Gaverhopke dregs

Ok so I've got a starter going from Jolly Pumpkin dregs, it's been going a little over a week and has a nice krausen going. I had planned to just step this up once and pitch it, but while out tonight I stumbled across some 't Gaverhopke Extra and enjoyed it, so I brought home a bottle.

I'm curious if anyone has any experience trying to harvest yeast from Gaverhopke? I'm still pretty new to the wild yeast game, so all I really know to go by is that a strain from a 12% BSDA is probably too overstressed to be viable, unless maybe they use a different bottling yeast or something.

Basically I'm just looking for some input -- would it hurt to toss this in my starter and see what happens? Or better off just sticking with the JP dregs I've got going?

1) Why step up the JP dregs. All you are doing is increasing the sacc. The bugs are doing very little. The starter only confirms the sacc is alive (the bugs are probably doing fine too!).

2) At 12 % the Graverhopke probably only has sacc and brett left alive. But I would still toss it in with the JP dregs. You would at least get a different Brett strain, and might have a alcohol tolerant strain of pedio in there too (probably not, but maybe).

Thanks for the feedback. So the issue of stepping up being that it'd throw off the balance of sacc to bugs? Guess I didn't think that through fully. Last time I played with JP dregs I combined with a neutral ale yeast in primary, so this time just figured I'd try my hand with only the dregs and was basically just concerned with getting the cell count up. Sounds like I should just scrap that idea. I do think I'll toss the Graverhopke in though, I like the Brett character from it

stikolaboloni said:

Thanks for the feedback. So the issue of stepping up being that it'd throw off the balance of sacc to bugs? Guess I didn't think that through fully. Last time I played with JP dregs I combined with a neutral ale yeast in primary, so this time just figured I'd try my hand with only the dregs and was basically just concerned with getting the cell count up. Sounds like I should just scrap that idea. I do think I'll toss the Graverhopke in though, I like the Brett character from it

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I would disagree with calder, stepping up will swing it in the other direction given time

The bacteria in JP are generally very strong and healthy, if you make a small starter and give it a week or so it will be quite acidic, adding more sweet wort will only make it become ever so more sour (bacteria grow faster than yeast), at a certain point the sacch cannot handle the acidity, the souring bacteria will even go so far as killing themselves with acid.

I would grow up a starter and let it sit for ~1wk, taste if its really sour I would add some fresh wort and some baking soda (helps balance the acid)

One last thing I would suggest would be to keep the dregs of JP and gaverhopke separate, you never know if a bottle is gonna make something you dont particularly like so its best to keep things separate until they build up their population a bit, this way you can taste the starter and get a feel for the direction its heading

Good point on growing them separate just to be safe. My initial plan was to let the JP ferment the batch by itself anyway, until the graverhopke piqued my curiosity. Maybe I'll start that one up separately and let JP do it's thing for now, and then down the road add the graverhopke in secondary for some extra umph if the starter comes along well

Sound like a reasonable plan or would you get all of the bugs into the batch sooner than later?