Sour Starter

Im building a starter of dregs from a few commercial sours to pitch into a saison Ive got going. The starter is puzzling me a bit. 2 days later, there seems to be yeast at the bottom, but it never really krausened or anything. Even when I shake it up, I dont see much of any foaming. I did accidently put in about twice as much fermcap as usual, so im wondering whether this is the reason or whether its just something with the bugs not being able to ferment the wort. Although, theres gotta be some sacch or wine yeasts in there somewhere too. Ive just never seen a starter act like this. Every other sour Ive done has been from pitching dregs directly into the fermentor.

Should I just go ahead and pitch it into the beer?

could be the fermcap. could also be that your pitch rate into the starter was incredibly low so a vigorous fermentation could not happen. this has happened to me before. cold-crash, decant and add some from starter wort. i'm pretty sure that you'll have a noticeable fermentation the second time around... although it could take a week or so, since brett might be the only yeast alive in there. depending how old the bottles are, the sacch is likely dead.

i would pitch that starter.

ok thanks yeah ill make some new wort. There will likely be a layer of what should be yeast settled at the bottom, but just the entire lack of activity is weird

I started with maybe 500ml with the dregs of 3 22oz bombers and 2 12oz bottles. I figured that wouldnt be too much of an underpitch

I suppose I could taste some of the decanted stuff, how much sourness you think it would have at like 1 week old?

What beers are you using?

i used Prarie Artisan Ales Eliza5beth, and Puncheon, Anchorage's Andromedus and Bitter Monk, Goose Island Sofie, and one of my earlier Sours that is easily the standout of the 3 ive done.

That Prairie has wine yeast added at bottleling. I made a starter with Puncheon and it fermented crazy. Def had a windy smell. Tossed, didn't like the aroma and about a month later I beard a podcast with one of the brewers and confirmed, he also said that using his dregs would not be advisable because of the wine yeast.

Do all of the Prairie bottles contain wine yeast or only a select ones?

I believe all, link to the Basic Brewing interview, I think this was the one
http://traffic.libsyn.com/basicbrewing/bbr03-27-14prairieales.mp3

crap. wait so if I used like a number of bottles and 1 or 2 of them had wine yeast but the rest was all bugs, i should start over?

forgot to mention, this isnt for a primary strain, this is a souring blend I want to use on a saison. Really hope i didnt screw it up with a bit of wine yeast

I just remembered the other sours ive done have used Prarie and Anchorage dregs so Im hoping ill be ok. I read an interview from Anchorage that they bottle stuff like Galaxy White IPA and Love Buzz with brett & wine yeast

I've used Prairie dregs in secondary as well and haven't had ill effects from the wine yeast. Probably not best to prop up for a primary ferment, but I don't think you've ruined it.

Have you tried stepping up your dreg culture? Sometimes I see limited to no activity in the first step when harvesting from bottles, but then get a visible krausen in the 2nd step.

according to this Mad Fermentationist article, adding wine yeast to an ale yeast fermentation isn't a good idea (at least in this one case it wasn't) http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2014/09/flemish-red-with-red-wine-yeast-notes.html

ive got my starter up to 1L now I was going to decant it and pitch in sometime this weekend. So Im getting both points fo view here. Is it safe to pitch this mixed culture in my finished beer as a secondary?

edit: wait i read that and he co-picthed the beer and wine yeast. This is already fermented out so........

also what the hells a "killer" wine strain. I at first thought he was saying it was really awesome, but it doesnt seem thats the case. Does prarie use killer wine strains to bottle?

If it wasn't safe to pitch the wine yeast in a fermented product with ale yeast, then Prairie wouldn't have done it in the first place...

It's just not safe in primary if you want your main yeast to survive and make a contribution. Secondary/bottling pitches are quite safe.

Ok cool thanks guys. Pitching the sour starter tomorrow and at least according to SWMBO, its smells good

so update: This sour culture ive built up for use as a house culture is absurd. Its like the WY3711 of bug blends. It fully soured a beer in 27 days and dropped it to 0.098. Looks like I wont have to look into sour worting after all
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=543576

52 days in:
Finished at 0.0996 with a pH of 3.2
Trying to figure out how normal that is compared to other sours....