Well this is embarassing but...

So, I'm currently in the midst of making a beer with a new-ish local brewery down the street from me. Background details here.

The very basics of what happened is:
1) I propagated the yeast for the batch. I gave them 3 yeasts/blends - a sacch, a brett blend, and my sour blend. Each to then be pitched into 3 kegs filled with starter wort to step them up for enough yeast for a commercial size batch
2) I go there last night to find they put it all in a single starter. Not too much of a problem, but I was planning to pitch my sour blend a bit after fermentation started so the pH doesnt get too low too quickly. My sour blend is pretty aggressive
3) After I left, I realized they did not pitch starter wort with my yeast. They pitched the finished, non carbonated beer from their pale ale, instead of the wort runnings like I figured they would. Evidently, they have never made a starter before, even in their homebrewing experience.

I haven't said anything to them yet. But I am trying to figure out what the hell to do. We wont be trying to pitch the yeast into the actual batch until we've got enough yeast. Here's my current plan:

- The brett & bugs will likely be fine and grow a bit in the pale ale they pitched them in. Its basically a secondary thats been soured. I want to let this ride for a bit, then cold crash, decant, and add actual starter wort this time on top of it to grow
- The sacch strain I'm a bit concerned about. Its a saison strain which has basically been pitched into a pale ale, so it should attenuate it a bit, but I doubt we'll get enough yeast as we need. I want to regrow this for them and put it into a separate starter keg


any ideas? I'm a bit at a loss here, but more baffled that this even happened

sorry bumping this because for some reason it isnt showing up anywhere I can find. Lucky I kept the window open...

Buncha morans. Any chance of a larger vessel? If not I'd probably just shake it up and split it into three other kegs of starter wort.

I think I'd be more concerned that they pitch yeast into a finished beer. The sacc yeast may not be viable because of the alcohol already present in the Pale Ale. As for the Bret and Sour mix, they may be fine, but the growth with be slow and the lacto may be inhibited by the amount of hop IBUs in the Pale Ale. I know several small breweries that don't use starters for the simple fact that they do not have an onsite lab or one that is close enough to them to ensure that they aren't getting contamination in their sacc strains. I would rather pitch a pure culture over pitching something that could ruin the batch. I'm not saying that your practices aren't good, but a commercial brewery has to look at cost of dumping several barrels of beer or paying more for a commercial sized pitch.

well the entire batch is basically being purposely contaminated. The keg worth of pale ale was just pitched on top of all my yeasts I gave them so it likely will have some of their WLP001 in it, but that's not really going to hurt the final sour we make. Not sure if I was clear, but they did it due to some serious misunderstanding about how I said I planned to build the starters.

I figure as long as we actually use starter wort this time we should be OK. They got 5 and 10gal sanke kegs we can use to make the starters in. Im just worried about a full scale batch going down the drain because of a blunder. Plus, Im pretty sure that would ruin any future chance of collaborating....

But yeah, mostly Im surprised this could even happen

It's late, so maybe I'm confused.

You gave them some Belgian yeast, some Brett, and a sour blend - all separate. Plan was to make 3 separate starters.

They pitch all 3 into a fully attenuated pale Ale (with alcohol and hops).

My guess almost everything they added is going to do very little due to the alcohol. With time, the Brett and bugs will work, but as a starter, not a lot is going to happen.

I'd suggest letting the 'starter' settle, decanting the liquid and then adding proper starter wort and going from there. The Belgian strain should start up fine, and the Brett and bugs should take a secondary role. Worst case, the Belgian strain will share the lead role with the 001, but if they have good practices, your Belgian strain should be in the majority.

Maybe save the keg of Pale they take off the cake and let it ride for a while and see what that turns into.

Calder said:

It's late, so maybe I'm confused.

You gave them some Belgian yeast, some Brett, and a sour blend - all separate. Plan was to make 3 separate starters.

They pitch all 3 into a fully attenuated pale Ale (with alcohol and hops).

