel

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I'm in the process of starting up a sour beer pipeline and wanted to prep a starter for a lambic I'll be brewing soon. My wife loves the really over the top acidic / sour Hansson's Artisinal stuff so I'll be tossing dregs into the starter as we finish off bottles. I may toss in dregs of other lambics if I like the profile along the way. I just did a 1L normal starter w/ some yeast nutrient and cooled it down, flamed the lip of the first bottle and put the dregs in. My plan is to purge out the head space with CO2 and put a stopper and airlock on. Over the course of the next month or so I'll be adding in a few more dregs and I'll come back to re-feed with fresh wort over other month or so until I'm ready to brew up the lambic.

Does this sound like the right way to go about this?

I also have a single BugFarm dated from early July. My plan is to brew a 10g batch. When should I add the Bug Farm to the starter wort (or not at all?).

Thanks!
 
Also would basement temps (about low 70s this time of year), fermentation temps (mid-60s), or fridge temps (low 40s) be best here?
 
make sure to pitch a normal yeast strain with that starter as it is likely to be predominantly brettanomyces and bacteria
 
Your basement temps are fine. So are your fermentation temps. Fridge temps are too low. I ferment my lambic at ambient temperature start to finish. I brew it annually in December. It stays in an upstairs bathroom where the temperature during cooler months (we really only have a few) hangs in the low 60s at night to the mid 70s during the day. At the hottest part of summer it gets into the mid 70s at night but probably gets into the low 80s during the day. It's a touch warmer than I would like but I feel like the ambient fluctuations give a bit of terrior effect to the beer.

You're fine with your bottle dregs. I'm not sure whether you need a starter with bugfarms since I can't ever seem to score it when a new release is issued, but I'm sure somebody will chime in with an answer to that for you.
 
I'm not sure whether you need a starter with bugfarms since I can't ever seem to score it when a new release is issued, but I'm sure somebody will chime in with an answer to that for you.

Yeah - my question about the BugFarm is that it's a 5g pitchable quantity. If I want to make a 10g batch I'm guessing I'll need to step that up, but I'm not quite sure how fast that can be stepped up. I realize it may change the ratio of bugs slightly but I'm not too concerned there. I'm just not sure if it's a 1-2 week thing or a 1-2 month thing.
 
If you are pitching both bugfarms and the dregs you are probably ok on the brett and bacteria front. I'd add some extra saccharomyces to make sure you get a good initial fermentation. A good Belgian strain would be my preference but any will do.
 
Bugs and brett don't need to be stepped up. Preference is for not stepping up Brett and letting it reproduce anaerobically. Bugs will not reproduce that quickly (short time with a starter).

It is the sacc yeast you want to be healthy, so that it can create the alcohol to protect the beer before any nasty critters have a chance to take hold.

To answer your question, the bugfarm will be fine to straight pitch to 10 gallons as long as you also have a healthy pitch of sacc yeast. I do not know if bugfarm has any sacc.
 
The bugfarm typically has an agressive saison strain in it. Have hear Al suggest a starter for it, but have only brewed five gallons with a single pitch.
 
My tactic for brewing a lambic or other sour beers is to under pitch. Especially in a mixed ferment sour saison or a lambic. I'll take a vial of bug farm, and just pour 1/4 of the bottle into a 10 gal batch to force the microbes to fight for growth. I figure when it comes to spontaneous inoculation via a coolship the wort is not receiving the standard 1mil cells/ml/degree plato. So with that said I avoid pitching the standard ale guidelines for yeast on sours and wild beers depending on the beer. I want a higher level of esters produces from the get go from stressed yeast because the brett will metabolize some of those esters into other flavors/aromas. It's like taking a drastically underpitched tripel and only pitching half the needed yeast. You end up with a phenolic ester soup, but if you add brett the esters get tamed and even out.
 
Interesting. Have you been able to do side by side comparisons to see the differences? If not, I might take that approach on my next batch or two.
 
Nothing side by side, but I did a saison with a proper pitching rate using ECY20. Then I did a lambic with ECY20 and I got more flavor and compexity in the lambic that is only 6 months old at this point. The complexity could be from the turbid mash or it is due to the decreased pitching rate. They both fermented about the same rate though so it doesn't seem the lambic wort did a whole lot to slow the culture down.
 
I'm going through almost the exact same process right now. I have a 2L flask of wort that i've been dumping dregs from sours i enjoy in to it. I've "fed" it once and i have the beginning of a pellicle going. Just to add to the conversation, i'm thinking of brewing saturday. Is chilling and decanting the spent wort in the starter a good move or would i be decanting the bugs? It's about 1.5L worth of wort so i'm not sure i want to pitch it all, although that is an option.
 
Nothing side by side, but I did a saison with a proper pitching rate using ECY20. Then I did a lambic with ECY20 and I got more flavor and compexity in the lambic that is only 6 months old at this point. The complexity could be from the turbid mash or it is due to the decreased pitching rate. They both fermented about the same rate though so it doesn't seem the lambic wort did a whole lot to slow the culture down.

Interesting. One thing that I would like to sort out (which is tied to this) is the difference between primary Brett fermentation vs. secondary fermentation. There seems to be a good deal of research about primary Brett fermentations ending up very similar in nature to Sacc. ferments whereas adding Brett to secondary starts to really bring out the funk. I haven't seen it stated explicitly, but maybe Brett when fed a steady diet of "easy" sugars ferments out (and then peters out) like Sacc., but when fed only complex sugars starts throwing the funky esters.

That's a long way of me saying maybe there is something to the turbid mash bringing a high level of complex starches / sugars to the table and bringing out the real funk in the Brett. In addition, underpitching forces lots of replication which many times can result in (oddly enough) higher attenuation and significantly more esters (expected). There's a good exchange between Garret Oliver and the dude from Brew Science blog about this. Sounds like it was a best of both worlds scenario possibly - low pitching creating lots of new cells struggling and fermenting out everything in it's path but throwing tons of esters along with them eating a higher portion of complex sugars making them throw even more esters providing that higher level of flavor complexity / funk you got out of your lambic.
 
The saison is no slump in the flavor department it's just that the turbid mashed lambic has more complexity. I'm about to do a big batch of saison tomorrow 8 gal bret trois and 8 gal wild card mix of yeast and bacteria from two years of sour beers. I'm just going to let it roll with only the pitch of the mason jar.
 

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