Cultured orval dregs into starter, any idea what else is in there?

I cultured some dregs from an orval bottle with the intent to build it up to a nice big starter. I pitched the dregs into a small amount of boiled and cooled wort. After a few days of giving it some yeast nutrient, yeast energizer and lots of swirling for aeration I started to get some strange growths on the interior sides of the flask above the liquid.

I usually see some yeast cells and bits of stuff from the starter liquid left along the sides of the flask from swirling and I usually don't think twice about it. This is the first time I've experienced this issue. Where all of the yeast cells or grain bits or whatever were left on the flask walls they turned into small, flat white blobs. Sort of snowflake-like. They grew a little and turned sort of an off-white color. Now that the brett has started to ferment over a week later the white spots have begun to appear on the surface of the brett krausen.

I also started a second starter in a different part of the house with more orval dregs when I thought the first one was not going to take off. It took off in fewer days but it is also showing signs of the white snowflakes on the krausen and liquid surface.



You can see the white spots on the sides of the flask. Any speculation on what this is? Lacto? Brett doing weird stuff?

Why not get a sterile loop and reculture one of your "colonies" on the side of the flask? I'd be curious to see what comes of that.

I just recultured some Orval dregs and looked at what I got under the microscope. As expected, there are 2+ strains there: A larger, spheroid cell which I would guess is the primary strain, and a more elliptoid group of cells which I would assume is the brett. They are there in about equal numbers, but my bottle was 8 months old.

I'm trying to separate out these strains just for laughs, but since I'm cheap I keep my place at 60 in the winter and I can't get my plate to grow. From the side of your flask it looks like you may have better luck at this than me.

Was there ever a conclusion on this starter?

Yeah, any updates?

Buddy of mine and I cultured Orval recently- we got a fruity, funky starter with no odd growth.

I still have no idea what was going on with the sides of the flask. Once the pellicle dropped on the starter and the liquid cleared I decanted and pitched the slurry into an all-brett beer. It fermented normally (very sacc-like) and none of the weird white flakes grew in the beer, which sat in primary for six months. The beer turned out great.

I never tried growing up the white flakes. I'm not sure if it was mold or if the starter got a lacto infection from residual liquid left on the sides of the flask.