My guess almost everything they added is going to do very little due to the alcohol. With time, the Brett and bugs will work, but as a starter, not a lot is going to happen.

I'd suggest letting the 'starter' settle, decanting the liquid and then adding proper starter wort and going from there. The Belgian strain should start up fine, and the Brett and bugs should take a secondary role. Worst case, the Belgian strain will share the lead role with the 001, but if they have good practices, your Belgian strain should be in the majority.

Maybe save the keg of Pale they take off the cake and let it ride for a while and see what that turns into.

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No you got it right. Thats exactly what happened. We decided on using their "runnings" as starter wort. But that was a discussion with both the owner and their head brewer (the owner brews too but has less homebrewing experience). It was the owner that made the mistake of putting 10gal of finished beer on top of my 3 yeasts as opposed to starter wort..

Yeah I plan to tell them to let the sour yeasts and brett settle, decant it, and pitch 10gal of fresh starter wort. In the meantime, I am going to build up my saison yeast again and keep it separate from the sour bend this time so the pH doesnt inhibit fermentation. If I know my sour blend, it will be below pH 3.5 in a week or two

Interesting what to do with the pale. It should be pretty good. Ill suggest they transfer the beer when we decant it a separate keg for sour conditioning. That, or give it to me. I earned it after all this...

Write...don't "discuss".

^ now im confused...

Well I just explained the situation to them so we are gonna have 2 10gal kegs, One will be the decanted sour/brett/saison blend with fresh wort put on top. The other will just be my saison yeast I chose with fresh wort.

I talked ot them about saving the soured pale ale. Thanks for the idea @Calder . SHould be an interested mistaksperiment

I want to know what professional Brewer would allow Brett and souring bugs into their brewery willingly...maybe we will hear about a new sour brewery opening here soon

It's embarrassing because I have had plenty of beer from both of the breweries in Paducah.

thehopbine said:

I want to know what professional Brewer would allow Brett and souring bugs into their brewery willingly...maybe we will hear about a new sour brewery opening here soon

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Well apart from the breweries that only do wild/sour beers (Jolly Pumpkin, Jester King, Crooked Stave, etc) the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are:
- Russian River
- Stone
- Anchorage
- Mikeller
- Prarie Artisan Ales
- Orval
- Ommegang
- Allagash
- Brooklyn
- Evil Twin
- Cantillon
- The Bruery
- Goose Island
- Cascade Brewing co
- Lost Abbey
- Almanac Beer co
- Wicked Weed
- Odell
- New Holland
- Victory
- Boulevard
- Three Floyds
- Logsdon Farmhouse Ales
- Sainte Adairius
- Side Project

please excuse the lack of breweries on the list. There are a few (hundred) im definitely missing....

OK here we go:
https://wherethewildbeersare.com/Register/Beer

still incomplete though. But yeah I see your point. What the hell were they thinking???

Cascade is a sour Brewer only, so is the bruery, stone, anchorage, goose island, all have separate facilities for their souring programs

Umm.....Ive had several non-sours from the bruery, anchorage, goose island....but most of all....stone? Im pretty sure they arent an only sour brewer............................................................................................................................facepalm

well Ive got the saison yeast built back up and am going to bring it to them before I leave for Thanksgiving with the family. I gotta be sure to spell out EXACTLY what needs to be done this time. My plan is:
- wait till the next time they brew a lower OG / lightly hopped beer and use the runnings from that for the stater wort
- cold crash the current 10gal keg of what is now a soured pale ale (save the beer in a different keg). Put the starter wort on top to fill it about 7-8 gallons to account for krausen
- take my ~3L of saison starter and build it up in a separate 10gal keg with 7-8gallons
- let those go for at least a week and we can hopefully brew something early december

Sounds like a reasonable way to make the best of a bungled situation.

