Starter attempt Omegang Abbey dregs

The first time I tried this I was very new to brewing, and thought I had read up enough to try and make this happen - no way complete fail. First time I had too much wort, OG was to high, no stir plate, attempted to mash grains for a starter, etc. Hopefully this first step will work.

Second attempt at making a starter from Omegang Abbey dregs. Used one ounce of DME, and 300ml of water, then added 100ml dregs/wort. Hopefully, can crash this today, and step again tomorrow.

Well I guess this my last attempt at these dregs - FAIL...

Why not just use the Duvel yeast?

Is there enough in a 750ml for a small starter to build up. I may have to wait for my next bulk order and figure which Belgian strain to buy.

dstockwell said:

Is there enough in a 750ml for a small starter to build up. I may have to wait for my next bulk order and figure which Belgian strain to buy.

Click to expand...

The commercially available Duvel yeast is probably the closest you'll get to Ommegang. They are owned by Moortgat and I'm pretty sure their "proprietary" strain is likely from their parent company.

The problem with culturing from a bottle is that unless you are sure that the brewery is using primary yeast to condition with, you may not even be getting the yeast you want. I get a lot of the same flavors and ester profile from Duvel as I do from the Ommegang beers.

It can be done. I just bottled my version of an Abbey Ale clone (Abbey Road - a modified version of the BYO clone) using harvested yeast. I harvested the dregs from a 4-pack of the small bottles and started with a 500 ml starter on my stir plate. After 36 hours I still had nothing and was going to toss it but I decided to give it one more night. It took over 48 hours to kick in but it eventually did. I guess the yeast were extra sleepy. I stepped it up twice more and had about 50 ml of pretty dense slurry after crashing. It sat for a couple of months in my fridge until I got around to brewing the clone. I ran it through one more step and pitched it on brew day.

It took me from OG 1076 to FG 1009 - 88% attenuation in 3 weeks. It has been 2 weeks in the bottles. I'll give it one more week and see how it is. FWIW, several sources have indicated that Ommegang uses the same yeast throughout fermentation and conditioning.

Glad to hear you were able to make it happen. Maybe I'll give another try down the road..