Starter from mixed lindemans after 1 week.

Well I plan to be brewing a 10 gallon split batch of a lambic in the next few weeks. In the mean time I have been drinking a variety of lindemans and pitching the dregs into a mason jar along with a dreg from a bottle of Brux Beer. I then made up a starter wort of 1.030 and pitched the mason jar into the flask. I had it on the stir plate the first 2 days with no sign and with loose foil over the neck of the flask.

Yesterday I placed a airlock on top I started to notice a build up of sediment on the bottom and a white film on the surface. This morning I checked and there's a small krausen and bubbling away. My plan is to build this up and pitch it into one of my vessels either my old oak barrel or a carboy.

The only Lindemans that has viable dregs is the Cuvee Renee, have you added any dregs from one?

I've added from framboise, kriek and the apple all of lindemans.

Unfortunately those are all bottle pasteurized so nothing will be growing from them.

I will see how this turns out, I read on the mad fermentionist that the kriek had usable dregs.

The regular kriek does not, but the cuvee renee kriek does. Either way you still have Brett B in there with it.

looks good. In fact, it looks just like my brett c starter built up from oak cubes.
Good luck with it bro.
Btw, how does it smell? Have you tasted it?

Haven't smelled or tasted it yet didn't have time this a.m. but my brew room smells of cheesed hops.

Gave it a smell when I got home and it smells good. Nice and light sour smell, I kicked the starter plate on for a minute or two it got extremely active.

My Brett C smells sour-ish,kind of like hard cider

Have a ? On the BRETT can I cold crash it and decant the old wort for a fresh batch just like a normal starter?

hunterlab said:

Have a ? On the BRETT can I cold crash it and decant the old wort for a fresh batch just like a normal starter?

Click to expand...

Yes.

Just to reiterate what was said above, the fruit lindemans -- except the cuvee kriek -- are all pasteurized so there is no live brett or bacteria in the bottle. So all you really have in that starter is the brett brux. You won't get any lambic sourness just out of brett brux, you need the bacteria to produce sourness. I wouldn't want you to devote a year of aging to that beer expecting lambic and instead being disappointed you only have a brett beer.

You may want to try to find the lindemans cuve renee gueuze, which is not pasteurized. I've never seen the cuvee kriek but it's an option as well. I know Timmermans makes a gueuze, too, and it is not pasteurized. If you have access to American sours or other non-pasteurized Belgian sours those would help add other strains of brett and some bacteria to your starter. Jolly Pumpkin, Russian River, Cascade, etc.

You could also supplement with one of the blends from Wyeast, White Labs, or ECY if you can find it.

I do plan on getting bacteria from wyeast when I get the supplies. This is more or less a experiment for now . I plan to take the list of usable beer dregs when I goto a local specialty package store.

Taste pretty decent kinda fruity and earthy if that makes any sense lol.

To reiterate, the fruit lindemans are pastuerized and don't have viable dregs. The exception to this, the cuvee renee kriek, is a pretty rare beer.

I see you're in CT. Some of the beers you want to look for for dregs are Allagash Confluence or Interlude, Ithaca White Gold, Green Flash Rayon Vert (brett only), Boon Oude Gueze, anything from Hannsen's, and of course the lindeman's cuvee renee gueze.