Not sure if runnings is the right word in this case, since it sounds like the plan is to pull off some finished wort post-boil (from the fermenter?). Do they have the ability to pull off wort from the kettle prior to any hop additions going in? Or even some second runnings from the mash tun that could be boiled in a smaller kettle (not sure what size or kind of system they're operating on).

Edit: btw, why start a new thread for this? I'd rather follow the continuing saga in a single location.

thehopbine said:

Cascade is a sour Brewer only

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Nope.

BGBC said:

Sounds like a reasonable way to make the best of a bungled situation.

Not sure if runnings is the right word in this case, since it sounds like the plan is to pull off some finished wort post-boil (from the fermenter?). Do they have the ability to pull off wort from the kettle prior to any hop additions going in? Or even some second runnings from the mash tun that could be boiled in a smaller kettle (not sure what size or kind of system they're operating on).

Edit: btw, why start a new thread for this? I'd rather follow the continuing saga in a single location.

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Maybe the threads can be merged. I just figured I might not have gotten advice if my question was at the end of a long winding thread

But I was wondering about the starter wort. I originally was going to see if they could just pull off some during the transfer from their mash tun, but then I wondered about sanitation. At normal mash temps, would the wort be OK to use for a starter do you think?

They mostly have 7 barrel systems, but they are getting a 15gal or 20gal; https://www.brewmagic.com/
unit for doing small test batches. Hoping to be able to play with that, but not sure when theyll be getting it.

Maybe Ill ask about pulling out the ~15gal we'd need from their mash, storing it in kegs, and then just bringing it to a boil after they finish brewing their batch. Its basically that, or have the yeasts ferment their pale ale or wheat or something and harvesting the finished cake

thehopbine said:

Cascade is a sour Brewer only, so is the bruery, stone, anchorage, goose island, all have separate facilities for their souring programs

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Pretty sure he just missed his punctuation. There should be a sentence ending "." after the bruery, and yes he is wrong. Cascade and the bruery make non-sour beers.

leaving for Thanksgiving vacation tomorrow morning so im bringing them the new saison yeast tonight. Plan to give them very specific instructions on what to do with the yeast. Here's what I plan to tell them

During the next batch of pale ale or wheat (figure these would be optimal if using finished beer wort):

- stick the 10gal keg of soured pale ale in the fridge to cold crash the day before

- decant the sour pale keg and add my saison starter to a DIFFERENT keg

- take ~15gal of the finished, boiled, cooled wort and put ~7gal in each keg to leave adequate headpace

- do NOT put the kegs in the fridge and they dont need temp control (sour and a saison). just let them sit until I get back and we can get started on the sour


see anything I missed?

Well I left them 2 big yeast starters in their walk in before taking off for thanksgiving. Wrote instructions as above. Hipefully, we've got 2 7gal starters going in kegs now

Well I went down there last night to talk about plans for the sour. They are supposedly pitching my starters into wort from their IPA (just happened to be what they were brewing next). They are going to take wort from right before the first hop addition. Their IPA is only a bit over 6% so it wont be a terribly high gravity starter

Im interested to see what they are gonna do with the 10gal of sour pale ale. I did mention saving it.

Also went home with about 3 lbs of Pacific Gem hops free. They opened a big bag and couldnt fit the remainder into their bucket. Looks like someones making a very hoppy saison next week...

This story is really hard to read when ive been trying really hard to get into pro brewing, even just packaging or w/e....then these guys are brewing professionally and have never made a starter. FML

they finally got the starters going! I got a call from them asking me to swing by to clear up a few things on how to do it. They ended up using wort from their IPA, taken off right when the boil started so there was no hop additions. They found some cool big silicone starter that has a hole for an airlock to fit these sanke style kegs with ~3" dia triclamp holes on top

globe said:

This story is really hard to read when ive been trying really hard to get into pro brewing, even just packaging or w/e....then these guys are brewing professionally and have never made a starter. FML

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blackhawk farms?

motobrewer said:

blackhawk farms?

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Yea, used to go there...recently moved to San Diego so had to sell the bike.